- Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland sat down with GMA on Friday in his first TV interview since leaving prison.
- In the interview, McFarland expressed remorse and admitted to lying to investors to save his company.
Billy McFarland, the disgraced founder of Fyre Festival, shared an emotional apology for the disastrous music festival in his first TV interview since his release from prison.
McFarland appeared on Good Morning America Friday morning to discuss his role in the 2017 festival that went viral on social media after it fell apart, leading to his 2018 conviction in federal court on two counts of wire fraud.
He spent four years of a six-year sentence in prison before his release in March. As part of his conviction, McFarland — who also admitted to using fake documents to con investors — agreed to forfeit $26 million to pay back investors, concert-goers, and vendors.
In his appearance on GMA, McFarland expressed remorse for his infamous Fyre Festival scheme.
"I need to apologize. And that is the first and the last thing that needs to be done," McFarland said in the interview. "I let people down. I let down employees. I let down their families. I let down investors. So I need to apologize. I'm wrong and it's bad."
According to McFarland, his time in prison, which included two stints in solitary confinement, gave him a chance to realize how his insecurities led him down a "terrible path of bad decisions."
"I started lying to get the money and I would literally wake up every day to a document that we called, 'Urgent Payment Sheet.' And it had an amount of money that I had to acquire before the bank closed that day to stop the company from going underwater," he told GMA.
He continued: "So I was literally day-by-day doing whatever it took. And looking back, it was so incredibly stupid."
In a September interview with The New York Times, McFarland spoke of plans to branch into the tech industry for his next venture. Although his wages will be garnished until restitution is paid, McFarland is "shipping code and building 'PYRT' ships" as part of his newest project, according to his LinkedIn profile.
"If I worked in finance, I think it would be harder to get back," he told the Times. "Tech is more open. And the way I failed is totally wrong, but in a certain sense, failure is OK in entrepreneurship."
The 2017 music festival was heavily promoted by the likes of famous influencers and models such as Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid and promised attendees a luxurious experience in the Bahamas. Instead, concert-goers arrived to find inadequate food and disaster relief tents, Insider reported.
When asked by GMA's Michael Strahan why he didn't pull the plug on the festival before, McFarland said there was "no excuse."
"I should've listened. There's no excuse," he said. "I think the hardest thing for me is the trust that I violated and whether it was friends, investors, or employees, people gave up a lot to try to make this happen."
He continued: "How do I call them now and look them in the eye when I let them down?"