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00:00My heart was pounding.
00:02We were going 90 miles an hour down residentials.
00:05But you don't win in a high-speed chase
00:07with the cops by out-speeding them.
00:09You win by out-crazying them.
00:11The cops wanted us bad,
00:13and they were about to get their wish.
00:17I defrauded the U.S. government
00:19to earn a $300 million arms contract.
00:25I created the world's most notorious festival,
00:27Fyre Fest.
00:28I lied to investors costing them $26 million.
00:33It is the most exhilarating feeling
00:35that I have ever felt in my life.
00:39When the federal government comes after you,
00:41they will do anything to take you down.
00:45We have sold thousands of tickets.
00:47What are we going to do?
00:48This was not just business anymore.
00:50It was matters of life and death.
00:52I am getting cut to shreds.
00:53It's like trying to crawl through a cheese grater.
00:58My name is J.D. DeLay.
00:59I stole millions of dollars worth of cars
01:00and became addicted to outrunning the law.
01:01I grew up in a rough neighborhood in Eugene, Oregon.
01:03As a kid, I was an absolute menace.
01:06I was super hyperactive.
01:07I lived for chaos,
01:08and I was definitely all over the place.
01:10When I was about 16 years old,
01:11I started hanging out with the wrong crowd,
01:13people who were making insane amounts of money from crime.
01:15That's when I really started to get into trouble.
01:16I had this buddy named Mike.
01:17Mike was the type of dude that every dude wanted to hang out with.
01:18He had a slick mouth.
01:19He had, like, that steroid sort of build.
01:20He was a football player that just turned into a full-on man.
01:21He was a football player that just turned into a full-on man.
01:22He was the type of dude that every dude wanted to hang out with.
01:26He had a slick mouth.
01:27He had a doubly field.
01:28He was einfach out of a truck.
01:29He had a new place that he didn't own any of these cars.
01:30He was the type of guy.
01:31So, you know, we knew that right now I was probably off the road.
01:32He was a new kid, I started hanging out with the wrong crowd.
01:33People who were making insane amounts of money from crime.
01:34That's when I really started to get into trouble.
01:35I had this buddy named Mike.
01:37Mike was the type of dude that every dude wanted to hang out with.
01:41He had a slick mouth.
01:42He had, like, that steroid-sort of build.
01:44He was a football player that just turned into a full-on gangster.
01:48And this dude would roll up in a different car every single time that we would meet up.
01:53It didn't take me very long to figure out that he didn't own any of these cars.
01:56cars. He was stealing these cars. It was such a high-risk, high-reward thing, and that's something
02:01that I had always chased. I was immediately fascinated with the idea and the process of
02:06stealing cars. He said, man, if you want to go out with me tonight, you can work with me. You're
02:11going to be working. You're not going to make as much money as me, but I will show you. It was kind
02:15of like an internship into crime. So I went out with Mike to steal a car for the first time, and
02:22he told me I was just going to be on lookout. But I didn't realize that we would be stealing a car
02:27literally out of somebody's driveway while they were in their living room. So we drove over there
02:33together, and we parked about two blocks away. We walked over to the car, and he said, just keep a
02:38lookout and whistle if anybody's coming. And I've never been a lookout before, and I didn't know if
02:44I was supposed to act casually. Do I keep my hands in my pockets? I was kind of nervous about this,
02:49and it felt really awkward. But the whole thing happened so fast. Before I knew it, this dude walks
02:56right up into the driveway, and I'm literally looking at the people through their living room
03:01window. Like, I can see them. If they weren't watching TV and they looked out the window, they
03:05can definitely see us. And I'm just thinking, this is crazy. He had the door lock picked immediately.
03:13Mike gets the car in neutral, and it just starts rolling backwards out of the driveway. And I'm
03:18running up to it, and I jump in the passenger seat before it's even stopped moving. And before I'm
03:23even fully in the car, he has the ignition picked. This took him like 12 seconds, and we are taking
03:30off down the road fast. I really wasn't expecting Mike to be driving that fast. I mean, if you're
03:36gonna steal a car, shouldn't you kind of obey other laws? And he wasn't obeying any of them. I mean,
03:42I know that we were going at least 90 miles an hour down residentials. He was just flying, and my
03:48adrenaline and my heart was pounding. You could feel every single molecule of your body. I was like,
03:55this is amazing. This is what I want to do. From the very first second that we drove off in that stolen
04:01car, I knew that I wanted to steal my own cars. I didn't want to be a lookout. I wanted to be the active
04:07participant doing this. So I asked Mike, you've got to show me how to do this. Like, I need to know
04:12what you're doing. So Mike took me under his wing, and he taught me exactly step by step what you need
04:18to do to be able to steal cars. So I'm going to explain to you guys exactly the method that I use
04:24to steal cars, only because it's not something that you can actively do today. In about 2005, 2006,
04:32that all cars started putting transponder keys. They made that transition to battle car theft.
