Photo: Getty
She got duped.
By Emily Blackwood — Written on Mar 06, 2019
There may be no millennial disaster greater than Fyre Festival. When hundreds of people arrived in the Bahamas in April 2017, they were promised a weekend surrounded by music, luxury, and celebrities. Instead, they were met with hurricane tents and slices of bread and cheese in lieu of fine dining.
The hashtag #FyreFraud went viral and it was quickly revealed that the entire festival was a scam. Billy McFarland, who created the event, has been the center of documentaries and stories about the scandal, and there were people other than his customers who were duped. One of those people being New York businesswoman Carola Jain.
Jain was also featured in both the Netflix and Hulu documentaries about the festival as she was a prominent investor and was portrayed as a big supporter of McFarland's. So who is Carola Jain and how did she get caught up in the Fyre Festival scandal?
Here's what we know.
1. She hasn't spoken publicly since the documentaries were released.
Since the two documentaries were released, many people involved in them spoke out about their individual roles in the festival; except Jain. She has not spoken publicly about Fyre Festival and has declined multiple interview requests.
2. She's not taking any legal action.
Initially, it was reported that Jain was among the private investors — including Manhattan investor Oleg Itkin — who were taking legal action against McFarland.
“They made Fyre appear to be a good investment,” said Itkin’s lawyer, Michael Quinn. “But McFarland defaulted on the loan, and other investors, ticket holders, employees and vendors have been unable to recoup their money. No one is seeing what they’re owed.”
“The organizers used Instagram and Snapchat to garner interest, and Billy McFarland was going to follow in the footsteps of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg,” Quinn says. “It was going to be models and yachts. But the luxury experience turned into a disaster. Everything he’d promised to investors, ticket holders, and everyone else, he couldn’t come up with.”
However, Town & Country reported that she has no plans to pursue claims at the moment and is just trying to "move on from the bad investment."
3. She's a regular in the NYC social circuit.
Jain is known around the city for attending charity events in the Hamptons and rubbing elbows with the city's elite. But those close to her say that her real passion lies in business and investing, not attending parties.
Which is a little ironic now, considering.
4. She's passionate about business.
Jain currently works as the chief marketing officers of Spartan, the company that puts on those crazy obstacle courses. She was a speaker for the most recent Consumer Technology Association conference in Las Vegas where she discussed sponsorship and fan engagement, representing Spartan.
Prior to that role, she worked as a senior director for Interbrand, a brand consulting agency with clients like American Express, L'Oréal and J.P. Morgan.
And don't let the Fyre Festival have you thinking she's privy to bad investments. She invested in several successful startups like Juice Press — now worth $75 million — and the Wing, a popular women's group in NYC.
5. She backed McFarland up before Fyre was a thing.
Jain was one of the earliest investors in McFarland's first company, Magnises, which he launched in 2014 when he was only 24. Magnises was an exclusive credit card experience that was briefly touched on in the documentaries.
In fact, Jain even let McFarland use her Upper East Side townhouse for their holiday party in 2016. And when Magnises failed after people complained about bad tickets, over-billing, and poor customer service, she still trusted him enough to invest in his new idea: Fyre Festival.
In the Netflix documentary, Jerry Media CEO Mick Purzycki said that Jain was "a big believer" in McFarland since the beginning.
"She had always been around, always supporting this kid, always believing in his ability to become the next big entrepreneur."
6. She was kept in the dark a lot.
According to the Netflix documentary, Jain was unaware of the severe lack of infrastructure for the festival and that the talent that was supposedly booked to perform had yet to be paid. Even though she was also seen on the film taking meetings with McFarland to discuss how to get people to spend more money during the festival. One of his ideas is charging people to party on yachts with celebrities like Kendall Jenner.
At one point, McFarland told his music festival consultant Marc Weinstein to "stop telling Carola about the housing situation because they were trying to get more money from her and my emails were alarming her and outright told me to be dishonest.”
Emily Blackwood is a writer and editor living in California. She covers all things news, true crime, and pop culture.