U.S. Marshals Service online auction – Fyre festival fraud scheme | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Marshals Service online auction – Fyre festival fraud scheme

txauction.com

203 pointsaranibatta172 comments

I first thought these were bids for lots of items, like... cases of the item. Am I mistaken that these are actually bids on a single, quantity=1, item?

It's actually impressive if they're auctioning off failed-festival merch at Supreme prices.

It's basically the same thing, and I say this as someone who gives money to Rick Owens.

I sort of wonder if someone is trolling them with a credit card that's going to be invalid before the auction ends. Who bids $500 for a single hat you can reproduce on any custom hat site?

I feel like trolling the US Marshals with credit card fraud is a bad idea.

Oh no, what are they going to do? Go find some random poor fool you stole the card from and kick their door in? I'm sure the credit card thieves are quaking in their boots.

US police at all levels are an impotent force against online crime. Once in a while they catch some guy and then they parade it around but the likelihood of that is microscopic.

They seemed to catch the twitter hackers pretty quickly. shrug.

"FAILURE TO PAY FOR ITEMS WILL RESULT IN ACCOUNT DEACTIVATION AND DENIAL FROM PARTICIPATION IN ANY FUTURE GASTON & SHEEHAN AUCTIONS, LIVE OR ONLINE."

The consequences seem pretty light.

That doesn't preclude other punishments, no? Fraudulent auction bids are presumably fairly illegal, so criminal persecution is presumably also a possibility.

> Fraudulent auction bids are presumably fairly illegal

Someone's never been on Ebay

It’s like ebay, but where every seller has a gun, federal backing, and literally gets paid to arrest people.

It's an auction house. They aren't giving the Marshal's service item level updates. They just give the sale to the number 2 bidder and move on.

So what you're saying is, I need 2 accounts, bid $15 with one and then up myself with the fraudulent account to $500 and get the item for 15?

People actually do this on eBay sometimes

The sale goes to the number 1 bidder at some bid increment higher than the number 2 bidder's maximum bid. The current price shown is that amount, not the number 1 bidder's maximum bid. It implements a modified Vickrey auction using an autobidder.

Sounds like the solution is to be not American.

If you goal is to defraud the U.S. Marshals Service I mean.

Like what is the U.S. Marshals Service going to do to a Romanian trickster?

>> Like what is the U.S. Marshals Service going to do to a Romanian trickster?

Get him extradited in the US after possibly serving some time in Romania as well?

> <insert the DVD Jon story here>

Ah, that's a story I havent't seen cited in a long time.

Wife screamed at me threatening to divorce...blah blah. So illegal prob not but ban yes.

You're under no legal obligation to pay if you make a bid.

Using a stolen credit card, on the other hand...

I've been (not bidded) in cattle auctions in Brazil and they always announce that auction bids are irreversible.

There's quite a leap from "you can't change or revoke your bid" to "it's illegal to make a bid you have no intention of fulfilling."

On a bidding site nobody bans like Gaston! "I'm especially good at deaaaaactivations!"

I just assumed it was rich influencer fashion types who were keen to own a piece of infamy and had the disposal wealth to not over think it and just bid on homepage items.

“Hey is that hat from Fyre festival?” “Yeah it’s real, I got it online for $500”

Perfect to wear to that next Kool-Aid drinking SV investor meeting.

I think it's more like "Yeah I was totally there, we were lucky to get off that beach alive!"

It's like I'm again hearing the jokes about Russian ‘nouveau riches’ of the 90s:

— Bro, check out this tie I've bought for 500 bucks.

— Dude, you were swindled like a loser. I've bought one just like that next door, but for 700 dollars.

I placed a bunch of bids on the sweatshirts when the auction opened a few weeks ago.

Clearly there’s a limit to how much I’m willing to pay but those are amazing novelty gifts.

Never underestimate what hipsters will pay for kitsch.

I think you're underestimating how much of a meme this is. Some of these I actually considered for a hot second in my head.

>>Am I mistaken that these are actually bids on a single, quantity=1, item?