04:37But back in the early 2000s, we had a method called shaved keys or jiggle keys.
04:44We used to take these keys, and we would shave them down so that we could jiggle the tumblers.
04:49And that's the way that we would trick the cars and the locks into thinking that this was the key
04:54for that car. So the first time that I'm going out to steal a car on my own, when I was 16 years old,
05:05I was really nervous. I had gone out and done the lookout thing. I had done them with Mike having my
05:11back while I stole cars. But this was the first time that I was actually doing this like 100% by
05:17myself. And I had a knot right in my throat. I'm walking up to that car like I own that car,
05:24because that's exactly what I'm trying to project to anyone who could possibly be watching.
05:29My heart is pounding 80 miles per hour. I put the key in the door, and it just opens immediately.
05:37I get inside. I sit down. I put the key in the ignition, and it's even easier than the door.
05:46And that's when I start to feel the adrenaline really take over. I start the car, I put it in
05:52reverse, and I start pulling out, and boom, I'm gone.
05:58The first car that I ever stole, I got $600 for. When I first started stealing cars, I had like two
06:04different people that would buy them, and they were taking them, and they were using them for
06:07parts. All I had to do was get the car to the warehouse, where the people were taking the parts,
06:12drop it off with them, collect my money, and I never had to see it or think about it ever again.
06:19After stealing that first car, I was completely and totally addicted to the money that I could make,
06:23because it wasn't just stealing one car a night. We would go out and steal anywhere from three to
06:28eight, possibly 10 cars a night. I was making anywhere between 12 and 15 grand a week.
06:34I was on the ride of my life, because I was making a ton of money.
06:39I met a dude named Buck, and he had just gotten out of prison for stealing a car.
06:44Buck was a big dude. He looked kind of like a young John Wayne, if John Wayne was on meth,
06:49and a convict, and completely tattooed, and all swolled up. He actually had multiple people who would
06:54buy stolen cars, so Buck and I decided to start working together. We were going out every single night.
07:00One night, me and Buck were out after this new car. We specifically wanted a Honda Del Sol.
07:05We've heard great things, so we find one. We get on the street, and we start trying to see how it
07:11goes, man. We're pushing it to see what it can do, and this thing has absolutely nothing. We're about
07:16to pull over and ditch it, when all of a sudden, there's a cop car behind us. There wasn't a discussion.
07:25What it comes down to is, do you want to go to jail, or do you want to go home? And me and Buck were on
07:30the same page. We wanted to go home, so Buck immediately slammed on the gas, but this thing
07:36was zero competition for this cop car. With the lack of speed, the only thing that we knew that we
07:42could do is try to outmaneuver and outcrazy this cop. You don't win in a high-speed chase by outspeeding
07:48them. You win by outcrazying them. You want to hit red lights, and you want to blow through that red
07:54light. You want to find one-way streets and go the wrong way down the one-way street. If you're
07:59becoming enough of a danger to the community around you, the cops have a legal liability to pull back
08:04the chase. This cop wasn't having any of it, though. He knew that we were outmanned and outpowered,
08:12and that's when he was able to pigeonhole us into getting on the freeway, which was breaking the
08:16number one rule. You never get on the freeway in a high-speed chase, because you might be able to
08:21get away from that one cop car, but you're never going to get away from the radio. We got on the
08:27freeway, and this car was, like, topping out at maybe 90 miles an hour, which was not good. That's
08:33not what we wanted to do. We were used to going much faster. We see the cops coming up on the next
08:38freeway entrance trying to get on the freeway, and we just barely make it in front of them so that they
08:44can't block us off. Luckily, everybody's still behind us, but at this point, we have three
08:50arresting agencies behind us. We have Eugene police, we have Springfield police, and we have Lane County
08:56sheriffs all behind us. All I see when I look back is an ocean of red and blue lights. It looked like
09:02a giant rave was chasing us at a high speed. Might as well be going backwards! At this point,
09:08I already know that we're screwed, and so does Buck. I yelled at Buck, we have to get off at the next
09:14exit! He looked at me, and he said, I don't know what the next exit is, and I'm like, take it. It
09:18doesn't matter. Well, it turns out it absolutely did matter. This exit is a KOA campsite. There's
09:26literally nothing there but a campground, and we are going as fast as we can down the road,
09:31and we're running out of road. The road ends up dead-ending into a big, thick patch of Blackberry
09:40bushes with a telephone pole right in the middle of it. Buck looks over at me, and he tells me,
09:47I'm going to bank this car as hard as I can into those Blackberry bushes, and I said, run it, homie.
