Good news for Ja Rule. He is officially cleared of his 2017 Fyre Festival lawsuit.
Southern District Judge of New York, Judge Kevin Castel, has cleared Ja Rule and the event’s Chief Marketing Officer, Grant Margolin, of all charges. Castel explains that the two were unaware of the harsh conditions that the event’s participants were walking into.
“(Ja Rule) and Margolin were participants in organizing or promoting a large-scale event,” Castel said. “There is no assertion that the Festival when first conceived or introduced to the public was intended not to go forward or that defendants intended not to perform by organizing the advertised amenities and accommodation.”
Earlier this year, Ja Rule shared how this situation broke his heart. He wanted to be a part of something that would be considered life-changing.
“It’s heartbreaking to me,” Ja Rule said. “It was something that I really, really wanted to be special and amazing and it just didn’t turn out that way. But, you know, in the midst of chaos there’s opportunity. So I’m working on a lot of new things. I got my new platform Iconn.” The rapper’s latest venture, ICONN, is an artist booking app, which is supposed to be similar to the Fyre Festival booking app.
Following the blowup of the festival, there were two documentaries created on Hulu and Netflix that shared the backstory and ultimately what lead to the event’s downfall. Although Ja Rule states that he hasn’t seen it, he is open to the possibility of watching it one day.
“I haven’t watched ’em yet,” he said to TMZ. “They’re very popular, they’re very popular. Maybe one day [I’ll watch them]. I lived it, man. I ain’t gotta watch it.”
Billy McFarland, the founder of Fyre Festival, is serving a six-year prison sentence for the scheme. He has been ordered to forfeit $26 million for frauding investors and other plots.