Talent Manager Lou Pearlman Was a Thief and a Grifter — How Much Money Did He Actually Have?
Lou Pearlman was a scam artist who had a knack for finding actual artists.
Published July 24 2024, 12:20 p.m. ET
Talent manager Lou Pearlman was behind some of the most popular boy bands of the late 1990s and early 2000s. If it weren't for him, we wouldn't know how to quit playing games with people's hearts or how much someone's heart could be torn up. Wow, artists sure were obsessed with hearts back then.
After cobbling together boy bands like the Backstreet Boys and *NYSNC, then managing groups like O-Town and LFO, Pearlman must have been drowning in dollars. And he was, but a lot of that had to do with the fact that he was committing fraud left and right. He passed away in prison in August 2016, leaving who know how much money behind. Let's take a look at Lou Pearlman's net worth.
Lou Pearlman's net worth was in the red.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Lou Pearlman died owing money. $400 million, to be exact. Perhaps we should say he had a neg worth. It's no surprise that he left this world owing people money as Pearlman was in prison for conspiracy to commit bank fraud, money laundering, bankruptcy, and fraud.
Lou Pearlman
Talent manager, Scam artist
Net worth: -400,000,000
Lou Pearlman was the creator of boy bands such as the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. He was also running a Ponzi scheme for over 20 years, for which he was eventually sent to prison.
Birth date: June 19, 1954
Birth place: New York, N.Y.
Birth name: Louis Jay Pearlman
Birth father: Hy Pearlman
Birth mother: Reenie Pearlman
Education: Queens College
In his 2002 book Bands, Brands, and Billions: My Top 10 Rules for Making Any Business Go Platinum, Pearlman talked about how a business plan for a college class project eventually turned into Airship Enterprises Ltd. During this time he leased a blimp to Jordache, the jeans company, which would have been great if he actually owned one. He ended up building one himself, which crashed. The resulting lawsuit got Pearlman $2.5 million in damages.
He rebranded that company to Airship International but per the Orlando Sentinel, it failed after several crashes. Despite touting several notable clients such as McDonald’s, MetLife, and SeaWorld, its stock fell from $6.00 a share to 3 cents. That's when he turned to the boy band-making business.
Inspired by the success of New Kids on the Block, Pearlman began creating groups like some sort of scammy Geppetto. He was eventually sued by most of these groups. Brian Littrell of the Backstreet Boys was the first to file a lawsuit after discovering that "among other things, Pearlman was paid as the sixth member of the band," per Vanity Fair.
It was the Ponzi scheme Pearlman was running that would be his ultimate downfall. Apart from his publicly traded company, Pearlman had a private company called Trans Continental Airlines, which leased aircrafts. It turns out that company never existed. For over two decades Pearlman convinced people to invest money in a company that only existed on paper. He managed to steal $1 billion, $300 million of which was never found.