09:52The car on my side ended up hitting the telephone pole right on my door. Buck immediately opened his
10:03door. He jumped out. I tried to open my door, and my door would not open. I'm feeling so trapped. I am
10:09in a panic mode right now. I get out the driver's side door immediately into waist-high Blackberry
10:17bushes, and I just start crawling as fast as humanly possible, and within like 10 yards,
10:23I've already lost my shoes and pants. I'm in nothing but a t-shirt and boxers trying to claw my
10:29way through all of these Blackberry thorns. It's like trying to crawl through a cheese grater.
10:35I am getting cut to shreds, but I know what's behind me. Prison is behind me. I hear that they have a dog
10:42behind me, so I am clawing my way through this as fast as I possibly can in the darkness, and that's
10:49when I hear it. I hear Buck start to scream, get your dog off me. Police dogs, when they bite you,
10:57they lock on, and they are absolutely vicious. Like, they tear chunks out of your skin. There was
11:03nothing that I could do for Buck, so I kept crawling, and all of a sudden, gravity just took over me,
11:09and I was going head first down. I hit a couple rocks, and then I hit this creek.
11:16This water is freezing cold. It was winter. It was like 2 in the morning in the state of Oregon.
11:23Soon as I hit that water, I knew that I was going to get hypothermia. I wasn't going to be able to get
11:29any farther. I had to find somewhere to hide right now. Once I got to the other side where I was covered
11:34by blackberry bushes, I could see everything happening down below, and I see an absolute
11:40ocean of blue and red. It is just cop car after cop car after cop car, and I knew that my body was
11:47shutting down. My mind was shutting down. Hypothermia was kicking in. The last thing that I remember
11:53hearing was them calling my name over a megaphone because they had found my pants with my wallet and
11:59my ID in it, and they were saying, Mr. DeLay, this is a search and rescue mission now. You are going
12:05to die. Just turn yourself in. It's in your own best interest. And that's when I lost consciousness.
12:18I don't know how long I was out, but I do know that the sunlight starting to come in is what woke me up.
12:24Every single molecule in my body hurt. I was a shade of blue that I had never seen in my skin
12:31before. At this point, I had realized that it was a life or death for me, and I needed to get warm.
12:37There was no sign of the cops. I just needed to hitch a ride out of there.
12:41The problem with trying to hitchhike when you're covered in mud and blood and you're not wearing
12:46pants or shoes is that people think that you're crazy and they don't want to pull over and give you
12:51a ride. I was praying and begging for somebody to stop and pick me up. And I don't know how far I
12:59had walked or how long it had been when I heard the cops behind me. I turned around and they were
13:04standing behind their doors with their guns out pointed directly at me. They said, Mr. DeLay,
13:09get down on your knees. We will shoot you right now. I knew that this was it. I knew that this was the
13:15end of the road. I had played with my life for so long, and now all of that was crashing down around
13:21me, and I knew that I wanted to live and that I couldn't live this way anymore.
13:28My name is David Packhouse, and I defrauded the U.S. government to earn a $300 million arms contract.
13:36The movie War Dogs was based on my life. My dad is an orthodox rabbi, so I grew up in a very religious
13:48family. I'm one of nine children. Orthodox men are required to go to temple three times a day,
13:55every single day. And so what a lot of the kids would do, myself included, is we would sneak out
14:01during prayers and entertain ourselves, and that's how I met Ephraim DeViroli. Ephraim was loud,
14:08obnoxious, funny, kind of annoying, but as long as his pranks weren't directed at you, he was
14:14entertaining. He brought a lot of fun to an otherwise boring situation. I definitely felt that the
14:21religion was a prison because they control literally every aspect of your life. I realized that this
14:27wasn't for me. I wanted a life of excitement and adventure, so in 2002, I told my parents,
14:33I'm done, and I want to go to a normal university. When I was about 22 years old, I bumped into Ephraim
14:42again, and he said, oh, you should come work with me, because I bet I'm making way more money than you.
