Citation Needed - Lou Pearlman

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Louis Jay Pearlman (June 19, 1954 – August 19, 2016) was an American record producer. He was the creator of successful 1990s boy bands such as Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. In 2006, he was accused of running one of the largest and longest-running Ponzi schemes in US history, leaving more than $300 million in debts. After being apprehended, he pled guilty to conspiracy, money laundering, and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding. In 2008, Pearlman was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.[3][4] He died in federal custody in 2016.

And so I said what if you were allowed to watch and how do you take that worse? Can you believe that I can't yeah? Yeah, I can Okay, well then I don't understand Holy crap you I what did you do? No, no, this isn't me. This this is too organized for my shenanigans Hey fellas, hey, no, no, it was me. Let me get these. Let me turn these off Keith, what are you doing here? What's with all this sound stuff? Oh, I sold it. For computers?

Wait, is that, what? Not for computers, Tom. For woodscoyne. Woodscoyne, yeah. What's woodscoyne? That doesn't count for the score. It's a bit coin that we made with the face of James Woods on it. But why? Well, we're thinking about this week's essay and we realized what's a better scam than Bitcoin. Bitcoin's

not a scam. It's just like money made of math problems, right? Right. Right. But there's a bunch of smaller coins that work on the same system. And since they're all traded anonymously and without regulation, they're perfect for a pump and dump scheme. Okay. Yeah, so we made Woodscoin. We tell people who listen to our podcast to buy it while it's low. And then once it goes up, we tell everyone to dump it. Okay, yeah, but for that to work, we need other people to buy it.

We can just sell and buy bitcoins to our listeners. Okay, but that's where James Woods comes in. Exactly. See, Woods is a Trump supporting bigot assholes. So when the price of the coin goes up, Nazis and memeers will buy it as a joke or they'll buy it because they're Nazis and memeers and they're stupid. Yeah, right. Well, exactly, but it doesn't matter at that point. All right. So, So we tell our podcast listeners

to buy the ironically problematic coin, assholes notice and drive the price off. Exactly. And then we and our listeners dump it and we leave the assholes holding the back. Holding the back, exactly. Yeah, you got it. I mean, that has to be illegal though, right?

Well, I mean, with any regulated anything, yes, super illegal, but not with cryptocurrency. Yeah, because it's money made of math problem. Money made of math problems, exactly. That actually, that sounds like a really good point. I will do that. This would actually work if it wasn't sketched. Yeah, probably would. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where you choose to subject read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we are experts.

Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Cecil and I'm just a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude, but I'm not the only one whose humanity has been turned into a few quirky character traits by Eli, we have a whole cast of those people. Introducing first, the guy who's the smartest dumb person on the planet, and the guy who gets high in his mat a lot, Tom and Noah. Hey, you know, if you want to look good, you have two choices. Be actually excellence or carefully choose who you are compared with.

Hello, friends on the podcast. I have to say as what's with all these hippies at these damn dispensaries? And also joining us tonight, a noodle loving fellow who's into step sisters and a tall noodle loving fellow who's into step sisters. See, he's some of us revel in our new found immortality. New to loving, insistent, enthusiastic, never die. Yeah, that's good. It's a beautiful headstone, Eli. I love it.

I love it. Patrons, we spend hours a week writing, recording, and editing this show, and you give us money for that. So thanks. Also, anyone else who's listening, you can give us money for that. And if you'd like to learn how to do that, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. And with that, on the way, tell us, Eli,

what person-place thing, concept, phenomenon, or event we would be talking about today. We'll be talking about my three-quarters of the way through the essay, Hero. Ooh. Ooh. Oh. Hey, Anton, are you ready to tell us who the fuck this is? through the essay hero. Hey, and Tom, are you ready to tell us who the fuck this is? Every word I say is true.

So this I promise. That's a great. I don't care how you're proficient though. I yourself do our condom. Okay. The whole time who was Lou Proman? Well, I wouldn't know at a certain point. Imagine, you know.

