The Hit Charade: Lou Pearlman, Boy Bands, and the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in U.S. History (Hardcover)

by Tyler Gray (Author)
Key Phrases: blimp company, music mogul, Trans Con, Backstreet Boys, Airship International (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In the wake of phenomenally successful tweeny-bopper pop stars like Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers--as well as the recent reunion of boy-band New Kids on the Block--the time is right for a good look at the ever-present sleaze of the music industry, and journalist Gray provides it in great, greasy bucketfuls. His focus is Lou Pearlman, the manager of the Backstreet Boys and INSYNC who, Gray explains, used their earnings to finance his exorbitant lifestyle including a multimillion-dollar mansion, a fleet of private planes and expensive cars, and, inevitably, "a shady world of endless investments." Gray's look at the bands' music is serviceable. However, Gray has a keen eye for business, and he writes fluently in detailing how Pearlman with "an assembly of hucksters as his new business partners," massively scammed not only his boy bands (he collected "50 percent of all recording royalties, 100 percent of all advances") but hopeful model wannabes as well as gullible investors, including Pearlman's first cousin Art Garfunkel and government officials of Orlando, Fla. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description

Without Lou Pearlman, there would have been no Backstreet Boys, no *NSYNC, and possibly no Justin Timberlake. In the late 1990s, Pearlman's boy bands ushered out guitar-and-angst-driven grunge music, and *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys began to dominate the television and radio airwaves. At the core of this squeaky-clean pop revolution was a sinister international fraud conceived by Pearlman, a husky huckster who first honed his crooked business skills as a teenage math nerd and blimp enthusiast in Flushing, Queens. From there in the mid 1980s and from his Orlando, Florida, base in the early 1990s through 2007, he cheated hundreds of investors out of nearly $500 million. When they finally caught on to him and started demanding he return their money, the “Sixth Backstreet Boy” had already fled to Germany and then to Indonesia, where he was eventually nabbed by authorities and charged with a historic federal fraud.

Tyler Gray (the only journalist to speak with Pearlman while he was in jail) weaves together the fascinating behind-the-scenes story of the greed and desperation of this boy-band mogul and monumental scam artist. Gray unravels Pearlman's twenty-year long Ponzi scheme and explores persistent rumors about alleged inappropriate behavior by Pearlman toward members of the boy bands and other young men. Along the way, former friends, family members, Pearlman business associates, and band members themselves reveal detailed accounts of everything from the heyday of their stardom to Pearlman's more troubled times.

The Hit Charade starts with Pearlman's awkward youth and follows along as his juggling act becomes increasingly complex, then builds to the heartbreaking moments when investors—retirees, relatives, and friends—and government authorities discover that the man they had trusted had been cheating them all along. How did this chubby boy from middle-class Queens, who pioneered some of the music industry's most lucrative pop ensembles, mastermind one of the largest and longest running Ponzi schemes in U.S. history? Here, finally, is the true story of Lou Pearlman's epic rise and fall.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1 edition (November 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061579661
• ISBN-13: 978-0061579660
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #678,359 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Blimp Vision, April 3, 2009

By	MJS "Constant Reader" (New York, United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Early on in Hit Charade one of Aviation Entrepreneur/Boy Band Impresario/Con Man/All Around Large Guy Lou Pearlman's business partners declares "He had the same sort of blimp vision that I had!" For a split second after reading that line I wondered if Blimp Vision required special glasses like a 3-D movie. Then I realized what a perfect metaphor blimps are for any of Pearlman's business ventures: large, full of hot air and liable to explode.

At the three-way intersection of True Crime, Business Expose and Celebrity Tell-all, Hit Charade is a winner. Tyler Gray tells the unlikely story of a boy from Brooklyn who conned nearly everyone he met in pursuit of his dreams of aviation greatness and then, bizarrely, decided to go into the entertainment business where he "rescued" pop music from the clutches of grunge. Explaining the ins and outs of any business related fraud is difficult. Explaining it without inducing comas is even more difficult. Gray manages to explain what Pearlman did clearly and entertainingly. Of course, he has awesome material for this venture.

While Gray can't provide any juicy tidbits from the behind the scenes stories of The Backstreet Boys or *NSync, he can tell us about the time Pearlman taught a wanna-be boy band star the "hit, hit, pump hit thrust maneuver." In public. On stage. He can also quote Pearlman telling a interviewer of the aquatic toys at his home, "If these Jet Skis could talk they would tell you about all of our artists who have been riding them."

