NBC NEWS Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland sentenced to 6 years on fraud charges

Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland sentenced to 6 years on fraud charges

McFarland pleaded guilty in July to wire fraud charges related to his failed April 2017 music festival in the Bahamas.

by Doha Madani / Oct.11.2018 / 2:03 PM EDT / Updated Oct

Artwork by Elizabeth Williams 

The organizer of a failed Caribbean music festival was sentenced Thursday to a combined prison term of six years in prison for fraud.

Assistant US Attorney Kristy Greenberg and defense attorney address Judge Buchwald during the sentencing of Billy McFarland ( click on an image to see larger)

Billy McFarland, 26 was taken into custody following the sentencing in federal court in Manhattan for his role in the Fyre Festival, a music concert that was supposed to place in the Bahamas in April 2017. People paid thousands of dollars for tickets and accommodations to what was supposed to be a luxury musical festival in the Caribbean, but upon arrival were met with FEMA tents and cheese sandwiches and no concert.

Celebrities such as Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid endorsed the event on their social media pages. Fyre Festival cost investors, including rapper Ja Rule, $26 million — roughly the same amount the judge ordered him on Thursday to forfeit.

Judge Naomi Buchwald who sentenced McFarland to 6 years. 

McFarland apologized during his sentencing and said that a "fear of letting everybody down" drove him to make mistakes.

"I made decisions that were a slap in the face to everything my family tried to teach me," McFarland said in court.

Billy McFarland seated in court with leg shackles

McFarland pleaded guilty in March to wire fraud charges relating to the festival and in July pleaded guilty to various fraud charges stemming from a separate ticket selling scam. McFarland was able to make $150,000 in phony ticket sales to fashion, music and sporting events, according to U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman of the Southern District of New York.

CNBC: Trump lawyer Michael Cohen appears in court with porn star Stormy Daniels watching

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen appears in court with porn star Stormy Daniels watching 

Dan Mangan

link
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/16/trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-in-court-with-porn-star-stormy-daniels.html

• President Donald Trump's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen appeared in federal court Monday on a request to protect files of his seized by the FBI.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, attended the Monday hearing alongside Michael Avenatti, her lawyer in a pending suit against Trump and Cohen seeking to void her hush deal. Michael Cohen seated at table next to his attorney . Artwork by Elizabeth Williams

• Porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump, also attended the hearing.

• Trump has raged about the raids on Cohen's files, in which FBI agents seized documents related to a payout to Daniels in exchange for her silence about the purported affair.

Michael Cohen, longtime personal attorney for President Donald Trump, on Monday showed up at U.S. District Court in lower Manhattan after skipping an initial Friday hearing.
Cohen is asking Judge Kimba Wood to bar prosecutors from getting the first look at client files seized from him by the FBI last week. A lawyer for the president, Joanna Hendon, on Sunday filed a motion asking the judge to grant the president the privilege of reviewing the documents first.
The hearings follow the April 9 raids, in which federal agents seized materials from Cohen's office, home, hotel room and electronic devices.
Both Cohen and Trump argue that they should be allowed to decide which of the documents should be permanently withheld because they are protected by attorney-client privilege.
U.S. attorneys pushed back against Cohen's request in a filing Friday, saying that "Cohen is in fact performing little to no legal work," and alleging that "zero" emails were exchanged between Cohen and Trump. Their assessment was based on already conducted searches of Cohen's email accounts which had not been reported before the court filing.
In a Monday court filing, lawyers for Cohen said that he represented three clients between 2017 and 2018, but refused to identify one of them. The anonymous client had told Cohen not to disclose his name, his lawyers said, partly because it would likely "be embarrassing or detrimental" to him.

 The other two clients are Trump and Elliott Broidy, a former deputy finance chairman for the Republican National Committee who resigned following reports that he had impregnated a Playboy model in an extramarital affair.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, attended the Monday hearing alongside Michael Avenatti, her lawyer in a pending suit against Trump and Cohen seeking to void her hush deal.

Investigators also searched for documents relating to the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape in which Trump boasts about sexual harassment, as well as communications between Trump and Cohen about the tape.
And the agents reportedly sought documents in Cohen's possession related to payments made to another woman who claims she had an affair with Trump: Playboy model Karen McDougal.