All right. Well, if you're like me and you spent your misbegotten youth, studiously avoiding boy bands because you felt like they were, you know, inauthentic and manufactured and you always felt like they were just lying to you, but in harmony, you would be just like, and hopelessly underestimating just how right you actually were. So today, I'm going to tell you the story, the man who not only manufactured the ear cancer that was Backstreet Boys in sync and a host of others, but also the story of exactly how wildly you almost certainly borrow a bushism, misunderestimated the gravity of this very bizarre situation. Today I'm going to tell you the story of Lou Perne. Nine of Chanel's was

a boy, there was a single emo boy, but I read it made fun of the Kuran once a month for a year, but if you're about to come for K pop in this essay, you're on your own. You're on your BTS for life. I'm not mobilizing those guys against this. Are you kidding me? I'm not giving much away here when I tell you that Lou Pearlman was a con artist. Yes. And sink was the am I of music? Thank you.

It's dark. It was the Betsy device. Very few con artist come into their trade quite so young as Lou. When Pearlman was a young man growing up in a flushing New York, he was not a popular or well-liked young man. He was a chubby, unhappy little Jewish kid, but he had dreams of making it big. And according to his much-bally hood origin story, Perlman had his first big business idea watching the local paperboys deliver their wares door to door around flushing.

According to Perlman, he realized that certain customers had preferences on their paper delivery. Someone at the paper, the mat, someone at like their door knocked on the paper, hand delivered, that sort of thing. So what Perlman did was he took notes on what each customer wanted in there. I guess weirdly the spoke news paper delivery requirements. Then Perlman bought out the routes of all the local paper boys and then hired his own team of delivery guys, all of whom delivered the papers exactly the way their customers wanted it.

The grateful customers, of course, tipped much better for the better service. And Perlman had a nice little passive income stream before he'd even grown hair on his balls. Yeah. Nowadays, he would have just invented an app called like PAPER for some guy to throw a paper in your neighbor's bushes, but you tip and give five stars. Anyways, except like most things about Lou, this story was, it was just total bullshit. Paperboys can't just sublet their paper routes. That's crazy. It didn't happen.

No, well, in true story, I erased an entire paragraph of, but that's impossible because notes when I saw that you opened the next chapter. But Lou was not the kind of guy who let the truth stand in the way of a good story. So he kept going. As Lewa tell it, his home in flushing was right across the street from the flushing airport. And it was as a result of this proximity that he began his love of blimps. You heard that right? But no blimps. Yeah. Yeah. The giant balloon kite gondola things that for some reason exist. I love blimps obsessed with them so much so that he used his position as the editor of the school newspaper to arrange for a ride. Just smoking three cigarettes at the same time flip it through a roller dexat.

Hello, Jimmy, you better give me that blimp ride. You never get any ink in this town. Never. I'm not a child. Jimmy, I'm telling you, I'm rolling in Lincoln's and blimpin' ain't easy. I'm telling ya. Yeah, it's just that that story, yeah, he didn't. It didn't.

It was actually his best friend, Alan Gross, who was obsessed with blimps and who was also the editor of the school newspaper and who arranged for a ride in a blimp. Pearlman, well, wasn't and didn't. But since it's a good story, he just took it and would later leverage this very weird, blimp-related mythology in surprising ways. Because while nothing about Lou Proman was honest or true or authentic, you cannot fault him

for missing a lot of opportunity. Okay, okay, in lose defense, everyone's wife is the most beautiful woman in the world, but when we borrow a perfectly good blimp story, all of a sudden everyone's sure. I'm not fucking wrong. Oh, no.

So, true story, I raced an entire paragraph of Eli does this all the time, no time to write that in your newspaper. Yeah, I mean, the story's about a fat Jewish kid who steals other people's stories. I mean, it's a reason why we don't let Eli touch the money. He loves real far from all the money. While he was a student, Lou had to write a business plan for a classic Queens college. And he wrote his plan based on the idea for a taxi company that used helicopters rather

than cars. If you ever spent any time trying to get around New York City in a cab, you two would be sympathetic to the notion of simply flying straight into the sky rather than spending one more minute in a yellow stench carrot. You spend a fucking infinite amount of time in there because they literally don't know where they're going. Every single cab I've gotten into, the cabbie asks you where it is. He doesn't know where you're going.

You tell him where you're going. He's like, I don't fucking know where it is. How do you get there? You're fucking city, man. What the fuck? That's rustic charm, see sir. That's rustic charm. New Yorkic charm.

