'Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam': How did Lou Pearlman die? Backstreet Boys & NSYNC creator was serving 25 years
MIAMI, FLORIDA: The cause of death for the guy who founded two of the most well-known boy bands in history was confirmed by the Associated Press on August 19, 2016. According to the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner, Lou Pearlman passed away in a Federal Correctional Institution, Florida, due to an infection that developed after heart valve replacement surgery.
After Lou passed away, a few of his well-known former clients recalled their late manager. Some of them admitted to feeling conflicted since Lou was infamous for defrauding the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, and other of his acts out of substantial sums of money.
"I hope he found some peace," Justin Timberlake wrote.
"God bless and RIP, Lou Pearlman." Chris Kirkpatrick and Lance Bass shared their sentiments.
Who is Lou Pearlman?
Lou was not just the brains behind several very successful pop musicians, but he was also a con man who defrauded numerous individuals of *checks notes* $300 million. Moreover, he treated the stars under his management dishonestly.
An example of that? *NSYNC's Lance remembers, in an interview with The Guardian, how he and the other members of the group had been subsisting on a $35 daily budget.
Lou summoned the band to his house after three years of record sales so they could get their part of the money they had made thus far, and gave them each a $10,000 check.
Lance recalls, "That is when I knew we were being taken advantage of. There was something wrong. We immediately started calling lawyers."
What happened during the Lou Pearlman boy band scam?
Lou, the promoter behind '90s megastars such as the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, appeared to have an alchemist's touch, transforming fresh-faced youths into global superstars. However, his pop empire was constructed on quicksand, a gigantic Ponzi scam that would finally consume everything.
From the mid-1980s to 2007, Lou cheated investors of more than $300 million through his fictitious firm, Trans Continental Airlines. The veneer began to deteriorate in the early 2000s, when band members began to question their meager salaries.
By 2006, the FBI had launched an investigation. Lou fled the United States in January 2007, was apprehended in Indonesia in June of that year, and sentenced to 25 years in jail in 2008.
He died in jail on August 19, 2016.
What’s 'Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam' about?
The show will explore his early career, the accomplishments that propelled him to the top of the field, and the controversies that ultimately took him down. Given that Lou's professional career was filled with contentious business decisions and choices, the series has a lot of territory to cover in that area.
Even though Lou was inextricably linked to the success of pop icons such as Britney Spears, N'Sync, and the Backstreet Boys, his financial misdeeds are now Lou's greatest claim to fame. Lou did the same, much as the notorious Elvis Presley manager Colonel Tom Parker came to represent a particular kind of predatory music manager.
On July 24, Netflix will premiere the true-crime docuseries 'Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam'.