Sadly, Jet Skis weren't the only things being taken for rides in Lou "Big Papa" Pearlman's world. Apparently taking business lessons from the movie The Producers, Pearlman liked to sell shares in his corporations over and over and over. Anyone can give 1000% to their company, Lou liked to sell 1000% of his company. He was also quite the forgerer, happily producing his own letters of insurance from Lloyd's and AIG. (These stories hark back to the days when a letter from AIG inspired confidence in investors.) All this helped Big Papa to steal the life savings of hundreds of people to keep himself in Jet Skis, cornflower blue Rolls Royces and fine restaurants. Along the way we have ex-Nazis, pretty boys, home-care nurses who stay for ten years and Art Garfunkel.

There are dark rumors that the Jet Skis weren't the only things being ridden by artists at Casa de Big Papa. Gray, to his great credit, doesn't wallow in the gutter on this. He reports the rumors, makes it clear that no one has ever made a verified claim and moves on. Of course, the presence of a casting couch would be positively classy compared to the facts surrounding Pearlman's model scouting venture. The business revolved around "scouts" asking strangers if they've ever "considered going into modelling" and then selling them $1,000 modelling portfolios. Bad enough, you say? Well, add on the fact that even the absence of a limb didn't stop these scouts from convincing the naive that a successful runway career was just a check away.

Until the Madoff scandal Lou Pearlman held claim to being the perpetrator of the largest Ponzi scheme in US history. Not unlike Bernard Madoff, it's obvious that Big Papa couldn't do this on all his own. Nor are his crimes without a similarly ghastly human toll including suicide. But unlike Bernie, Lou made a run for it only to be caught by an *NSync fan at a Bali resort. As the saying goes, publicity doesn't kiss back. Tyler Gray's prose is almost perfectly suited to this story. He has just the right balance of factual reportage prose with snarky asides like "he threw his fat assets behind the model scouting business." Pure gold.

Pearlman has moved from his plus-size mansion to the big house for an extended stay. For fraud, not in punishment for making The House of Carter possible. One could make a case that Pearlman made a life's work out of exploiting the secret dreams of others but I'm not convinced Lou ever thought anything through to that degree. He was just an improviser who kept the gag going for an astonishingly long time.

Kindle Note: Photographs are included.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Look at World-Class Con-Man, January 25, 2009

By	Adam J. Loewy (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The saga of Lou Pearlman will eventually occupy a prominent chapter in any book on the greatest ponzi schemes of the 21st (and late 20th) century. It is downright fascinating how a man like Pearlman could not only bilk some many people out of Millions but also somehow manage to break in the music industry as a novice and churn out acts like the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC.

This is one of those books you just won't be able to put down. Tyler Gray does a very good of researching the history of Pearlman's business endeavors and the cast of characters that always hung around him. While the beginning part of the book is a tad slow, the story just soars once he shows how Pearlman broke into the music business, and then how his empire falls apart in 2005 and 2006.

My only slight critique of this book is Gray's reluctance to confirm stories about Pearlman's homosexual proclivities. Bryan Burrough's 'Vanity Fair' article on Pearlman did a much better job of discussing this and for whatever reason, Gray seems hesistant to tackle this issue. While this doesn't take away from the main story, it is definitely an interesting aspect that should have been explored more fully.

Regardless, this is a superb piece of investigative journalism and a downright fascinating look at a multi-decade Ponzi scheme.

1.0 out of 5 stars The Author Is A Charade, June 16, 2009

By	Avi D. Reader - See all my reviews

Tyler Gray masquerades as an author. This book sucks. It is poorly written and researched. By the author's own admissions, it is filled with half truths, lies, and indirect innuendo. As in all of his other reporting, Gray ignores important information if it doesn't fit his own foregone conclusions. He had it all laid out in front of him. He could have broken the story of the century, but he missed it. He can't add up the math or the stories. The book, like the author, is superficial, shallow and clueless. This is a hard book to read and easy to put down. I wouldn't recommend wasting time or money on this book or anything by Tyler Gray. It is my understanding that NO major publisher has ever shown an interest in another book by Tyler Gray.