New York City charm. Yes. The thing with Lou though is that as full of shit as he was, he also sort of wasn't, because just about as often as Proman was lying, he was also making good on some of his crazy ideas. By the late 1970s, Lou actually launched a helicopter dancey service.

No, no. Though he seems you've only ever had one helicopter. Yeah, it was called airlift, which was hilarious. But it's a pun for the future, so I'll be really, really get it. Also, it's insane. A cab service in New York made of helicopters like, that's real though. I look this up.

Apparently, New York allowed helicopters to land on buildings all over the city until four people literally got chopped in half on top of the pan-amp building in 1977. I'm like, maybe not the greatest. Paul were a big. Because New York City is so concerned about the safety of the people who widened its tasks. learned about the safety of the people who've widened its task. I didn't want to. I didn't want to. The tall ones evidently.

Yeah. It's helicopters that fucking waste height. Did I landed it at like a 45 and just, I know, I know, I know, I know. Yeah. Lou was now firmly into the aviation game. Not the standard airplane-related aviation game, but the aviation. No, nonetheless, after acquiring his helicopter, Perlman persuaded some German guy with a

difficult pronounce name to teach him about blimps, or as people who are lying to you, call them airships. They're like those people, they're blimps. So Perlman promptly formed a company called Airship Enterprises and just as promptly leveraged his origin story, he stole from his best friend Alan Gross to secure a business relationship with the then mega brand at George Ash. George Ash agreed to lease Pearlman's blimp so that a ginormous George Ash ad could float serenely above the heads of the like denim buying public

yes that contract was exclusive and very lucrative and it had only one minor hiccup. Proman had just leased ad space on a blimp without owning that could be problematic. Yeah right. When I said I would give you 10 inches of dig you didn't assume I was coming alone, did you? Three, three, three, one. That counts. The math adds up. The math adds up. So Burmmann did the only reasonable thing. And he promptly used the money he got from the initial phase of the contract to buy an old Run-down blimp because I guess there's like a resale market for used blimp's She's somewhere. I don't what is terrible sale

He's slapping the hood. Okay. This is really it's like you can't really slap It's just It's just really big. We pop balloons to get people's attention outside the used blimp lot, but I don't know, it just seems anticlimactic. So you threw some paint on the old girl to make it look presentable and on its maiden George Ash ad voyage, it promptly crashed and was hopelessly. Of course this piece of shit blimp was, because the contract he had very well insured

and now Pearlman had a very nice little nest egg. Oh, and he also won a lawsuit with George Ash and was awarded $2.5 million for his effort. Okay, it was a good year for him, good year. But, took a second. Well, it was a good year for him., took a second. It was a good year for him. It was double. I'm talking about that.

Hold on. But why do blimpads exist at all? I don't understand that. Are lots of people like sitting there at a pro football game just ruminating about their shitty firestone tire purchase that they made and then they look up. Hold on. I mean, you look up and you think, man, if they can do that with a blimp, imagine what they can do with car tires, right? Airship enterprises obviously needed a reboot since it did not successfully yet flown one

flight. So Pearlman closed up that shop and started a new business. This one called Airship International. He then took Airship International Public despite the company having no airship and being decidedly non-international. And he somehow raised $3 million, which he used to buy a admittedly much better blimp.

He then managed to lease blimp ad space to McDonald's, MetLife and SeaWorld, three of the biggest brands of the late 80s and early 90s. Yeah, the McDonald's probably stopped paying for ads after they took the McBlimpie off the menu in 92. Oh, I love it. I'm not going to do that anymore. Yeah, so good.

Hot Psycho, cold Psycho, cold, good. Airship international ran into some difficulty though when they crashed three more blips. They crashed the whole thing. Yeah, you're sad. Did you let hire the driver of the X-Out and Valdese? Like, what the fuck is going on? The stock price, because remember, he went public with the company before he went skyward, collapsed as quickly as one of his stupid crashy airships.

Like, uh, it leds up. And actually, the stock had been artificially pumped up to $6 a share. But after three crashes and losing all of their contracts, the stock fell to three cents a share. Oh, the humanity. Oh, hey, hey. Well, it's not unusual for bad press and lost business to damage a company. That's not the full story of what happened with lose business.

