Billy McFarland, Fyre Festival Founder, Gets Early Prison Release

The founder of the ill-fated Fyre Festival, Billy McFarland, currently lives in a New York halfway house after his early release from prison on Wednesday. The Bureau of Prisons website and McFarland's attorney Jason Russo confirmed that he was released from the Milan Federal Correctional Institution in Milan, Michigan, where he was incarcerated, TMZ reported. 

Currently, he is under the management of Residential Reentry Management New York, an administrative office overseeing halfway houses located in southern and eastern New York and New Jersey. McFarland is set to leave the halfway house on Aug. 30. According to Bureau of Prison records, he was originally scheduled for release on Aug. 30, 2023. 

McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison in 2018 after admitting to defrauding investors in the doomed 2017 Fyre Festival, which was marketed as a luxury music festival for influencers with lavish celebrity promotion. However, when ticket-holders arrived on Exuma island in the Bahamas, the promised event had not materialized. Afterward, McFarland pleaded guilty to charges related to a ticket-selling scam.

Since his initial incarceration, McFarland has served time in prisons in New York — where he worked overnight in a sewage treatment plant — as well as in Oklahoma City and Ohio. McFarland claimed he was "particularly vulnerable" to Coronavirus 19 through his attorneys during the pandemic in 2020. The request was denied, and he told the media months later that he had contracted the virus. 

While in prison, McFarland participated in a podcast he started in 2020 called Dumpster Fyre."A year ago today, I was in the midst of a 3-month stint in solitary confinement," he said on the first episode. "It was the hardest but most impactful period of my life." Jason Russo, McFarland's attorney, told Insider that McFarland was sent to solitary confinement for 90 days after authorities discovered the podcast. McFarland committed another infraction in the summer of 2019 when he was caught with a prohibited recording device. 

According to Russo, McFarland is now solely focused on repaying the nearly $26 million he owes in restitution. "What's the best way to generate income to pay this restitution back and make amends," Russo said. "Any new projects that he does become involved in will be done solely for the purpose of generating the restitution for paying back his victims," remarked Russo. McFarland is planning to self-publish a memoir with a working title of Promythus: The God Of Fyre, but the book hasn't been published yet, according to New York Magazine.