American pop culture at the turn of the millennium was defined by its unique fashion and the rise of the internet — but you can’t talk about the Y2K era without also paying homage to the music that defined it. The global impact of the “boy band” can’t be understated: Pop groups like the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC ruled the airwaves for years and changed the face of the entertainment industry. Much of the success of these groups can be attributed to the bonafide pop star-maker Lou Pearlman. The only problem? He was also a con man.
Through interviews with his former colleagues and the high-profile stars he managed, Netflix limited series Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam zeroes in on Pearlman’s fabled career, detailing his origins as both a trailblazer and an entertainment-world vulture. In addition to sharing never-before-seen home videos of your favorite baby-faced boy bands’ early days, the three-part limited series pulls back the curtain on the glitz and glam surrounding the man responsible for launching so many careers and reveals the crooked and complex financial scheme he used to build the foundation of his unstable empire.
Lou Pearlman and the Backstreet Boys.
Pearlman, a former blimp rental exec turned talent manager, created the Backstreet Boys after a nationwide talent search, and the group became one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. Pearlman went on to become the manager of pop stars *NSYNC before managing other notable artists of the era such as Aaron Carter, Take 5, O-Town, Brooke Hogan, Natural, LFO, and Innosense.
AJ McLean
Howie Dorough
Erik-Michael Estrada
Patrick King
Alongside the people that worked on the corporate end of Pearlman’s business, several of Pearlman’s artists make an appearance in Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam, including Backstreet Boys’ AJ McLean and Howie Dorough, *NSYNC’s Chris Kirkpatrick, Natural’s Michael Johnson and Patrick King, and O-Town’s Erik-Michael Estrada.
Pearlman was sued for misrepresentation and fraud by a number of the musical acts he’d managed. The artists claimed that he and his management company exploited them and unfairly pocketed the majority of their earnings. He was eventually bought out of their contracts.
Following to his legal issues with his artists, Pearlman was also sued by Cheney Mason, the defense lawyer he’d hired to represent him in the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC cases. Mason alleged that Pearlman owed him millions for his services, but the music mogul claimed that he didn’t have the funds to pay.
What landed him behind bars was the discovery of an extensive, decades-long fraudulent enterprise, considered to be one of the longest-running Ponzi schemes in American history. Despite the undeniable success of his talent roster, Pearlman owed more than $200 million to various banks. To keep his business afloat, he spent some 20 years enticing thousands of private investors (including his artists, close friends, and business partners) to entrust him with roughly $300 million of their savings for an “FDIC-insured” savings program affiliated with Trans Continental Airlines Inc. and Trans Continental Airlines Travel Services Inc. — corporations that didn’t actually exist.
In 2007, Pearlman was charged with conspiracy, money laundering, and making false claims in a bankruptcy. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. He died there in 2016, at the age of 62. To this day, more than $400 million acquired in Pearlman’s Ponzi scheme remains unrecovered.
Watch Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam on Netflix now.