Ja Rule was in the vicinity of such items, we are lucky they're so cheap considering ;)

The funnier thing would be to create knock-off clothing and sell it hella' cheap, flooding the market with indistinguishable fakes.

Would they be trademarked and copyrighted? Even if they were themselves a fraud?

I somehow doubt someone is going to sue you for violating those trademarks...

Depends who owns the trademarks now. They would be an asset that whoever managed the bankruptcy would be able to sell on. That person may well want to use them to make some money back.

Actually the Fyre Festival LLC owned trademark is dead: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4806:ad5...

Seems two different companies have rushed to register it, XNO LLC and IMG Worldwide LLC - the XNO service mark application has been granted: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4806:ad5...

Their trademark for use on merchandise is currently pending a submittal of a Statement of Use: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4806:ad5...

- so seems like the tmsearch.uspto.gov links expires... Hopefully these keeps working:

1. https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87357393&caseType=SERIAL_...

2. https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87981042&caseType=SERIAL_...

3. https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87877280&caseType=SERIAL_...

Trademarks require active use, so seems the answer would be no. Copyright requires the logo/design of the merch to be sufficiently creative, a court would ultimately have to decide that, but I doubt it.

But even if it is copyrighted, who owns the rights now? The U.S. Marshals Service?

My thought exactly. The inflated prices have to be a prank

Ive seen one of the documentaries about this festival. IMO, I dont think the perpetrators set out to defraud anyone. I think they were just completely inept at what they were doing. They(Billy McFarland) got in over their head and realized way too late that they were. I suppose the case can be made that they did realize early enough that they could have called it off before the dumpster fyre that it was happened. Not doing so seems solid grounds for a fraud case. I think that it is also possible that if he had admitted failure there is a chance he could have salvaged the event and had it later.

That said I don't think it was an intent to defraud people or else they would not have even tried to put the event together. Why would all of this merch have been created if they just wanted to bilk investors and festival attendees? This is hubris and ignorance more than fraud.

You should watch both documentaries. It's weird how they have entirely different people in them, and they spin things slightly differently.

I do think McFarland was a scam artist. His past history of scams shows he's one of these hustle culture people who commits outright fraud, and he deserves more jail time than he got.

why is it weird? it's told from 2 different perspectives. every story has at least as many sides as there are people involved.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Whether they intended to defraud anyone or not, they had ample warning that they were way in over their heads. After a certain point, it was criminal.

Watch the Netflix documentary, and pay close attention to what he does after his failed festival. Either he's a scammer or Netflix is, as he seems to be running a new business where he sells tickets to events he doesn't have tickets for, and for which he has no way of getting them, and then ghosts the buyers.

I think he didn't really set out to defraud anyone, but he has an incredible ego and sense of entitlement, and he got used to living a jetsetting lifestyle and didn't want to downgrade, so he defrauded people (in his newer business, after the festival). Given how naturally he did it, I'd be surprised if he hadn't been running ticket scams on and off for years.

Yeah this basically matches with my impression. You can watch maybe 3/4 of the netflix doc and believe it's plausible they didn't intend to defraud anyone, and then you witness the behavior in the last 1/4 and it's clear there was intentional, serious criminal fraud.

That is the one I saw. I kinda think that he knew he was screwed and leaned in to the persona he thought he now had curated. Its one of those things where he knew he was going to jail(or really was that oblivious) and just decided to burn it down and try the persona...

What the Netflix documentary leaves out, significantly, is the involvement of the "fuckjerry" advertising/PR agency people in both promoting the festival and then later contributing to the documentary itself.

google "fuckjerry fyre festival"

https://decider.com/2019/01/15/fyre-festival-fuck-jerry/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2019/10/24/...

It's been a while, but I thought the Hulu documentary included a decent amount about fuckjerry. Might be worth comparing.

I'm pretty sure the Hulu one was made by fuckjerry. That's why they were a prominent interviewee during it and also profiting again.

I only saw the Hulu one, and I didn't remember it being very kind to fuckjerry. According to Wikipedia, Jerry Productions (aka fuckjerry) was the Netflix one. Kinda glad I didn't see it now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyre_(film)

Oh thanks. Honestly I've always confused the two so thanks for clarifying which one was made by them. I've only seen that one to be honest.

