Fyre Festival: GoFundMe campaign raises over $100,000 to repay Caribbean caterer Maryann Rolle
She said she had a good faith agreement with the founder of Fyre Fest, who was sentenced to prison last year
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Your support makes all the difference.The caterer who said she was forced to spend $50,000 of her own savings when the organisers of Fyre Festival did not pay for services, will get repaid thanks to the kindness of strangers — and then some.
A GoFundMe fundraising account set up by Maryann Rolle, the owner of Exuma Point Bar and Grille in the Bahamas, has surpassed its goal.
The account had received more than $138,00 in donations to help Ms Rolle, whose appearance on the recent Netflix documentary about the failed music festival, FYRE, packed an emotional punch that showed just how much human damage the organisers had done.
“I went through about $50,000 of my own savings,” Ms Rolle says during the documentary in an emotional accounting of the cost the festival had on her after organizers failed to pay. “They just wiped it out and never looked back”.
Ms Rolle set up the GoFundMe herself to coincide with the release of the Netflix documentary, which is one of two on the subject alongside one released on Hulu.
“As I make this plea it’s hard to believe and embarrassing to admit that I was not paid....I was left in a big hole! My life was changed forever, and my credit was ruined by Fyre Fest,” she wrote on the page.
“My only resource today isn o appeal for help. There is an old saying that ‘bad publicity is better than no publicity’ and I pray whoever reads this plea is able to assist.”
Ms Rolle said that he festival founder, William “Billy” McFarland, had promised to pay her for providing thousands of meals and to provide housing for guests with tickets to the festival.
But, after the festival fell apart, she did not receive the money.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered McFarland to pay more than $27m in restitution related to the festival.
He was sentenced to six years in prison for fraud in October.
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