Ticket holders for the infamous Fyre Festival were awarded nearly $2 million as part of a class-action lawsuit, according to a report from Billboard. Each of the 277 attendees will be awarded $7,220 as part of the suit.
The 2017 Fyre Festival event in the Bahamas was organized by Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule, but ultimately failed and never took place. McFarland later pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and a second count to defraud a ticket vendor — he is still imprisoned.
“It’s a small but significant step for ticket holders who were defrauded and had their lives upended as a result of the fraudulent conduct by McFarland,” Ben Meiselas, partner at Geragos & Geragos and lead attorney for the class-action representing the ticket holders, told Billboard.
At this time, it it unclear who would be paying the settlements.
Two popular documentaries about the failed festival debuted on Hulu and Netflix
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Fyre Festival was in the news recently because a famous tweet about the festival’s food is set to be auctioned as an NFT.
An NFT is a verifiable digital asset vouchsafed by blockchain technology. NFTs are not exchangeable like currencies, as each is unique and can’t be replicated. NFTs use blockchain, the technology ledger backing cryptocurrencies like bitcoin
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and ethereum
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which are databases of linked information to record ownership or transactions of a product.
The owner of the food tweet, Trevor Dehaas, is hoping to use the funds from his NFT sale to get a needed kidney transplant procedure, according to his Twitter
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