Hundreds of FOMO-driven attendees were still on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma, grappling with the reality that the first annual luxury Fyre Festival was an unthinkable scam, when California-based laywer Ben Meiselas of Geragos & Geragos began receiving call after call ... after call.
The civil rights, class action and litigation firm, which has filed notable consumer lawsuits against companies like EOS lip balm and CenturyLink , had quickly become the priority speed dial for rich, white 20-somethings stranded in the Caribbean with no way home.
We got calls from people who were looking for lawyers to get off the island people who we had known in Los Angeles and people who just knew us from Googling the firm, Meiselas told HuffPost following the premiere of Hulus Fyre Fraud documentary, and just days before Netflixs Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened hit the streaming network. Meiselas appears in both films.
We started getting calls from literally everybody on the island who wanted to be involved in the case, he said. I think you can say hell has no wrath like a millennial scorned.
It was April 27, 2017, and Meiselas and his team were receiving real-time updates from attendees of the first and final day of the most infamous failed music festival in history, created by New York entrepreneur-turned-fraudster Billy McFarland and his Fyre Media minions, including rapper Ja Rule. Fyre Festival was supposed to be a transformative, immersive experience on a private island once owned by Pablo Escobar, an event focused on A-list guests, opulent accommodations, Michelin-status food and top-of-their-game musical acts.
What both documentaries make clear is that the festival was, in actuality, a dumpster fire that engulfed guests as soon as they arrived via a chartered plane from Miami to a dusty construction lot filled with rain-soaked FEMA tents and sad cheese sandwiches no villas or yacht parties with Kendall Jenner in sight.
After the deluge of phone calls, Geragos & Geragos prepared a $100 million class-action lawsuit and filed it before the weekend was over . The litigation is ongoing.
The lawsuit itself went as viral as the tweets in terms of bringing light to what was taking place, Meiselas said. Then, we started getting the whistleblower information that it was financially fraud, as well.
McFarland didnt just scam the Fyre Festival participants; he allegedly defrauded investors and employees out of millions of dollars, too. Now, the nearly unbelievable story of a huckster who hawked his way into the pockets of the rich and not-so-rich is being told in not one but two competing documentaries, both of which have captured the attention of the internet, bringing the grotesque carnival of horrors that was Fyre back into public conversation.
Hulus Fyre Fraud is more of a true-crime comedy that details the overwhelming influence of social media on human behavior. Netflix s Fyre, on the other hand, is preoccupied with the festivals inner-workings, as told by McFarlands scorned Fyre Media employees, Bahamian workers and festival attendees. Both have their faults Hulu reportedly paid McFarland an undisclosed amount of money to appear in an exclusive interview; Netflix sugarcoats Fyre Festival promoter Jerry Medias sketchy involvement in its project as a producer but they land on a similar conclusion: McFarlands heist saga serves as a handy allegory for everything wrong with power and influence in a post-truth era.
Below, Meiselas shares his take on the dueling films and gives an update on the class-action lawsuit.
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