The rapper Ja Rule was officially dismissed on Monday from a $100m class-action lawsuit filed by Fyre festival attendees, clearing him of any legal wrongdoing.
Ja Rule, whose real name is Jeffrey Atkins, co-founded the festival with Billy McFarland, and repeatedly advertised it to the millions of followers on his social pages.
The New York City southern district judge P Kevin Castel delivered the decision, saying that plaintiffs were unable to prove that Ja Rule’s promotion of the event on his social pages directly led to their ticket purchases.
“This ruling is nothing short of a total vindication of Mr Atkins,” Ja Rule’s lawyer, Ryan Hayden Smith, told AllHipHop.
Two years after its disastrous staging, legal proceedings against the festival and its organizers rage on. The festival is regarded as the ultimate “millennial scam” of recent years, its fallout the focus of Netflix and Hulu documentaries. More than 5,000 people purchased tickets to the weekend-long event in 2017, expecting a luxury experience featuring high-octane shows from Major Lazer, Desiigner and others on a private island. It was to be an Instagram-ready party. But what attendees actually received were cold cheese sandwiches, hastily constructed tents to sleep in, rain-soaked mattresses and a logistical nightmare.
So who has been forced to answer for the disaster?
The people behind the ill-fated festival have battled lawsuits while attempting to resuscitate their careers and reputation, from nabbing an unexpected talent deal to launching a tequila brand. There’s the sense that few were held responsible.
McFarland, the founder and CEO of Fyre Media, was found guilty of wire fraud in 2018 and sentenced to six years in prison and a $25m fine. While Ja Rule was dismissed from the $100m lawsuit, McFarland remains a defendant. Some have accused McFarland of attempting to profit off of Fyre Festival’s failure – he was paid to appear in Hulu’s documentary.
The event’s producer, Andy King (who was heavily meme’d after Netflix’s Fyre documentary), recently nabbed a talent deal. He has signed with Spoke Studios and is currently shopping around a TV series featuring him, now marketing himself as the “Tim Gunn” of the events industry .
Elliot Tebele, the founder of the ad company behind the festival, Jerry Media, is battling a lawsuit for lifting content from a meme creator and using it on his Instagram account, FuckJerry (which has over 14 million followers and has reportedly charged companies $50,000 a post). Tebele is not done with music festivals, either. He recently hosted Revolve festival, a party at Coachella that featured A-list attendees such as Cardi B, SZA and Kendall Jenner and promoted Tebele’s new tequila brand, JaJa.
Meanwhile, Maryann Rolle, the unsuspecting Bahaman cook who lost her life savings because of McFarland’s reckless decisions, was forced to hold an online fundraiser, where she asked strangers for donations. A dash of good news: Rolle was able to raise more than $232,500. Her original goal was $123,000.
