re: Fyre Fraud Documentary - Hulu and Netflix. Fyre Festival Scam

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I think that was Magnum Rolle’s Mom. He was from the Bahamas. The lady from the restaurant

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Negative. Rolle is one of the most common names in the Bahamas, but these Rolles are from Exuma - not Grand Bahama (where Magnum is from). Not that I'm discrediting MaryAnne Rolle's version of the events/her GoFundMe, or accusing her of manipulation, but I would be very surprised to find that her and her husband (Elvis Rolle) are hurting. Elvis owns a number of businesses on the island, and comparatively, he does very well. Exuma Point (their restaurant) is just one of their interests, and they're known on the island for being very successful.

To the point, I haven't watched the Hulu documentary, but I watched the Netflix version and thought it was great. For clarity, Exuma is not a "remote" island in any sense of the word, especially from Bahamas perspective. It is an "out island" by description, but there is infrastructure on the island, though perhaps not sufficient to establish a music festival of that scale on such short notice. It's also one of the only out islands that you can fly directly into from the US. There are plenty tourist amenities and numerous hotels, but it's hilarious that they tried to set the festival up on the same weekend as the Regatta.

Things that require importing into the Bahamas are very expensive, and labor is very inconsistent. Everything kinda operates on its own time down there, so the idea that McFarland and Ja Rule came up with in and of itself goes to show how much they lacked understanding of how things worked there.

Another thing to note is that the location of the festival site was basically a microcosm of the entire disaster. That particular location is a failed real estate development. There are literally hundreds of these throughout the Bahamas, because developers underestimate the cost of importing building materials and the unreliability of local labor in the planning stages of development. So, the projects run out of money and the developers basically abandon them. I'm surprised that the Bahamas Investment Authority has not attempted to regulate development more strongly over the years, but I suppose it's just difficult to turn away foreign direct investment in a relatively undeveloped nation.

Another funny nugget of irony/info is that the Fyre festival site is literally less than a mile away from a Sandals, which is probably the biggest employer/economic stimulus of the entire island .

It was shocking to me that nobody involved with the process aggressively approached McFarland about shutting the project down because of fraud concerns. Especially the guy that was sent to get the water released. I also was confused as to why McFarland continued to have himself filmed after the fact setting up an entirely different scheme. Awful stupid for a human capable of such large scale manipulation. I want to watch the Hulu version now to see the interviews and see just how involved Jerry Media was.