See, after Lewin public in 1985, Lew became close with a guy named Jerome Rosen. Rosen was himself a scam artist and it was 1985. So pumping and dumping penny stocks was a really big thing at this point. Rosen owned a small cap trading company called Norbe securities in exchange for absolutely outrageous commissions like commissions that were tens of thousands of dollars per trade. Norbe actively traded airship international stocks, which drove the stock up, despite the company having negative cash flow and no revenue or assets.

The whole thing was a classic penny stock pump and dump scam. The blimps to really just the cover for the stock scam. At this point, all the air had gone out of the blimscar. Scanner! Yeah! But Pearlman, he got wind of the phenomenon. That went, yes! Take it! Hey, got wind of the phenomenon that was new kids on the block. And what he heard, unlike NKOTB, was music to this scammer's heart.

I'm calling it that. I'm calling it that for the whole rest of the essay. Well, folks, we've gotten to the part of the show where we're just about getting to the point, so we have to take the last one. Let's do that. Hey Heath, what's with the painting of James Woods? Is this for that James coin? Okay, well, first of all, it's called Woods' coin, but this is even better.

Better? That's right. It's an NFT. Or it will be. Wait, that's an NFT. What's an NFT? So an NFT is like, it's the thing, so you know how Bitcoin is made of math problems? Sure. Yeah. Well, NFT is art made of math problems.

People are going to go crazy for them. Wait, why are people going to go crazy for them? Because they're so expensive. Why are they so expensive? Because people are going to go crazy for them. Just try to hide on. Okay, I see. Okay, so once Woodscoin takes off, then boom, we release this bad boy, make even more money. Okay, great plan, but he's, nobody's gonna fall for that.

It's just an obvious money grab. Nobody is ever, I don't think ever gonna find, I forget it's gonna work. Hey Eli, yeah, heath, what's up? So don't tell anybody, but this art is made of math problems. I will give you $10,000 for it There it is. Okay, that's fair. What it sees a lot for you. I'll double it Well, it took a half an episode, but we're ready to tell you about the origin story of the music that they play at Banana Republic. Are you ready to quit playing games with our hearts?

Oh, nicely done. I'm so happy to be here. That's one of their songs. I think it is, too. I have to look at it off some Google. Everyone has at this point, unfortunately, heard and heard of NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys. We all know that these boy bands and the whole boy band craze was manufactured. But I love it though. What is it NSYNC like a grandfather talking about the internet?

I swear to God, I will fight you. He's right. I don't know who the first thing is. That's what it says and sing. Is that in sync? That would be spelled differently. Got it, right? Fuck you. Tom is the last radio DJ. Oh, I'm sorry. I might not respectful of their hearts. No, you're not. Cardi B, what's the full name? Tell me the full last name of her. Is it Bianca?

Cardi Bob. Cardi. Cardi. Cardi. See, thank you. I've been wondering for a lot. Thank you, Heath. Hi, the whole boy band craze was manufactured, but what is stunning is the degree to which that

statement is true. Lou Perlman became fascinated with the unrivaled success and money that NKOTB was breaking in. And Lou figured he understood well enough the formula to create the same success. And Lou Figordy understood well enough the formula to create the same success. Quickly walking away from his blimp thing, he found it a new comp, this one called Transcontinental Records. Transcontinental records hadn't either records, nor did it span the length or breadth of any continents,

but what it had was an understanding that success in the music industry didn't need to rely on trying to find talent and hope to capture that lightning in a bottle. Instead, music was no different than any other industry, with the right ingredients and formula, success was simply a matter of creating a product to meet a customer need and then marketing the shit out of that. So little Pearlman, a short, fat, but spectacle little man used $3 million of his own money, any hell-day talent search.

Would you call it his own money? Would you call it his own money time? Money that he was in his mother's account that he stole. If that's all that, it was his. He, no one had taken it yet. He was temporary custodian of that money. Okay. So from that talent,

denim blood money, that's fine. From that talent search, Proman picked out five kids, none of whom had any substantial commercial success of their own yet and signed them to transcontinental records is newly minted label. These five teenage boys moved into Proman's

massive Orlando residence and began their training to become the Backstreet Boys. Okay, we're basically the Backstreet Boys podcast. I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that. So really we just need the buddy mansion and like, better hats or something. That's, yeah, pedorus.