I also know one of the two also did a paid interview with Billy McFaland so it was another instance of him profiting off this. The other declining to have him due to principle. I again forget which.

Agreed, I was disappointed that I watched the one supporting that media company.

I'm pretty sure I saw evidence or at least rumor that fuckjerry knew it was going to be a colossal fuck up and continued along with it just for money and the making of movie.

I remember this being a controversy when the documentaries came out. I ended up watching the Hulu one when it came out, and was underwhelmed having already seen the Netflix one (which was quite well done). I suspect that this "controversy" was simply an attempt to get publicity for the Hulu doc (it succeeded on me, at least).

It's not surprising at all that a PR/advertising agency would have a lot of footage from the event they were attempting to promote.

> Either he's a scammer or Netflix is

From what I understand, Making a Murderer is basically one big lie-by-omission so my faith in other Netflix funded documentaries to value truth over sensation is quite low.

- https://time.com/4167699/netflix-making-a-murderer-evidence-...

That entire article is citing the now-defamed prosecuting attorney Ken kratz. He was caught sending inappropriate texts to minors shortly after the show aired, as well as lying/hiding about some evidence from the case. I wouldn't put too much credence in him.

Healthy doses of both maybe.

Compare it to lots of financial fraud like ponzi schemes - the perpetrators often don't think it will fall down all around them until it does.

Billy McFarland was arrested for selling fake tickets to Coachella, Burning Man, The Met Gala, and The Superbowl while he was out on bail for his Fyre-related charges. That is not ineptitude.

You could say he was criminally inept.

I would say that is more 'ineptly criminal.'

He seems like an example for the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon...

That's not the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon.

I agree, Fyre was more a product of magical thinking than anything else. McFarland did engage in outright fraud in the aftermath though.

> I think they were just completely inept at what they were doing

Setting aside what others are saying about other examples of more obvious fraud, we must, at some point, believe that a reasonable person[1] would notice the misadventure and do something about it.

[1] A questionable but important legal concept.

It's easy to cut yourself on Hanlon's razor.

Billy McFarland has a long history of exploiting the benefit of the doubt. It would be self-destructive for society to continue extending it without taking that into account.

Quite. I'm surprised to see intelligent HNers pushing the advice of George Castanza, Esq: "It's not a lie if you believe it."

If we require intent to charge, I don't quite get how the court fulfills any definition of justice. There's a clear, material list of damages here caused by individuals. Who gives a shit if they hurt people through abusing power via ineptitude rather than via malice?

One of my friends was hired at McFarland's first company. He was basically instructed to tell lies to customers.

MacFarland is a con man and FuckJerry is a slimy ad agency. Both of them create reality distortion fields for a living, so be skeptical of your impressions if you only watched one of the two competing docs.

Getting in over your head and then lying about how badly you've fucked up is the standard fraud.

The median fund manager sending fake statements isn't cynically trying to fleece people, he's desperately trying to earn their money back before anyone notices.

I largely agree with you, though I think they were both fraudsters and in over their head. McFarland seemed to buy in too much to the "fake it 'til you make it" startup ethos and desperately wanted to be a part of that.

The Hulu documentary, especially, gave me the impression that McFarland just wanted to be successful and though he could turn it around at the last minute. What I liked most about that one is that we've all had situations where we overstated our prowess, or put off a project that we committed to doing, etc. and then realized way too late that everything would have to go perfectly for us not to fail. It was that, but on a larger scale and impacting significantly more people. (Not at all to excuse what McFarland, JaRule, etc. were doing.)

This, exactly. I think the Theranos scheme was somewhat similar, albeit not as far along the "fraud" spectrum as Fyre. I have the impression that most successful startups involve someone overstating what they've got already done, in order to rally a bunch of people around the imagined upcoming success. In some cases, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the people around McFarland had somehow pulled it off, we might be seeing his picture on business magazines.

Of course, none of this means McFarland was in any way innocent. But the difference between "scam artist" and "successful startup entrepreneur", while not at all illusionary, might be one more of degree than kind.

It was very very clear intent to defraud and it took place before the festival was a failure.

