Oh, you thought it was getting hard to keep track of all the Fyre Festival lawsuits? Well, these aren’t just a bunch of lawsuits: they’re an experience. Strap in.
Pitchfork reports that lawsuit number seven was filed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday by ticket holders Sean Daly and Edward Ivey. There’s the usual fraud stuff and then some new flavor in charges of “unjust enrichment and violation of New York state business law.” The suit alleges that organizers kept encouraging attendees to put money into their Fyre Band payment system for VIP upgrades, even after they knew the festival wouldn’t be taking place:
When Defendants [McFarland, Ja Rule, and Fyre Media] became aware before the start of the festival that it would not actually happen, they notified the scheduled performers and certain festival employees not to fly out for the event. However, Defendants did not notify Plaintiffs [Daly and Ivey] or the thousands of festival-goers who showed up at the event that it was canceled. Instead, Defendants were actively trying to sell upgraded VIP tickets to existing ticket holders.
Pitchfork also interviewed Ben Meiselas, an attorney at the lawfirm of Mark Geragos, who is representing other Fyre Festival grievances in a class action lawsuit seeking $100 million. Mesielas was encouraged to talk shit about Ja Rule and his involvement in the whole mess.
“Not to be a hater on Ja Rule,” said Mesielas, as he proceeded to hate on Ja Rule. “I don’t think the name itself in a contemporary sense carries a great deal of weight. He leveraged his connections [and] basically promoted this as a rebirth of his career. Venture capitalists really bought in and liked that American comeback story, which is how it was being pitched.”
The Geragos lawsuit currently has 300 people attached to it, though the number could end up being in the thousands. In addition to Ja Rule and Billy McFarland, all investors in Fyre Fest and the Fyre App are now also named in the suit, which accuses the whole production of being akin to a Ponzi scheme.
“It kinds of reminds me of a politician, I won’t name who, who says, ‘It’s not about this,’ and then it’s always about that,” explained Meiselas, “The moment they tweeted, ‘This is not a scam’—I think it was Ja Rule who tweeted it—then you go, OK, so why was it you were valuing a company that had no assets at all at $90 million?”
For the memories, man.