Ooh, I would love that. Mornin, Cecil! Hey, Eli, do you want the tofu frittata? Make him one. Absolutely! Who made the coffee? Heave! Man, makes a great cup of coffee.

Where are the kids? Lucinda took into the zoo again. Again? She spoils them. Yeah, I guess there's a monkey exhibit or something. Uh, technically they're lemurs. Um, you guys done eating? Tom and I are streaming portal to today for Game and Watch. Oh, this I gotta see. You'll finish your frittata before you get up. I'll finish it in there.

I don't, I don't get it. Yeah, what was the joke? That sketch. I don't sometimes I just want to manifest things with a doodly do. Okay. We, we was the joke? That sketch, I don't. Sometimes I just want to manifest things with a doodly dood, okay? We gotta take away his doodly doodly. I would do it with a guy's own. That's my favorite. You know what I'm talking about? It's the saddest one.

It's saddest one. You know what? It's what breaks your heart. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Doodly dood's they're all half-triple. Oh. Oh. Heart Did they do so all I have to

Seas was basically your mom there's a lot done We have psychologist We have to say college, just go to your pocket. Fuck man, I gotta, okay. Yikes, we gotta take away those doodly dudes. I had to give credit where it's due. These kids, they worked their absolute balls off. They took dance lessons, they took voice lessons, they drilled and practiced in hot, unair conditioned blimp hangers, because he had those in the Florida heat.

He really did. They worked seven days a week. They played every gig they could manage to get. These kids were not an organically formed band with a sound of their own or some great artistic reason to be, but they fucking worked. And the work combined with Proman salesmanship, it paid off. They became the backstreet boys and they would go on to sell $130 million of records. They went gold, platinum, and diamond in 45 different countries.

They were fucking huge. And they weren't alone because Proman realized even as he was doing it, that building one singing meat puppet cash machine was great. It was you have the assembly line all worked up and only makes sense to keep producing shit. So we followed the same principles in Lou Proman, sourced five new teenage boys out and nowhere, stuck them in his house and literally just created the product. Sorry, the band in sync.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Seriously. Nailed it. It's close. Sorry, the band in sync here, but I do have better in sync. Just pick it seriously. Nailed it. It's close. It's a very close time. In sync sold $70 million in records.

It was also internationally successful at creating screaming preteen fans by the millions. Okay. Tom, maybe Lou Perlman had a song in his heart. Did you think of that, Tom? No. Did the two boy bands, there are two bands with like five people today fight like fucking power rangers at some point? Did they have to choose who was there?

Yeah, actually there was a huge rivalry between them, which I have to rangers style rivalry going on. Yes, there was. I don't know. I'm kind of fascinated that many of you know this. I did research for the show. I'm kind of fascinated that many of you know this For the show I know what your fucking excuses are Team in sync by the way Of course all day. Yeah, Justin's on in some now if I asked

Now if I asked you how many band members there were in in sync or backstreet boys You would probably answer five and if you could name all of them. On Nick, howie, AJ Brian Kevin, Chris, JC, Joey Lansing, Justin. I would lose respect for you forever. Is, yeah. I mean, has. Well, in crazily, Heath, you are also wrong.

There were six members of InSync and Baxter. He doesn't, for every band that pro-man managed Baxter, he was also the sixth member, and he was the producer, and he was also the manager. And he was all of these roles, not just for InSync and the Baxter points, but also for every other band that he shit out of his vocals and choreo factor, including O-town LFO, take five, us five, and the old version he gave a world to, in no sense, which spelled wrong with an S.

I don't know if it like ever. Yeah, that's great to get a lot of weight. No, that's so very scary. It was sure it was it. Various. It was always the same structure. Five randos, plucked from relative obscurity, and then dump old Lou Perlman, the silent sixth member, manager, and producer of each of these bands.