He falsified bank and brokerage statements to make it look like he had millions of dollars in the bank, and falsified transaction data, in order to defraud investors.

Go read the Federal indictment. This was intentional fraud all the way through.

Billy, is a serial con artist, with a history fraudulent schemes. He continued to offend after release. This is standard con artist behavior.

Sometimes with these people you really do wonder if they believe their own lies. I think he had a pretty good idea how it was gonna go.

> Why would all of this merch have been created if they just wanted to bilk investors and festival attendees?

What was he supposed to do say? "we're not gonna do merch, because this things fake" Other people were involved. It would be suspicious not to. They might have told themselves that there's a chance it would work, but that doesn't mean they weren't setting out to defraud. You don't get to finance your moonshot with lies to investers. Not these kinds of lies, at least. Maybe some of the main guys behind Enron thought it would work, but they still engaged in blatantly illegal transactions.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/834383864/

Here you go guys, you're welcome.

Oh man these are collector’s items. I’d love to have one of the hats. Not $500 want, but I’d probably have spent double the price of the hat on them. Maybe $50-60 or something.

you could probably just print one on RedBubble. I don't think anyone will stop you.

Then it's not collectible or particularly interesting. That's just a hat.

Who could tell the difference?

People who buy collectibles are going to ask for proof of authenticity and the chain of custody.

The value of these sorts of things will drop precipitously with time. Who's going to remember/care about fyre in 20 years?

"Bob, I wanna show you something, hang on... OK, here it is.. Remember that Fyre festival a few year ago?"

"The scam thing?"

"Yes! This... is a real Fyre merch hat!! Got it at auction."

"Huh."

The real ones look like they’re embroidered but you can get hats embroidered at the mall

If I desire the collectible, how will a fake fulfill my desire?

I think what he's getting at is: How would you be able to verify its authenticity? A mass-produced clothing item wouldn't have telltale markers...

That's easy in this particular case - the U.S. Marshalls are selling it, and presumably they're not lying about it. Maybe the U.S. police is that corrupt, but I think somebody would find out sooner or later (they would need to make them somewhere, a large order of custom Fyre-branded hats by the U.S. Marshalls is not an everyday thing), and that would be an obvious case of fraud then.

On the other hand yeah, members of the U.S. services tried to steal the Silk road bitcoin too, so who knows.

The assumption is that the US Marshal Services is reasonably trustworthy with the items they sell.

Hate to break it to you. These are just hats too.

I'm not going to sit here an explain what makes collectibles and art desirable. I think you understand this and are just being difficult.

You can't just throw art in the mix there. One can absolutely see collectibles as ridiculous while placing great value on art. One can also understand why people value collectibles, and also think it ridiculous. They're empty.

So you're in charge of what is and isn't art, huh? That seems like quite the burden for you. Was it always just you, or was there some kind of committee that you staged a hostile takeover of?

I think you misread my post.

I think you misread mine.

I find this idea curious; what's different with collecting art than other collecting? As an outsider it appears to be "unique collection syndrome" no different than any other, where the artistic value is present in reproductions and is almost none of the price of buying an original.

Jog on, Socrates. Prices in the art world are presently distorted because of astonishing levels of wealth concentration. But basically yes, reproductions are perfectly fine - although an actual high-fidelity reproduction will set you back quite a bit. My comment really wasn't directed to the Renoirs or the Van Goghs, though. I was thinking more of the many artists you'd never even hear of whose paintings sell for multiple thousand $'s in any of your local art galleries (assuming you live in a large-ish city) and aren't well-known enough to even give rise to reproductions.

> Prices in the art world are presently distorted because of astonishing levels of wealth concentration.

I’ve heard two different art dealers on different continents (SF and London) both insist independently that the primary reason for high art prices is that art is a great way to bribe the owner, or to launder money, or both. (Similar to former politicians being paid millions for a “speech” in a foreign country).

I think I'm still missing the gap: hats have value and art has value. Collectors collect certain hats and certain art in a way that is disconnected from their underlying value; it seems like grand-op was legitimate to mention art then, in reference to the common phenomenon of art collection?