14:48So he opens up his computer. He logs into his Bank of America account, and it had $1.8 million
14:55sitting in his bank account, and he was still just 18 years old. So I realized, well, this guy
15:04obviously knows something I don't. So I told him, teach me what you know. I'm in.
15:12Ephraim got kicked out of high school when he was 16 for smoking weed, and he got sent off to work
15:18for his uncle. His uncle owned a big pawn shop in South Central LA. While working in the pawn shop,
15:24Ephraim became obsessed with guns. He learned every single gun. He started buying guns and selling guns,
15:30flipping them online, using his uncle's business, and he started making some money for his uncle and
15:36for himself. His uncle taught Ephraim how to bid on contracts, and that's how he learned government
15:42contracting. The federal government buys literally everything. They support millions of people all
15:48over the world at military bases in many, many countries, and that means supplying them food,
15:53clothing, fuel, cars. Arms are actually just a small part of what the federal government spends money on.
16:00If you want to sell arms to the federal government, then you need to go on sam.gov. That's the website
16:05where the government posts all the things they want to buy, and anyone can provide it as long
16:11as they are properly registered with the government and give them a properly formatted proposal.
16:20Once you learn how to work the system, the sky's the limit.
16:23There were two wars raging at the time, in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and they needed all this
16:34equipment, particularly military equipment that Ephraim had really great connections to,
16:40so he started bidding on all these contracts and started winning them. So my first arms-related
16:45contract was to sell rare gun parts to the special forces, which were very difficult to source.
16:51So I started calling up every little gun shop in America to see if they had these rare gun parts.
17:00There's something like 70,000 gun shops in America, so it was quite the job.
17:07We made a little bit under $60,000, which we split 50-50. Once we decided to focus just on small arms,
17:15we really hit the ground running. Ephraim and I were jetting all over the world. We went to all these gun
17:20shows, shaking hands, making connections, and holding guns. In early 2007, we saw one of the biggest
17:30solicitations from the United States government for small arms that we'd ever seen.
17:36And it ranged everything from, like, pistol ammo all the way to grenades, tank rounds, and the quantities
17:42were insane. I mean, it was, like, 150 million rounds of 7.62x39, which is the ammo used in the AK-47,
17:501.1 million grenades. And we had already delivered a lot of these items to Iraq in much, much smaller
17:57quantities, so we technically qualified to bid on this contract. So, of course, we had to go for it.
18:04After working for about two months of 18-hour days to pretty much scour the entire internet
18:12of every source of supply for these types of munitions, we came in with a 9% profit margin
18:19tacked on top at just under $300 million. We did not really think that we were going to win this
18:27contract, but we thought we have to at least try. I was at home. I get a call from Ephraim. I've got
18:38good news and I've got bad news. What's the bad news? Well, our first task order is only $600K.
18:45And I said, what, we won the contract? And he's like, yeah, mother get dressed. We're going to go
18:50out and celebrate. We had just won a $300 million contract. It was surreal. I couldn't believe we
19:01actually won. And I thought to myself, this is what I've been waiting for. This is what's going to make
19:06me a multimillionaire and it's going to set me up for life. But we were also panicking because we were
19:13like, oh my God, we actually have to deliver on this thing now. And it was going to be massive,
19:18about 25 times bigger than anything we'd ever done. We knew that we were going to have a major
19:25problem with the AK-47 ammo. We had to fly everything into Afghanistan. At the time, in early 2007,
19:37there was a massive spike in oil prices. That drastically increased the air freight costs.
19:44We were going to lose money unless we figured something out.
19:51It turned out that Albania was one of the most armed places per capita on earth.
19:57Albania was trying to join NATO and NATO insisted that they get rid of all their old ammo. So they
20:03were willing to sell it for pretty much anything. We got an incredible price on the ammunition.
20:07But when we went over there to inspect it, we realized there are Chinese markings all over
20:14the boxes. And this was a big problem because our contract with the U.S. Army specifically stated
20:20no Chinese ammunition could be delivered under this contract either directly or indirectly.
20:26By the time we inspected the ammunition and discovered that it was Chinese, it was too late
20:35because it was fighting season in Afghanistan. And our Afghan allies were running out of ammunition.
