Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Satisfying Downfall of Fyre Festival

Episode Date: June 15, 2025

Fyre Festival was a high-profile bonanza turned fiasco: planned for April 2017 on Great Exuma Island in the Bahamas, it was marketed by Ja Rule and entrepreneur Billy McFarland as an ultra-luxury music experience with A‑list influencers, glamping domes, supermodels, and top musical acts. However, when attendees arrived, they were met with half-built tents, soggy mattresses, scant food (think cheese sandwiches), poor sanitation, no power, and canceled performances—prompting immediate chaos and public evacuation.

This is your fix. I am your host, Stasi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Stephen, because he's so evil. I do think he is misunderstood. You see everyone base consequences. It's intoxicating.

The writers just know how to trick you. There's always a twist in this show. Tell Me Lies, the official podcast, January 6th, and stream the new season of Tell Me Lies, January 13, on Hulu, and Hulu on Disney Plus. Do you remember Fire Festival? What really went wrong with that? And is there really going to be a Fire Festival too? Now, this story all starts with this guy, Billy.

And Billy's around 23 years old during this time, and he's an entrepreneur whose credit card business is failing. So one day, in 2016, he comes up with a new business idea. He's going to start a company to build an app that lets people book celebrities and famous musicians for events. And to help him out with this idea, for some reason, he puts up. partners with known rapper Jha Ruh. One of the problems that we're really, really tackling is the nasty business of booking.

And so, Billy and Jarl will get this insane idea to promote their app and attract investors into their company. They decide to put on a big music festival on a small island. And they're going to call it FIREE festival. And of course, they've never put on a music fest before, much less one of this size, but whatever. They're going to go for it. And so Billy and Jarl rule get to work. They fly all the way over to the Bahamas to scout locations for this festival. Here's actually a picture of the two of them in the Bahamas.

And Billy specifically has to get investors involved because that's kind of his specialty. So over the next year, he starts misleading these investors to get them to invest in his idea. And he falsifies financial statements to back up these lies. He starts making deals based on bank loans he doesn't have. he lies about selling his old credit card business for a bunch of money when that never happened. He's even promising investors they'll get payouts from insurance policies if the festival gets canceled when the guy never bought event cancellation insurance like ever. And so after hearing all these lies, investors are like, sure, I'll invest.

And they start handing Billy tons of money to put into his business and to this music festival. And he apparently ends up raising over $26 million. And of course, Billy isn't putting all of this money into his business or into the festival. He's spending a lot of it on himself. Like he gets himself a Manhattan penthouse apartment. He starts taking chauffered luxury cars and private jets. He's partying a lot because I guess he really likes to party with and be seen with celebrities. Like here he is hanging out with Waka Flaka Flame.

And what money he doesn't spend on himself, he uses to hire a bunch of famous supermodels, including Bella Hadid, Emily Regdibir, and Alessandra Jardjjb. I'm not very familiar with supermodels, but he flies these women on a private plane out to the Bahamas, and he pays them to do promotional shoots for his upcoming Firefest. And these models, like, posted on their Instagrams and shit, like, look at how much fun this is going to be. Billy also pays a bunch of attractive model influencer types to post about Firefest, too.

Apparently, they pay Kendall Jenner $275,000 for just for just, one single Instagram post, and this post implies that artists from the Kanye West music label are going to perform there. And that's a whole other thing. There's supposed to be major music acts there, like major laser is supposed to be there, disclosure is supposed to perform, Ray Surmurned, Migos, little Yadi, Blink 182, even Thugfucker is going to be performing. And I have no idea who Thugfucker is.

I just really like that name. Regardless, Billy and Jaw Rules ad campaign and paying models and influencers to promote this fest are a huge success. Around 5,000 people collectively spend tons of money on tickets to come to this thing. The cheapest tickets are like $500 a person. The expensive ones are like $12,000 a person. So Billy and Jha are actually bringing in a bit of money and suddenly it looks like Billy is some kind of business genius with incredible marketing skills and he's really going to pull this off. Until. Until the whole. whole thing starts falling apart. A few weeks before the festival, Billy's company defaults on a

nearly $3 million loan, plus a potential investment worth $20 million falls through at the last minute. So now they need money, and the ticket sales alone are not enough to finance this thing. And without actual capital to put this show on, Billy's company starts cutting corners. Like they aren't paying vendors who have already done a bunch of the work and thus the whole thing devolves into a disorganized train wreck. And to make it worse, days before the big event, the music headliners start canceling and dropping out. Apparently, they don't want to be a part of this. And this is the moment where Billy should stop and give everyone their money back. Investors, people who bought tickets, but of course, that's not what he does. Instead, he assures everyone around him that some,

Somehow, everything is gonna be fine, and he keeps moving forward as planned. So then, boom, the first weekend of Firefest arrives, and thousands of people fly out to attend. But once they get there, they immediately see that this is a disaster. There are no luxury villas for them to stay in like they were promised. Instead, there are old FEMA tents, and a lot of the tents have cheap, soaking, wet mattresses from being left out in the rain. Not only that, a bunch of people are stranded just trying to get to the venue. And like, here's a luxury dining hall that they're all supposed to eat at. Here's a luxury bathroom, a bunch of them are expected to share.

And instead of the gourmet meals that they were promised, festival attendees are served from a styrofoam container, a wet piece of wheat bread with a slice of cheese and a side of lettuce. And here's actually another picture of some food, and here's another. This one's slightly better, but I mean, it's still garbage. And just keep in mind that festival tickets range anywhere from $500 to $12,000 a person, and they're eating Wonderbread and sliced cheese. And so immediately people are pissed.

I mean, this isn't what they paid for, and they all start flooding social media, posting about this terrible experience. Right now, we're walking with the squad trying to find food like savages. We're walking on the side of the road. We're worried to get off the boat to go to the island because people have been stranded there and not being able to get back to the boat. And the internet just fills up with jokes and memes making fun of the whole situation. Then, early the next morning, Fire Festival official social media accounts posts that Firefest has officially been canceled. But that's not the end of it.

Because it's easy for us to laugh at a bunch of privileged festival goers who had to eat cheese sandwich sandwich sandwich. which is for three days. But they're pissed. They feel ripped off and rightly so. And so, bam, Billy and Jarl Rule get sued at least eight times. Not only that, but remember, investors collectively invested millions of dollars into this, hoping to make a return, investors who Billy consistently lied to. And typically, lying to investors to get their money is fraud.

And so three months later, bam, the FBI arrests Billy. And I don't have his mugshot, but here's an actual picture of him being arrested. But then he gets out on bail and he goes right back to committing fraud where he starts a new company that sells tickets to exclusive events like the Met Gala, Burning Man and stuff like that. But the tickets are a scam. And he cons people out of $150,000 before he gets caught again. And so he gets additional fraud charges added to his already existing fraud charges. And ultimately, he gets sentenced to six years in prison.

While Jarl, he wasn't charged with anything. I guess he wasn't the one lying to investors, which is the illegal part. So no consequences for him other than just, I don't know, the public embarrassment. But then in 2022, Billy gets out of prison. And about a year later, in 2023, he announces Fire Festival 2. Good morning, everybody. We just announced on the Today Show that Fire 2, is taking place April 25th through April 28th.

However, many date and venue changes later in 2025, Billy puts out a statement saying that Fire Festival 2 will not be happening any time soon. I guess they're having trouble finding a venue or something. And also that he's selling the Fire Festival brand once and for all, which is, that's probably for the best.