The memes that cropped up after the disastrous Fyre Festival and the documentaries about the fest are funny, but the Fyre story isn’t all smiles: Ultimately, a lot of people were scammed, and Billy McFarland owes $26 million to a number of people. Now, in an attempt to pay back some of that debt, official merchandise from the festival will be auctioned off.
After McFarland’s sentencing, during which he was given six years in prison, his lawyer turned over “two large boxes containing Fyre-branded T-shirts, sweatshirts, shorts and other clothing items that were intended for sale at the Fyre Festival.” A spokesman for the United States Marshals Service’s Manhattan office said in an email, “We have an assortment of the ‘real thing’ Fyre Festival-branded tee-shirts, sweatpants, sweatshirts, hats, wristbands, and medallions. We know that there is tremendous interest in these items in the NY metro area in particular.”
The spokesperson also said, “The USMS will dispose (or sell) the Fyre merchandise in the most efficient, cost-effective way in the best interests of the US Government. We utilize our contracted partners to handle the marketing and sale and it will be an online auction. […] Our objective always is to get the funds back to the victims as fast as we can in cases where there are victims.”
There’s no word yet on when the auction will take place or what the merch looks like. In the meantime, it’s good to know that at least some of the folks who found themselves on the wrong side of Fyre are doing better now: Maryann Rolle, the unpaid caterer from the Netflix documentary, set up a GoFundMe page to recoup some of her losses, and it has since raised over $225,000.
