The internet has raised $130k for the Fyre Festival restaurant owner on GoFundMe

21 January 2019, 17:21

By Katie Louise Smith

Maryann Rolle, the manager of Exuma Point Bar and Grille in the Bahamas, revealed she lost over $50k of her own personal money in Netflix's documentary.

Netflix dropped their absolutely wild Fyre Festival documentary on Friday (Jan 18) called 'Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened' and when I tell you that it's one of the best things you'll ever watch, I mean it.

From rapper Ja Rule's involvement to the mind-blowing level at which Fyre Media CEO Billy McFarland appeared to scam almost everyone who worked on the event, the documentary details just how catastrophic Fyre Festival really was.

But while certain areas of the doc are hilarious (the story about Andy and the water tanks is truly something else), it also showed just how devastating the effects of the festival were on the Bahamian locals. Toward the end of the documentary, island business owners and workers who worked tirelessly to help put the festival on revealed that they were left thousands of dollars out of pocket when Billy left the island without paying the staff.

Caterer Maryann Rolle was one of them and now the internet has banded together to raise enough money to replace everything she lost in the scandal.

Maryann, the manager of Exuma Point Bar and Grille restaurant in Great Exuma, lost over $50,000 of her own money when it became clear that Billy, nor anyone from the Fyre Festival team, was going to pay her for the restaurants' services.

"I had 10 persons working for me just preparing food all day and all night, 24 hours," Maryann said in the documentary. "I literally had to pay all those people. I am here as a Bahamian. And they stand in my face everyday. I went through about $50,000 of my savings that I could've had for a rainy day. They just wiped it out and never looked back."

Now, a GoFundMe page has been set up to help raise enough money for Maryann's restaurant and to refund her personal savings that she had to spend in order to save her business after the festival.

The page, which was set up by Elvis and Maryann Rolle, has now reached over $130k (well over the target amount) and is still growing with over 4000 donations. Elliot Tebele, the founder of Fuck Jerry who did all the promo for Fyre Fest, donated $20k to the fund. So far, none of the famous influencers who promoted the event to their millions of followers have donated to the fund.

But of course, given how much of scam the whole festival was in the first place, some people are skeptical over whether or not the GoFundMe account is actually genuine. Thankfully, GoFundMe tweeted on Saturday (Jan 19) that the account was genuine and encouraged people to donate.

Here's hoping Elvis and Maryann secure the bag and get their savings back 💙