The Netflix miniseries Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam explores the dark side of the rise of Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, but what happened to their manager Lou Pearlman?
The three-episode series delves into the story of Pearlman’s mogul status in the American boy band market in the 1990s, spearheading the chart success of some of the biggest groups of the era, but also charting his dramatic fall.
Dirty Pop, named after an *NSYNC lyric, is ultimately the story of a con man, who in 2006 stood accused of running one of the largest and longest-running Ponzi schemes in US history.
The show uses interviews with many of Pearlman’s former colleagues as well as a number of the stars he helped to create to illustrate the dramatic arc of the businessman’s life.
It is suggested that Pearlman’s involvement in the entertainment industry began when he watched a New Kids On The Block appearance on TV and hatched a plan to create another group in their image.
That group went on to become Backstreet Boys, the members of whom Pearlman recruited with a talent search. In the wake of their success, similar acts followed, including *NSYNC, O-Town, LFO and Take 5.
A previous documentary about Pearlman was made in 2019, titled The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story, produced by *NSYNC’s Lance Bass.
What happened to Lou Pearlman, the manager from Dirty Pop?
In 2006, US federal prosecutors discovered that Pearlman had been at the centre of what was thought to be the longest-running Ponzi scheme in the country’s history, with claims that he had defrauded investors out of more than $1billion, of which nearly a third was still missing.
In essence, Pearlman convinced companies to invest in his operations, some of which existed only on paper. Only after the success of some of the bands did some of his companies begin to generate profit, but still Pearlman expanded the Ponzi scheme further, falsifying documents to win investors’ confidence and rigging accounting to secure bank loans.
Pearlman went on the run, after being indicted by Florida authorities. After reportedly being seen in countries across Europe and Asia, he was finally arrested in Bali, Indonesia in June 2007. He was indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with conspiracy, money laundering and filing false bankruptcy.
In May 2008, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
He suffered a stroke in 2010, and later had surgery to replace a heart valve. In August 2016, Pearlman died from cardiac arrest at the age of 62.
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