Fundraiser for Fyre Festival caterer reaches £125,000

Wellwishers have raised more than £125,000 for a Bahamian caterer who says she was cheated out of her savings by the organisers of a disastrous music festival.

Scheduled to take place in April 2017, the Fyre festival was sold as a high-end “luxury” experience, with Instagram models and A-list musical acts rubbing shoulders on a private island in the Bahamas.

However, organisational issues spiralled out of control, and attendees who had paid thousands of dollars per ticket ultimately arrived to find their luxury accommodation consisted of disaster-relief tents on a half-finished building site, with little food and water to boot.

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Much of the blame fell to the originator of the project, entrepreneur Billy McFarland, who was sentenced to six years in prison in October last year for fraud.

This month has seen both Netflix and US streaming platform Hulu release their own documentaries on the events leading up to the spectacular collapse of the festival, putting a fresh spotlight on the debacle.

Many viewers of the Netflix production - Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened - were moved by the plight of Maryann Rolle, a restaurateur enlisted to help cater the ill-fated event.

In a post on fundraising site GoFundMe, Rolle - who runs the Exuma Point Resort with her husband Elvin - described how she had prepared more than 1,000 meals for festival attendees, as well as hosting the festival organisers at the resort.

However, when the chaotic event was abruptly cancelled, she says organisers departed the island without paying her.

She told Bahamian outlet Eyewitness News how the losses had caused her to fall behind in payments on several cottages she had purchased to expand the resort, and forced her to pay ten staff members out of her own money.

“I went through about $50,000 of my own savings,” she said in the tearful final scene of the documentary. “They just wiped it out and never looked back.”

Her appearance “packed an emotional punch that showed just how much human damage the organisers had done”, says The Independent.

Since the fundraiser went live last week, wellwishers have raised more than $162,000 (£125,275) to help Rolle rebuild her life.

Rolle thanked those who had donated money, as well as her staff, whom she said had stuck by her despite her “terrible mistake”.

“I’m so delighted and happy to see how people throughout the world have sought to listen to my story and were kind enough to sponsor and donate to see my life go up again,” she said.

“I thought everyone had forgotten me; and there was no one who cared in the world anymore,” she said. “Through God’s mercy, I can feel a ray of hope.”