Okay. I just want to point out that I had no idea how many members there were in either of those bands. I just, I don't want my name. Probably would have guessed five. I just, I don't want my name. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Probably wouldn't gas to buy. I'm sorry. So after a few years of crushing the charts and touring at a grueling, relentless pace,

some of the members of the band began to wonder if they were gonna get paid for any of this work. What? Yeah, remember, these were all just teenagers when Lou made them into these mega stars. And they didn't know shit about shit. It's all parents. All time,, the back street and sink were touring and selling out stadiums and CDs were just flying off

a shelves and untold hundreds of millions of dollars and revenue was being generated. These kids weren't getting paid. They got some shitty inconsequential per diem and it was like $25, by the way. And these, what the, what was nothing? It was nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. What the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the,. And there was nothing, it was nothing, nothing, nothing. There was nothing. Oh geez.

And they did have their somewhat lavish expenses paid, but they themselves did not get checks. They were not paid money. One night, Luke gathered all the members of Insync to dinner with their parents and everyone thought that maybe now was to be their time to get paid. So after a toast, Lou magnetimously handed out envelopes to each of the five singers and he beamed as they opened their envelopes to days upon their well-earned checks, these

guys have been working non-stop, no kidding, seven days a week for years. They were international mega stars. Their faces were on fucking lunch boxes. And the checks that Lou shared with his singing ATM machines. 10 grand a piece. Whoa. Jesus Christ. All right.

That's crazy. Justin and Lance were the heart of the band. How, maybe JC, but Joe, I was getting paid the same as Justin and Lance fucked that. They'll open their like meager envelopes. And the guy says, I told you, I told you, you should have taken your money in dollars, not in blimp any stocks.

But you want to blimp any stocks. You were in the studio. That's it, dude. That's what I bought it. It's open up, they open up the envelope and a little blimp just opens up and floats out. Crash just momentarily. The Backstreet Boys were the first to sue. Having been paid only $300,000 for all of their work.

Why is it despite $130 million in record sales alone? She's the big of the concerts and the merch, right? Eventually, every band that worked with Pearlman sued him in federal court for fraud and mismanagement. I accept us five, but no one knows who they are. So who cares? Every lawsuit was either one by the plaintiffs or settled. I love that even after that, us five was like,

yeah, we're fine. We're fine. Yeah,. Never really came together. I can't blame those for that. How do I beautiful golden boy? Oh, as an aside, there were rumors that Proman's interest in having a house full of teen boys living and playing together may have also had creepy sexual motivations Because fucking of course it did yeah, nobody who has spent 10 minutes around a teenage boy who has not themselves a Teenager would if they had any other option share their home with one let alone No matter how much money they made you the stench alone would drive a man to drink.

Lou had a habit of offering massages to the boys. And he was obsessed with their physics, often demanding that they show themselves off by removing their shirts so he could look at. A pro man also had cameras all over his weird house full of teenagers and he would show off to the boys the secret footage he had made of the innocent girls hitting in and out of their tanning beds naked.

Okay, see now I'm not rooting for him anymore. I've been here since 1995. So what's the gravy train on boy bands had run its course? Lou realized that he could still leverage the fame he had accumulated through his proximity to actual fame to further continue to defraud people and line his pockets. In 2002, Proman purchased an internet based talent agency, a phrase which should give you a shiver just hearing me read it, aiously dubbed options talent group, E-Model Studio 58, Transcontinental Talent, Will Helmina Talent Scouting, Web Style Network, Fashion Rock, and Talent Rock.

The scam was the same. Hopeful marks looking to break into modeling of some form would pay high fees to submit their photos and bios to one of these talent agencies. And the talent agency would then market the young hopefuls and find them glamorous, lucrative work in the being beautiful for money industry. Except they didn't do any of the second part. And weren't so much a talent broker as they were just a website you could upload pictures to for a fee.

Okay, just a quick amateur tip. If you're creating porn and getting paid less than zero dollars, something went wrong along the way. That's why my website only fan never took off. Thousands of complaints were filed. The New York State Consumer Protection Board issued an alert calling it the largest example of a photo mill scam they had ever discovered. The San Francisco Labor Commissioner declared them in violation of several California laws and many other state agencies began investigating. However, Luperomon livedlman lived in Florida, and

in Florida, his money had made powerful friends with then Florida Attorney General Charlie Christ, and despite thousands of complaints and no evidence at all that this was anything other than a scam, the investigation was closed and then the company declared bankruptcy in a preemptive move to avoid paying damages. Ford has to just start a boy band of creepy petal fraudsters who get away with pretty much anything they want. Right. It's called the Republican Party. See, so Proman's biggest scam wouldn't be found out until 2006. When investigators discover that Proman had been running the longest running Ponzi scheme in American history, what now?