Look I'm sure you mean well but this feigned-ignorance-leading-question schtick is literally thousands of years old and is basically just annoying. Try making an argument instead of baiting someone else into a bad one. Anyone past age 25 has long since made the realization that you can Socrates the distinction between any two categories all day. Wittgenstein & family resemblances happened, get with the last century of philosophical discourse please.

I think the parent actually agrees with you and so do I. Art has value in and of itself in that it conveys an emotion, idea, or context. It can also have value through artistry; how difficult it was to create or how novel it is. That value exists whether the work is one of one or whether it is one of two hundred million. A collectible meanwhile does not have much inherent value (like the hat) and derives most of its value from being rare. If it wasn't rare, it would be substantially less valuable and potentially irrelevant. As you point out, those things are not mutually exclusive and you can certainly have art that is also a collectible.

A Fyre Festival hat can absolutely convey “an emotion, idea or context” and it likely does to many people.

Compare this to, say, Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ which is literally just a mass-produced urinal. ()

() Comically, the one on display on the Tate Modern is a copy of the original work. Someone is truly taking the piss...

Andy Warhol would like a word...

Imagine trying to explain to people how your cheap hat from a meme scam festival that nobody will remember in five years is a piece of art. They would - at most - nod tolerantly as you bring up Duchamp, their eyes presumably then drifting over to your extensive & expensive funko pop collection.

I suspect I would care little about “people” who “nod tolerantly” about DuChamp. Hopefully I never meet them, but if I’m forced to, I’d feel compelled to point out they were condescending assholes without the money to fund a truly opulent Funco Pop collection :)

Ill sit here and explain that the whole process can be faked. (Just for laughs)

Joe is in the business of selling large amounts of dubious goods and services. Jim makes a lot of money from his bar but on the side he does dubious business with Joe. One day Joe gives Jim a painting he made. It is one hell of a horrible work! Joe explains that Jim is no longer buying dubious goods, he gets those for free now! With the painting. More buddies join the network and paintings change hands frequently. Then one day Joe invites the buddy network to a public auction. Everyone bids on the paintings knowing exactly which dubious goods they represent. Slowly but steadily outsiders join in on the bidding. The price of the dubious goods goes though the roof! Jim goes to Joe and complaints about how expensive his services have become. Joe answers: But you have 100 paintings of mine? Why not just sell some of them for uhhh market value? I give you 2 million for the stack. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Counterfeiting a hat of a fake music festival and pretending that it's genuine has a certain pleasing symmetry.

You can always tell people it's every bit as real as the festival itself.

This is the art/collectible version of “the color of bits”:

https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

My work is having a “clear the office out before the move” auction - I can try for a few macMinis for about $200 total, or help fund a police department for Fyre swag, single item.

Tough choice.

I assume you're being sarcastic, but a Fyre hat sounds very badass. If I had the disposable income, I'd love one

It's not badass.

It is badass.

Maybe $1 badass.

But not $500.

Fyre Festival information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyre_Festival

Internet Historian has a video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBPg5ftCMv8

I also think that most of these “lots” are just for one item.

However, I think that the bids are probably mostly earnest.

As streetware a lot of this could probably be considered collector’s items among the hype beast crowd. The prices seem to be in a range similar to supreme and similar.

This must be how people feel when I talk about databases, I am speculating on meanings from context.

I was thinking it might be fun to have a cap or a shirt from this... then I saw the prices. $500 for a ball cap?

I'm wondering if anyone is actually going to pay for this stuff or if it's just a bunch of K-Pop fans driving up prices only to abandon them.

> $500 for a ball cap?

Seriously - if any more hilariously incompetent festivals come along, remember to watch the liquidation auctions.

So I can make my own knock-off ball-caps to sell!

> $500 for a ball cap?

What did you think this was, a Fyre sale?

SDNY got to get paid, son.

Normally auction houses require pre-registration and demonstration of payment ability and signing a contract promising to pay. They verify ID by taking credit card details. If they're thinking of ducking out on large amounts they're taking a large risk; it's probably worth sending a $500 tab (plus storage charges and administration) to collections ... plus they have your credit card info.

