Two Fyre Festival Attendees Have Been Awarded $5 Million Because Of Their Immense Suffering

Remember Fyre Festival? The ultra luxurious and exclusive extravaganza in the Bahamas that disintegrated into a gigantic and massively entertaining clusterfuck? Well, turns out the fallout is far from over.

Two Fyre attendees — blogger Seth Crossno and his co-plaintiff Mark Thompson — have just been awarded a $5 million settlement for a lawsuit they filed against Fyre head honcho Billy McFarland in May last year.

As Vice reports, they each received $1.5 million in compensatory damages plus an additional $1 million in punitive damages.

The pair were originally seeking just $25,000 — the minimum amount needed to trigger a lawsuit in their homestate of North Carolina — enough to repay the $13,000 they spent on a VIP Fyre Festival package, which promised them a “residence consisting of four rooms and a living area” and exclusive artist passes.

Of course, the pair received nothing like that: instead they were greeted with a festival site that was barely set up, and offered food that was just a slice of cheese on some bread, or some green leaves in a box. Crossno live tweeted the entire debacle, under the handle William Needham Finley IV:

So Fyre Fest is a complete disaster. Mass chaos. No organization. No one knows where to go. There are no villas, just a disaster tent city. pic.twitter.com/1lSWtnk7cA

— William Needham Finley IV (@WNFIV) April 27, 2017

According to Crossno and Thompson’s lawyer, Stacy Miller, the figure ballooned out to the million mark during the trial to include expenses like hotels and flights — and also more subjective factors like “mental anguish, pain and suffering“. I guess they really hate sliced cheese.

McFarland failed to respond to the court proceedings for more than a year. The judgement ended up being handed down without McFarland present — he’s currently in jail awaiting sentencing on multiple charges of wire fraud and money laundering.

So it might be a little difficult for Crossno and Thompson to collect their $5 million, but their lawyer said they are confident in their strategy to get the money.

“We feel confident about collecting,” Miller said. “I can’t tell you a whole lot about how we’re going to collect it, but we feel confident about it. We have to stay mum on our strategy.”

The settlement probably won’t be the last handed down for Fyre Festival: there are currently about a dozen class action suits pending against McFarland and Fyre Media.

Meanwhile, Crossno has already applied to get the Fyre trademark — which recently expired — and is about to start a podcast called “Dumpster Fyre“. As the saying goes, out of the ashes of tragedy… rises a podcast.