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Lou Pearlman has been in a Florida jail since June after he was finally arrested for a ponzi scheme in which he took hundreds of millions of dollars from investors and just moved it around without investing it, taking at least $150 million for himself. He was on the run from the law for eight months on that charge, having been seen in June Indonesia by German tourists, who tipped off authorities.
He’s best known for starting the careers of several successful boy bands, including NSYNC, The Backstreet Boys, Take 5, and LFO. Pearlman screwed all the musical acts he represented out of significant shared of income, using legal tactics and methods to take 75% of revenue off the top, and insure he received an ongoing percentage of merchandise and tour revenue. Every musical act he’s worked with except one has sued him.
Pearlman also started a talent search agency that bilked people out of millions. It was the subject of multiple lawsuits and was eventually closed by the state of Florida.
Not only is Pearlman an accomplished con artist, he’s said to be a pedophile too. There’s an upcoming story in Vanity Fair, covered by Page Six today, that details alleged incidents of molestation of the young boys Pearlman worked with:
“I would absolutely say the guy was a sexual predator. All the talent knew what Lou’s game was,” Steve Mooney, an aspiring singer who was Pearlman’s assistant, told VF’s Bryan Burrough. “Some guys joked about it. I remember [one singer] asking me, ‘Have you let Lou [fellate] you yet?’ ”
Mooney said he once asked Pearlman, who was known as “Big Poppa,” what it would take for him to get into a band. “I’ll never forget this as long as I live. He leaned back in his chair, in his white terry cloth robe and white underwear, and spread his legs,” Mooney told Burrough. “And then he said, and these were his exact words, ‘You’re a smart boy. Figure it out.’ ” Mooney added that a singer groped by Pearlman told him, “Look, if a guy wants to massage me, and I’m getting a million dollars for it, you just go along with it. It’s the price you got to pay.”
Phoenix Stone, an early member of the Backstreet Boys, tells Vanity Fair Pearlman was “definitely inappropriate” with Nick Carter. Nick’s mom, Jane Carter, wouldn’t get into specifics, but said, “Certain things happened and it almost destroyed our family. I tried to warn everyone. I tried to warn all the mothers . . . I tried to expose him for what he was years ago.”
Tim Christofore, a member of Take 5, recalls that during a sleepover at Pearlman’s house, the music czar swan-dived onto his and another boy’s bed and wrestled with them wearing only in a towel, which came off. “We were like, ‘Ooh, Lou, that’s gross.’ What did I know? I was 13,” Christofore told Vanity Fair.
Rich Cronin, lead singer of LFO, recalled Pearlman told him of an “ancient massage technique that if I massage you and we bond in a certain way, it will strengthen your aura.”
[From NYPost.com]
And as I was researching this story, I came across a statement by Justin Timberlake in a 2006 interview with Rolling Stone. Timberlake got his start in the business in the band NSYNC, managed by Pearlman. He said “Looking back at those days… I was being monetarily raped by a Svengali.” [From Wikipedia]
This guy should go away for the rest of his life. It turns my stomach to think of someone taking advantage of young boys like that. The only way he could be a lower form of human is if he was a serial killer, but he’s not too far from that level.