20:41And so the U.S. Army was yelling at us to deliver faster, deliver immediately. It's critical to the
20:45mission. We realized, we're ****. Do we tell the army about it and just ask for permission? Or do we hide it
20:53and try to sneak it under the radar? We had to make a decision.
21:01We didn't want to risk losing a $300 million contract. So we decided not to tell them about
21:07the Chinese ammunition, not to ask permission, and instead to repackage it. I'm terrified.
21:15I thought, well, this sounds super illegal and we can get in a lot of trouble. I can go to prison for this.
21:23But if we don't do it, there go all my dreams.
21:30When it comes to repackaging ammo, there are a few things you need to take into account.
21:36One, you need to protect the ammunition from corrosion, plastic bags. Number two, it needs to be put into
21:44boxes that are lightweight because that will reduce the cost of transportation. We were looking for a
21:49supply of cardboard boxes. And we found a guy named Costa Trebyshka. He owned a box manufacturing company in
21:59Albania. We negotiated a price of $100,000 to repackage 150 million rounds. And this was going to save us about
22:08$3 million in air freight costs. And we started delivering this ammunition to Afghanistan.
22:19We were on the edge of our seats. We were biting our nails. We were thinking, are they going to
22:23inspect the ammo and realize what it is? Because an ammunition expert could look at the ammunition
22:29itself and know where it was manufactured. We were terrified that the army was going to find out about
22:36this. But it turned out that the receiving officer in Kabul was not an ammunition expert. So he signed
22:45off on it. And then we started delivering three to four aircraft loads every week. The money was rolling
22:52in and we're like, this is actually going to work. We're going to succeed at this. We're going to deliver
22:57on a $300 million contract. So Ephraim was always trying to make more money, always trying to squeeze
23:06more money out of a deal. Ephraim meets with a guy named Mikhail Deliorgi. We didn't know this at the
23:14time, but he turns out to be the leader of the Albanian mob. Mikhail tells him, we're not going to give you
23:21a better price on the ammunition because you already have a good price. However, we could give you a
23:25little discount if you give us the repackaging contract. We'll make a little bit of money on
23:31that and then we can give you a little discount. So it'll be a win-win. And Ephraim says, that's a
23:35great idea. That guy's fired. You're hired. Let's do this. Costa, the guy who was doing our repackaging,
23:42calls me up. I got $20,000 worth of cardboard boxes that I manufactured for this job. So can you at
23:48least buy that from me? And Ephraim's like, nah, he's not going to do anything. He's a nobody. And
23:53I said, he knows everything. It's $20,000. Just keep him quiet. And he says, nah, that guy. He's not
24:02going to do anything. Don't worry about it. You just leave it to me. You don't, don't worry about it.
24:06And it turned out that we should have worried about it. Costa got really upset and he called up the New
24:13York Times and he told them everything we were doing. And he called up the FBI and told them what
24:19we were doing. And his biggest mistake was that he called up the Albanian press and told them that
24:26the Albanian politicians were getting kickbacks from this deal. One week after the newspapers in
24:32Albania published that article, Costa winds up dead in a very mysterious car accident. He was on an
24:41empty road in the middle of a field and somehow he had been run over by his own car.
24:48When I heard that Costa was dead, it was an enormous shock. This was not just business anymore. It was
24:54matters of life and death. A few days later, I get a phone call. Federal agents just raided our office.
25:09I was like, holy crap, we're . When the federal government comes after you,
25:14they will do anything to take you down. The federal government wins more than 98% of the cases
25:22that they take to trial. So that's your chances. I was going to be charged with 71 counts of fraud
25:28for 71 deliveries of Chinese ammunition. So you're looking at 355 years in prison. Unless you plead guilty.
25:40If you plead guilty, we have the power to combine 71 counts into a single count. So the max you're looking
25:47at is five years in prison. So of course, it's not really much of an option. So we both pled guilty.
25:54Ephraim was also facing a separate gun charge. So he could have gotten 15 years total. Ephraim hired
26:00the best lawyers in Miami, spent a couple million dollars on them. They eventually negotiated it down
26:06and he got out in about three and a half years. They fined Ephraim $350,000. He got to keep the rest of
26:13the money, including my share. I wasn't pulling out any money from the company during the entire
26:21time I was working there. I had a $300 million contract with the federal government and I put
26:28everything on the line for it. And ultimately, I made $0 from it. Ephraim owes me $5 million.
26:38My name is Billy McFarland and I created the world's most notorious festival.
26:44FireFest. And went to jail for it.