Maybe though.

Just have one made. Nobody's going to protect the trademark.

Nobody is going to come after you for a single item run for personal noncommercial use anyways - even litigious active trademarks

I'm confused if they are single items.

There are several tokens listed, all appear identical, but one has a current bid of $187 [1] and another $78 [2].

[1]https://txauction.com/lots/24143 [2]https://txauction.com/lots/24175

Ya, they're individual lots. People just aren't being very good at navigating the site I guess.

I don't think fake bids on an auction run by a federal police force is exactly the brightest idea.

My fear isn’t fake bids so much as an enterprising con-artist who buys one legit item and then uses the receipt from the US Marshals as provenance to later sell “legitimate” Fyre hats or shirts for $85-100 several times over.

What is the difference between paying too much for one of these versus paying too much for a knock off?

Either way you are paying way too much for a cheap hat.

It's not like people in 30 years are going to be buying these as collectables to remind them of the great time they had at the Fyre Festival.

One makes you the victim of a crime (fraud) and the other makes you a victim of your own poor decisions.

When you place a value on something, invisible & intangible, how do you know whether you got it or not?

What better way to celebrate a festival which fleeced thousands of people by getting fleeced yourself?

It’s a bunch of finance bros spending their bonus on this crap instead of going on vacation. Some harmless fun.

The endgame:

    Name: WILLIAM MCFARLAND
    Register Number: 91186-054
    Age: 28
    Race: White
    Sex: Male
    Release Date: 08/30/2023
    Located At: FCI Elkton

What's this?

> What's this?

His bio/profile and location of incarceration. I'll also add he tested positive for Corona virus [1] after confirming the prison location he was in.

1: https://nypost.com/2020/07/04/fyre-fest-fraudster-billy-mcfa...

They were pretty close to a billion $

From the docos the interesting thing is they seemed like they almost would have became Cameo.

Just like Riot-E also almost became 100 millionaires through their outrageous fake it till you make it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0lrIi0ce5E (NSFW)

I wonder if a merch for other fraud schemes existed how much would it cost and who would buy it? Imagine Bernie Madoff's t-shorts.

So I happen to know a bit of that world. I’m a collector of memorabilia of failed capitalist endeavors. The point others have made is very true about merch being hard to authenticate when you could just recreate on any custom T shirt / hat / mug site. But for some companies, Enron, Pets.com, and a couple others, merch still commands a high price (not Fyre level though). Personally I prefer to seek more rare and “inside baseball” artefacts but in some cases merch is the best I can do (or an autographed book).

My dad still has a ton of Netscape, Novell, and mp3.com branded gear from when he worked there in the 90s. The last time I went home I saw it just laying around in the garage with his bootleg cassettes and my childhood beach toys.

Now some of it makes an awesome talk piece at the office, or at least it did when we still had one. :)

If your dad is open to it, these three happen to be among the ones i have never been able to find anything (mp3.com especially) so I’d be interested

They would fit nicely : http://mattmg83.github.io/cynicalcapitalist/portfolio.html

I remember the Enron sign outside their HQ selling for $20,000 at the time. I actually think that was probably a decent investment.

I remember seeing some Enron merch at my Dad's desk. He had no idea of it's value and just laughed when I pointed it out.

(Enron pulled some shenanigans that were quite an annoyance to my dad at work. He had a greuling month working with them.)

He had no clue that he could sell his little trinket on eBay.

Friend of mine had a Bear Stearns cigar box (humidor? My poor underclass brain knows not the word). Was pretty good for a laugh.

These prices are insane! And the weird thing is that the site's showing multiple (in some cases dozens) of bids for items like single perfectly ordinary, even boring looking T shirts for over $100 dollars. Who'd be bidding at these prices and why? (Note: I have absolutely no knowledge of what the Fyre festival is/was or its relevance to anything, but even then, what makes it momentous enough for these prices?)

For some context: fyre festival was supposed to be a high end luxury all-inclusive festival. Essentially everything in the planning -- aside perhaps from the advertising -- went poorly to the extreme. In the end all that managed to actually get arranged was the flight to the island location. Once there people more or less found themselves stranded in a tent camp with no food and too few mattresses instead of the luxury festival they were promised.