The scam itself used forged FDIC, AIG, and Lloyds of London documents to convince investors that his program, the employee investment savings account, was both lucrative and very, very safe. His scheme promised, like all Ponzi schemes, unrealistic if not impossible returns on investments, but in reality, he had no mechanism to achieve those returns. Instead, the scammer lied on simply finding more investors,

more new money to pay returns to the pool of original investors who would act then as great advertisements for the success of the investment strategy. Not only that, but Proman used the story of his success as the creator and manager of the hip boy bands to get meetings and build confidence in his business acumen. This scheme had been running for 20 years when investigators discovered it, which means that it was running during the whole blimp debacle.

And while the boy band Bill King began and ended. Wow. To convince investors of the legitimacy of his enterprises, even when I love this story, this is so great. He went to the airport with a little model of an airplane on which he had put his transcontinental logo and then he held it up to the window and took a picture and then dropped it. So it looked like the little model airplane was really his company jet picking up. Who was that for? People were about to add them a check for $10 million for his ski and they were like, hold on.

Let me see a picture of your jet. Who was that fooling? All right, all right. Nothing I don't trust you here, Lou, but why does your private jet have a deceptive person, blonde and crazy? I just feel like, I wonder if he held it up there and made a sound like he was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom This scam. It's autocrats. It's a semi-global. So this scam netted him a billion dollars.

What? A billion dollars. Why not just get a fucking jet then? That's a great point. That is actually a good point. Yeah. 300 million of that billion was never recovered and that is terrible. But Hurlman himself was nearly lost as well.

Once he realized that the feds run to him, he became an international fugitive. Yeah, like he did. And during his time on the lamb, I love this. He bounced from Israel to Germany, Russia to Spain, Belarus, Panama, Brazil, back to Orlando, Florida, before he was finally captured at a tourist hotel in Indonesia by two FBI agents who happen to be having breakfast in the same hotel. They looked over and were like, wait a minute, is that who we're here to get? And that was who they were there to get.

He's on the list, guys. Why back to Orlando right there in that area? That's the crazy part. He's just like back to Orlando hiding in plain sight. Nope, stupid, stupid, wise, this thing. I have to go to the invasion now. Also, he's got a billion dollars and he chooses to live it up in

Juvenia, Nazi land, refrigerator, bad food, Russia again, mosquitoes, mosquitoes, open mosquitoes, and just cocaine. Nice. Man, it makes sense when you say it that way. Oh yeah, at the end of the class. The Lou Promo's returned to the United States to stand trial, which if I get lost. And while he was awaiting sentencing,

he actually had the gall to ask for permission for a phone and an internet connection so we could start working again to promote bands. Thankfully he was denied and we are spared any more of his horrible creations. Oh, if he had made a band out of the inmates, I might have been a member of the band. Oh, yeah. I'm Nate. It's Anne. A boss to be Nate.

Oh, what's the name of the band teeth? I know you got a plan. I know you made in clink. Yeah, I knew you had it. I knew you had it. Thank you. On May 21, 2008, inmates was better. Yeah. New kids on A block.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Prison. And then it's us five again. Yeah. It wasn't Kpop., it was Jenpop.

So good. So good. So good. On May 21, 2008, I'm out of puns. Go ahead. On May 21, 2008, Proman was sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiracy, money laundering, and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding. But remember that a lot of people, they lost everything in this scam.