26:52My parents were real estate developers and I grew up in a suburb in New Jersey.
26:55I was a kid who was intrigued and obsessed with technology. And I grew up kind of in the early
27:02wild, wild west days of the internet and started learning how to build my own websites as a fifth
27:06grader. I really just became obsessed that I could have what seemed like a crazy idea and in a couple of
27:11days, make it come to reality. I started my first business at 13, building websites.
27:18I didn't understand when I started the web hosting business that people who were paying me,
27:22they needed customer support. I had a razor flip phone. So this is back in the early 2000s. And I
27:27wasn't allowed to use my phone during class. So I couldn't provide that support during the school day.
27:32I hired three adult employees. They worked around the clock, eight hour shifts each.
27:36They didn't know I was a kid. I had this really terrible, fake deep voice that I was trying to
27:41overcompensate with. And the employees were Rex, Alex, and Juna. And everything was going great
27:45until one day, Rex was getting married and he sent me an invitation to his wedding in the mail.
27:49And my parents opened it up and they're like, why is my 13-year-old
27:52child getting invited to India for a grown man's wedding? I think the internet gave me this
27:57mentality as a teenager that anything was possible. So eventually, I dropped out of college and I
28:03moved to New York. I was now a 19, 20-year-old living in Manhattan, enthralled by this world of
28:09entertainment, technology, and finance. And one of my friends was the daughter of a top fashion
28:14designer. And we all go to split our dinner bill and she throws out her parents like black American
28:18Express card. And the whole table stopped and looked at her like, you know, the waitress came
28:22over and was like eyeing the card. And I had like two ideas that I didn't really know how to put
28:27together, which is one, how can I give my friends access to this experience in this network that I
28:34was finding existed as a 20-year-old? And two, how can I replicate a product that was as viral as this
28:41black American Express card? And that's when I got the idea for Magnesis. I found a factory in
28:48China where I ordered this like hunk of black metal and a credit card copier.
28:54The metal came, I went to the Diamond District in New York, had some engraver shaved down the
28:59metal to the size of a credit card and engraved my name on the card and copied my Chase debit card
29:04onto this like hunk of black metal. It basically was like copying a CD. I then went out and like
29:08used that black metal card. And everywhere I went, people were stopping and asking me like,
29:12oh, what is this? How do I get one? So when I was 22 years old, I founded Magnesis and started
29:17selling card memberships for $250 a year. I think what made Magnesis so interesting was
29:25the product was so simple. Your new card would have the same limitations, balance, whatever it
29:30was that your initial card had. All these young people who were trying to make something happen
29:35in the world now had this card. And it opened up this Soho loft where if you had the Magnesis card,
29:41you can come and work or hang out or party at night. Everybody wanted to be part of Magnesis.
29:45That kind of created this next level of this cult concert business. Fire all started when this
29:52pilot walked into our Magnesis townhouse one night and he told our front desk staff that he owned an
29:58airplane and that he wanted to fly me and other Magnesis members to the Bahamas for a trip.
30:04We landed on this like remote runway on this island called Norman's Key.
30:09And there was this magic in the air the second we stepped off the plane. The clearest blue water
30:18you've ever seen like the softest sand. This first trip to the Bahamas, it was the best weekend of my
30:24life. The group who flew together, we just bonded over like the most basic things and it just felt so
30:29pure. And we all left like the best of friends. And my high school friends, the magical words,
30:36you should totally do a music festival on this island for all the Magnesis members.
30:41And we turned that into let's do a festival and call it fire festival. And that started this whole
30:46six months of absolutely, you know, wild highs and lows.
30:53Fire seems so simple. I've been doing concerts for Magnesis members for years. I've been taking people on
30:59trips now to the Bahamas. And it just seemed like a combination of that, doing concerts and bringing
31:04people to the Bahamas, which I love to do and I think I was doing pretty well at. I remember we
31:08released a trailer and everybody thought it was genius. Everybody said it was the best thing ever.
31:12Everybody wanted to come. The biggest mistake of the trailer was that we set a date for four
31:19months after the video came out for the festival to take place. So the reality of fire festival set in
31:24very quickly. The first kind of rude awakening moment was when the owner of Norman's Key that we had an
31:30agreement with cancel the deal on us. We have sold thousands of tickets, millions and millions of
31:35dollars. Like what are we going to do? So it went from like, this is a great idea to oh, I need to
31:41become a real estate developer and build a city, make the water work, put electricity in and do all this
31:46in now a matter of four months. I approached fire festival like it was a website where I could build a
31:52website in a couple of days, put it live. There will be problems, but that's totally okay. We can fix them.