There's a couple documentaries on the whole thing which I can recommend watching, it's almost impressive how monumentally poor everything got planned. The whole thing of course strikes a chord with the ironic-fashion crowd.

Does the SDNY keep this money or does it go to restitution?

Goes to the victims.

I was wondering that too. I'm glad, although I'm guessing it won't be that much compared to how much they defrauded people. I'm guessing everyone might get like $50 back for a $1k ticket?

The people who bought the tickets are likely not the victims it's going to, or at least I hope not. Watch the Hulu documentary if you want more context.

I've seen both documentaries. I know that one women who owned the restaurant and provided a bunch of workers did have a gofundme that helped get back a lot of what she lost.

Where does the revenue from this auction go?

Presumably it's given to creditors of the fyre festival? What if there is an excess?

One of a few possible places. If the festival has fines they can not pay. It goes towards that any leftover would be credited back to the people who were fined. If it is just seized material that was abandoned or seized in the act of criminality then back into the treasury or the marshals general funds.

It's been pointed out that there are identical items with very different bids. Maybe someone with knowledge of game theory or mechanism design or whatever can tell me: What's the "right" way (or ways?) to auction off multiple identical items? Top k bids win?

It's probably something like "each winning bid pays the next highest bid price plus one".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey%E2%80%93Clarke%E2%80%9...

I was going to remark on that ugly URL, only to discover that using en-dashes, which have to be percent-encoded in URLs, is official Wikipedia policy! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Dash... How unbelivably braindead.

Hacker News and Wikipedia render links containing 毛泽东 correctly, but browsers copy-and-paste them as https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E6%AF%9B%E6%B3%B... and somehow it's Wikipedia's fault browsers do that?

It is most certainly Wikipedia's fault that their style guide requires –, Unicode EN DASH U+2013, rather than -, Unicode HYPHEN-MINUS U+002D out of some misguided desire for typographical "correctness". That is 100% Wikipedia's choice, and it ruins their URLs, for no good reason.

I wonder at what point the logo and other IP goes up for sale.

Also, if those caps get major media attention, I can see them going for thousands of dollars to a celebrity (someone like Kanye West). I’d bet wearing the cap alone would generate several articles and other press coverage.

hacker news: "if left unchecked, the powers of the federal government will prove quite onerous"

also hacker news: "i need this hat" [pays $700 to u.s. marshalls]

Who gets the money from such an auction? Does it act as repayment for those defrauded? Does it go to the government?

Fraud associations aside, Fyre would be a great name for a startup.

They tried!

"Fyre Media" was the talent-boooking app/startup that Billy was trying to get off the ground in parallel with the festival :P

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/fyre-media-inc

> Fyre Media, an app that ostensibly allows customers to book performing artists for private events, and the Fyre Festival was intended to be an extension of that brand.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/qvz5m3/fyre-festivals-25-...

They robbing people again with those prices.

Except it's an auction...

It seems people are just determined to keep throwing money into the Fyre.

This would be more surprising to me if I hadn't seen the guys who make Cards Against Humanity get a bunch of money thrown at them to dig a hole a few years back.

It's an auction, so the prices are set by how much people are willing to bid.

Or how stupid the people running the police departments think people are.

You can see the number of bids on each item. The $505 adjustable baseball cap isn't a price set by the police, it's what the 45th bid was.

The more they run the name down, the more the price goes up.

For the first item there are 45 bids, so obviously there are people that disagree this is "robbery".

Where does the money go?

$400 for a hat?

The money apparently goes to the victims. Maybe people are being charitable.

If it's anything like bankruptcy in the UK, it will go to the subset of the "victims" who have the best lawyers.

Fees for Lawyers and accountants dealing with the bankruptcy will be deducted first. Any money owed to banks will be paid next. If there is any left, it will go to pay any taxes owed to the government or the local authorities. Eventually whatever is left will be divided proportionally between whoever is left owed money, but this will probably be a tiny fraction of the amount they are owed, if anything at all.

the auction is also a fraud meant to recoup funds from the festival fraud...

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