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Disgraced music mogul Lou Pearlman dies
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 22 August 2016
The man who launched the careers of the Backstreet Boys and NSync, Lou Pearlman, has died, aged 62. He was eight years into a 25 year prison sentence for fraud.
Pearlman became known for his work with various boybands through his Trans Continental Records label in the 1990s. In the late 90s, all but one of his acts sued him for misrepresentation and fraud. Then things really began to unravel in 2006, when a federal investigation uncovered that the business that had been funding his success in music, Trans Continental Airlines, had been run as a ponzi scheme, defrauding around 1400 investors – mainly pensioners – of more than $300 million.
He fled the US, but was caught in Indonesia in 2007 and returned back to the States to face trial, where he was convicted for conspiracy, money laundering and making false statements during a bankruptcy. Despite this, he made occasional statements from prison insisting that he would regain his success as a music mogul.
As news of his death on Friday broke over the weekend, the Backstreet Boys’ Lance Bass tweeted: “He might not have been a stand up businessman, but I wouldn’t be doing what I love today without his influence”.
