The Fyre Festival is pretty much all anyone’s been talking about this month after the release of Netflix and Hulu‘s documentaries on the failed 2017 festival.
Organised by Billy McFarland, Fyre Festival was essentially a cock-up of epic proportions, promising ticket buyers a “luxury concert” spanning two weekends in the Bahamas, only to deliver disaster relief tents in the place of fancy villas and packaged sandwiches instead of meals cooked by celebrity chefs.
McFarland is now serving six years in prison for pleading guilty to multiple counts of fraud.
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Now, as a bankruptcy court is trying to piece together what happened to the whopping $26 million (USD) contributed by investors, the trustee overseeing the case, Gregory Messer, is applying for subpoenas of the agencies representing high profile models and influencers involved in the festival’s promotion, Billboard reports.
Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, Hailey Bieber, Elsa Hosk, Alessandra Ambrosio and more featured in a highly publicised promo video for the two-week-long event, featuring luxe cocktails, private jets and very extra looking yachts:
Messer is going after the models’ respective talent agencies for information pertaining to payments received from McFarland, essentially trying to determine how much the famous A-listers were paid for their involvement.
As a gauge of how much money we’re talking about, Messer claims that IMG Models – who represents Bella, Hailey and Elsa – received $1.2 million (USD) worth of transactions from McFarland between November 2016 and February 2017.
As for Kendall Jenner, the trustee believes the model was paid $250,000 (USD) for an Instagram post the model shared on her account claiming that members of Kanye West‘s G.O.O.D Music family would perform at the event.
The now-deleted, infamous post failed to disclose its sponsored nature, prompting the Federal Trade Commission to issue a warning to celebrities and influencers about the importance of disclosing relationships with brands in endorsement posts.
No word yet on whether the subpoenas have been granted, but definitely watch this space.