31:57The problems range from how do we get fresh water onto the island? Okay, we went and spend all these
32:04resources to literally drill a water well and to install a reverse osmosis system to turn the salt
32:09water into fresh water. Okay, that challenge solved. The next challenge is how can we possibly fly 3,000
32:15people into the island? We actually chartered two 737s and we installed a terminal in Miami International
32:20Airport to fly the guests there. So like that challenge solved. That's another, you know, three or
32:24four days of time and an extra $2 million of resources. We installed all these tents and we
32:28were celebrating. We managed to figure out how to get tents in the island and someone said like,
32:32where are people going to sleep? Now we buy the mattresses and we're celebrating. Okay, great.
32:38How do we get the mattresses from, you know, the US to the Bahamas now? So now we have to charter cargo
32:43planes to carry all the mattresses. So like every solution created a new problem. We would get so
32:48intoxicated by solving the impossible that we failed, or I really failed to zoom out and realize
32:54that, okay, we pulled off the impossible twice, but now we have to do it 2,000 more times and that's
32:59just not practical. I had a whiteboard that said like, you know, X number of days until firefest.
33:04And it was supposed to be like how many days until Christmas, right? But instead it was just like
33:08forever looming deadline, or as the number got smaller, the problems got larger. The days were counting down,
33:15the costs were becoming insurmountable and I needed cash flow to pay the bills to keep fire festival going.
33:21And I started lying to investors to get more money that I thought I needed to make fire happen.
33:27I inflated how much money we had and the sponsors that were interested on us. It just got to a point
33:32where every day the challenges became worse and worse. Things were out of control and a storm was brewing,
33:38literally. It's Wednesday morning, the day before fire. We are putting the final mattresses,
33:46carpets, everything in the tents. Everything is looking really good. And for the first time all week,
33:51the weather report changes and it shows a slight chance of showers. You couldn't have scripted the
33:57storm any worse than it was. It was as if it was the middle of hurricane season in the Bahamas, which it
34:02wasn't. And right after the storm rolled in, one of our employees drove over a water line with a cargo
34:08truck. So as the rain is falling from the sky, our internal water system gets knocked out and that's
34:13splashing water everywhere. The site was devastated by the storm. We knew that first plane was landing
34:21right after sunrise on Thursday morning. And I felt like our festival site wasn't ready and it didn't look
34:28good enough. Obviously it wasn't ready. So instead of having people come to the festival site in groups of
34:3270 people off the plane, I basically took a beach on the other side of the island. I sent everybody
34:37there. We sent all of our boats and jet skis and toys and booze and everything we had to this island
34:42and basically gave people this big party all day long. And finally, when the sun set, we said,
34:46okay, it's time to come back to the festival site. Like what's up with this rocky beach?
34:51So instead of 70 people at a time, you know, sober and manageable coming, we now had a thousand people
34:56all descending drunk. Like a third world documentary. All trying to find their tents
35:01and we couldn't handle that overflow. And chaos ensued.
35:09Todd Phillips, the director of the Hangover movies, discovered our story and decided to make the movie
35:14War Dogs about it. I thought in real life, I was a bit smarter and a bit cooler than Miles Teller portrayed
35:20me, but I really have no complaints. Other than, you know, I think I have better hair.
35:26My mom refused to watch it and I asked her why and she says, I don't need Hollywood to tell me about
35:32my son. There was just one part of the movie that my dad did not like. Jonah Hill tells Miles Teller,
35:41yeah, I was trying to get your number. Your mom wouldn't give it to me. And Miles Teller says,
35:47you were talking to my mom? And Jonah Hill goes, yeah, man, I was her. And my dad says,
35:53that wasn't a funny joke. I don't know. That was just not funny. He did not find that humorous.
36:01I'll never forget the moment where I'm standing on this milk carton trying to direct the chaos. And
36:05one of the big New York City based tabloids, they're live streaming me. And the reporter goes,
36:10you know, Billy, we have credible reports that you ran away, you know, on your yacht with cocaine and
36:15hookers. And I'm like, guys, like you're live streaming me on your website. Like I haven't
36:20slept or showered in three days. I'm standing like in the middle of the festival and milk carton.