$300 million was still missing and a lot of people had lost their entire life savings, so the judge actually made Proman an offer. For every million dollars of that $300 million he could produce to return to his victims, Proman's sentence would be reduced by one month. I'll save you the trouble and I'll do the math and tell you that means that if Roman had just produced all 300 million, he could have walked right out the door of free man. Now, Proman produced not one fucking sentence. Instead, Proman and his companies were dissolved in forced and bankruptcy and Lewis sent a prison. But Lewis had lived a lavish life and famously had many precious works of art scattered

throughout his sprawling Orlando estate, which could be auctioned off to repay those victimized by the Ponzi scheme. So a special team of art nerds were sent to Pearlman's home to recover, value, and sell his famous art collection. What they discovered was that the art, like Lou, was all fake. He had no priceless artwork on the walls of his home and his belongings were auctioned off by a traditional bankruptcy house. Lou did have assets, however, his estate was massive, any owned a train station called Church Street Station in downtown Orlando that was worth 34 million dollars. Though all of that was really just a drop in a bucket

against the total that he had stolen. Okay. Quart would like to know if any of the victims would be interested in being paid in rides on a chuchu. No. Okay. What if we just don't tell you this Rembrandt to speak? You know? Oh, okay.

Lou Pearlman went to prison in 2008 and two years later he had a stroke. Audio tapes of conversations with his former childhood friend, Alan Gross, seemed to show an abullion on apologetic man. A man has seemed absolutely oblivious to the damage that he had caused and who was still convinced that if he could just get out, he'd be able to make good and make it rich again. This was not to be. In 2016, Lou Perlman had a heart attack and died while in federal prison. Everything I've read about this story is tragic. I mean, from the jump, Lou just seemed like a lonely figure, the kind of guy who confused his success with love and

notoriety with respect. It seems such a tragedy that rather than find himself along with some love and validation, Lou Ruin not only his own life, but the lives of so many he defrauded chasing the elusive validation and love he so clearly craved. I'm reminded of all this as I reflect on the wise words of in sync when they said it doesn't matter about the car I drive for the ice around my neck all the matters is that you recognize that it's just about respect And if you had a summer as you learn in one sentence what would it be? Ah this story may sound crazy, but it ain't no lie, baby. Bye, bye, bye.

Okay. Okay. All just to set up that line. I'm gonna pay for all of these. I just just got that. That's it. Yeah. Are you ready for a course?

It's time. Worth it. I'm ready. Yeah. All right, Tom. Yes. What was the best pun on loop-promins death certificate after that one happened, Jail?

A, the guilt was tearing up his heart. I was just... B, something with dye-dye-dye circle back in, something better, and later, or C, I guess his prison sentence was larger than life. Oh, you go. Oh, it's C and Noah's laughing, he gets that joke. That is correct.

All right, Tom, if this podcast was a boy band, wait, it's not? What would it be called? A, the backache boys. Probably true. B, the backache boys. That's true. Probably true. Me, probably true. Yeah. Here's the bad one.

Wagon Chin's sink. Oh, I like it. Oh, that's good. That's very bad. It's okay. It's not bad. Thank you. It looped back around.

It did good. And see what I thought was the only good one. Three and a half degrees. That's it. That's good. It's probably the greatest half of one. I thought it might be a half of one. I thought it might be a half of one. Three and a half degrees. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha tough one here for your time. When Heath pretends that his love for boy band music is ironic, that's an example of what? A, a lie. B, that's D. Oh, it was a fucking his beer was a fucking lie I

That's it for that okay, no you're the winner this week. Oh, right. Well, the Cecil you're the essay is next. Oh I'm gonna do something and it's not I run it's not a boy brand. All right That's why it was be.A.F.A.L.I. Well, for Tom, Noah E.Line, he's I'm Cecil, thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then, I'll be an expert on something else. So, he now and then butt-blogged.

And if you'd like to help me keep this show going, you can make a prepsilination at patreon.com slash citation pod, or leave a supply star to you every weekend. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes. Be sure to check out, say, TationPod.com. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hey, you know what, you got there?

Ha-ha! It's an NFT I bought from Heath. Dude, it's a picture of James Woods. I mean, yeah, now. But someday, it's gonna be worth millions, Noah. Well, why? Because of the numbers, the numbers? Yeah. Mm-hmm. It's on the blockchain. So you actually can't copy it. How? How can I not, what? He said that because, okay, so even if that was true, what if I made a picture that was like exactly the same thing except for one pixel? Is that different enough?

I don't know that. And how was you supposed to resell it? Can you put it back on the market? It looks like it's just on your phone? What? Elon Musk said on Twitter. Okay.