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Roundup: U.S. Singer Ja Rule's luxury music festival turns out to be disaster

Xinhua, May 6, 2017 Adjust font size:

Fyre Festival, supposed to be a cozy carnival with gourmet food, pleasant music, nice beach view and several Instagram models on a beautiful Bahamian island this Saturday and last weekend, turned out to be a disaster for both attendees and founders, who faced a series of class lawsuits.

Thousands guests, who paid 2,000 dollars each to attend the Fyre Festival organized by well known rap singer Ja Rule, found what they encountered in Bahama was totally discrepant with the organizers promise when they arrived the site on April 30.

The organizers promised the attendees they would enjoy "a once-in-a-lifetime musical experience on the Islands of the Exumas", however, photos posted by the guests showed that the lavish accommodations were in fact some primitive tents, the world-class cuisines were replaced by the slight pieces of cheese and bread, the wild animals could be seen around the festival, and they didn't even have enough water.

These guests being tricked also became a taunt to many social media ill-wishers, who mocked that a group of rich fools paid thousands dollars to experience true life in a Syrian refugee camp or Cast Away, a film played by Tom Hanks depicting a FedEx employee stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane crashed in the South Pacific.

In last one week, three lawsuits were filed by the attendees against the two-weekend festival co-founder Ja Rule and Billy Mcfarland, and Fyre media, two in California and one in New York.

The first lawsuit was filed by an attendee named Danial Jung on Monday, who paid 2,000 dollars for an event package, including the airfare, food, accommodations and everything. When he fled back from Bahama, he engaged an attorney of a celebrated law firm, named the 90s'rapper, his partner Mcfarland and Fyre Media as defendants.

The lawsuit seek a class action and damages of 100 million U.S. Dollars on behalf of Jung and those who had the similar encounters. The suit states 63 details of organizer's negligence and discrepancy, including some on-site photos.

The second suit was filed by another three attendees early Tuesday, saying "defendants (Ja Rule and Billy Mcfarland, and Fyre media) tricked people into attending the event by paying more than 400 social media influencers and celebrities to promote it" .

According to report of Hollywoodreporter.com, the plaintiffs believed that the event was a scam at the very beginning, since the defendants knew they could not pull off what they promised at least one month before the event, but they did not inform the guests.

The suit alleged that the defendants breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation of fraud. Meanwhile, the plaintiffs also complained that the organizers made them to deposit the money into the festival wristband instead of taking cash or credit card to the festival.

It "posed a major problem when festivalgoers began absconding from Fyre en masse. Plaintiffs were stuck on the island, with no way off,", Rollingstone.com posted.

On Thursday, the third lawsuit was filed by two attendees, who paid over 1,027 U.S. dollars each for the food, tickets and "luxury lodging," and deposit another 1,000 U.S. dollars each into festival's wristband for their other expense on the Island.

This lawsuit "also names Grant Margolin, the event's marketing director, as a defendant and alleges negligence, fraud and misrepresentation and violation of the consumer protection laws of all 50 states" , NPR.org reported.

Ja Rule posted on his Twitter last Friday that "I want this to be an amazing event, it was NOT A SCAM as everybody is reporting, I don't know how everything went so left but I am working to make it right by making sure everyone is refunded. I truly apologize as this is NOT MY FAULT, but I am taking responsibility I am deeply sorry to everyone who has been inconvenienced by this."

A member of the Fyre Festival management team told Rollingstone.com that "We are in the process of helping all Fyre Festival guests apply for refunds" and "All guests who purchased tickets have been sent the appropriate form to start the refund procedure."

He still touted that the Fyre Festival was "a dream and vision." Endit