While Pearlman may not have been the most upstanding citizen, his instincts for talent brought us some of the most popular, joyful music of the 90s and 2000s.
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Pearlman’s fall came in 2006, when it was discovered that he had for almost 20 years ran a complex Ponzi scheme, drawing investors for companies that existed on paper only.
Lou Pearlman was convicted in 2009 of masterminding a half-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme, Billboard said.
Pearlman’s relationships with the boy bands he helped launch eventually faltered, with a lot of them, including The Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, suing him for fraud, according to Billboard.
In 2008, the infamous record producer was sentenced to 25 years in prison for swindling family, friends, banks and investors by encouraging them to invest money into two fake companies over a period of 20 years.
The boy band Backstreet Boys pictured.
The death of Lou Pearlman undoubtedly will have an effect on those whose careers he helped launch and those whom were victimized by him.
In 2006, he had an office on Church Street Station in Orlando. Pearlman was eventually arrested in Indonesia after being tracked down by authorities in June of 2007.
The allegations in the article relied on innuendo and rumors but did not contain any first-person accounts of sexual misconduct. Pearlman denied any inappropriate relations.
In 2014, Bass told The Hollywood Reporter: “We would hear things, for sure”. The Vanity Fair piece interviewed only people that had a grudge’. J. Records founder, Clive Davis also took on a hands on role with O-Town that season and for the remainder of the group’s platinum selling success with his label.
Clearly on a roll, two years later in 1995 he repeated the formula to create NSYNC, who managed similar success, raking up 55 million records, the eighth-best-selling boyband in history.
“#LouPearlman my old manager died in prison”.
Pearlman started in the aviation industry but shifted focus in the early 90s to music.
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Lou was once Aaron’s manager.