36:23And like, we don't care. We have credible sources. And like, it was at that moment that really taught
36:28me how we were, because at that point, reality didn't matter. And the story of fire and the failure
36:35was too good to be true. And right when I got off the milk carton, my number two, essentially,
36:40a fire comes to me and said, three people had died. He had these three detailed stories.
36:45Someone got bit by a pig, somebody got shot, somebody got kidnapped and like all these like
36:48details. That stopped me. And I was like overwhelmed with the motions. And the first reaction was,
36:54okay, like, that's over my head now. I can't stop somebody from getting hurt. And I literally said,
36:59okay, let's cancel it. And I remember making the calls at the airplane company and getting
37:04passion to the pilot who's in the air. He's like, are you sure? We literally turned a 737 around in the air.
37:09And that was the beginning of the end. When I was told that people were getting hurt,
37:14I immediately canceled on the spot. None of it was accurate. Thank God that wasn't true.
37:18Nobody was hurt at all. But it was still the end of the festival.
37:24The next morning, I remember getting a call from one of my investors who I really cared about.
37:28And he said to me, like, you need to do these three things. Or if you don't do this,
37:33you're going to be in the front page of the Wall Street Journal in handcuffs.
37:35I knew what I did was wrong. I didn't know it was actually like a crime. I didn't know jail
37:39was a possibility. And all of a sudden, the word handcuffs came out of nowhere. It's like, oh,
37:42s***. I think it was the first time I ever felt truly lost in the whole process, where no matter
37:49what I did at that point, it was beyond my control. I get back to New York, and I'm just like
37:54physically exhausted. It had now been this four-month sprint. And I pass out in bed. I wake up in the
37:59middle of the night, and my doorman's literally in my bedroom. He had been knocking at the door. I didn't
38:03hear him. So he came in. He came to my bedroom. He woke me up, and he said, Billy, the FBI is here.
38:07And before he even knew what he was saying, he goes, I told him you live on a different floor,
38:11so come with me. I'll get you out of here. And I said, no, it's okay. Let's go downstairs.
38:16And they basically gave me subpoenas. Five or six weeks later, I was arrested and charged with wire
38:21fraud. Wire fraud means that I lied to investors to get money. Ultimately, I pled guilty. There was no
38:29argument. What I did was totally wrong. I clearly lied, you know, clearly broke the law. I clearly
38:34let people down who I cared about, which I think is by far the worst crime. There's a saying where,
38:38you know, it takes years to build trust, but a second to lose it. That couldn't be more true for me.
38:44I was sentenced to six years in prison, ordered to pay $26 million, and I'm barred from serving as an
38:49officer or director of a publicly traded company. And I just didn't know how to process that length of
38:54time. Like, six years sounded like an eternity to me. I knew the party was over at that point.
39:00I think the hardest part with prison is realizing it's adult timeout.
39:05Because it was a total 180 to what the life with fire was. It was the excess. It was the experiences,
39:12the material items. And jail is the opposite. Jail is living life at the slowest pace. Jail is having
39:18absolutely nothing. But there's a lot to be learned from the extremes in life.
39:28Looking back at all of the chaos and the insanity that I lived in for so long and all of the times
39:33that I risked my life, I just cringe. I love the life that I have today. I own my own recovery
39:39coaching business. I go back into prisons and I speak to people when they are at their lowest and
39:44darkest moments. Using my story as a way to show others that there is a way out. Trust me, I was
39:51as bad as you can possibly get. And if I could turn my life around, anybody can. And these days,
39:57when I get in a car, I even buckle my safety belt. And I do feel kind of good about that.
40:02I plead guilty to a single count of fraud. And I was sentenced to seven months of house arrest.
40:15But house arrest was an incredible blessing. I felt like it was heaven compared to prison,
40:21that's for sure.
40:24It motivated me to become an inventor and invent all these things. Since then, I created a product with
40:31my brother called InstaFloss. It flosses all your teeth in just 10 seconds. Check it out. InstaFloss.
40:39If I saw Ephraim today, I would prefer not to see him today. So I wouldn't say anything to him. I would
40:45just keep on walking. Unless he had $5 million that he owed me, then I would be friends with him again.
40:55Today, I still legally owe my investor $26 million. It's a huge figure. It's obviously a life goal to
41:00dedicate myself to paying that back. I think my number one blessing is at 32 or 33. I still have
41:0650 years of working hopefully ahead of me to pay that back. This is not the end.
41:14Fire Festival is back. Fire 2 is taking place April 25th of 2025. The big difference is this time,
41:21I'm not in charge.
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