Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 529 - Lou Pearlman: Boy Bands, Blimps, and a $300 Million Scam

Episode Date: October 19, 2026

Lou Pearlman helped launch two of the biggest boy bands of the 1990s, the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, while secretly building a massive empire of lies, exploitation, and financial fraud. This story is crazy. From his bizarre obsession with blimps to his outrageous spending, allegations of sexual misconduct, and a Ponzi scheme that literally stole hundreds of millions of dollars, discover how one of pop music’s most influential kingmakers became one of world's biggest con men.Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Did you know that two of the biggest bands of the 90s were created by an obese, grifting, blimp baron, mommy's boy from Queens, with a reputation for being a sexual predator? True story. What do the good year blimp, MTV's making the band, Art Garfunkel, Ponzi schemes, the backstreet boys, 90 shopping mall pay-to-play model scouting scams, and in-sync have in common? Sounds like a set up to a weird joke, but the answer is one man. A spoiled brat and bully magnet who grew up in a working class family in Queens and dreamed of becoming someone rich, famous, and powerful. A man whose love of a combination of aviation and music led him to almost unimaginable success. A man who even if you don't know his name, you absolutely know his work. A man who helped shape so much of the late 90s pop culture.

A man who built an empire of success. A top a house of mostly cards and smoke and mirrors. A man who stole millions and millions of dollars from friends, family, the bands he managed and strangers alike to prop up his failing empire and life of decadent luxury, a man who created one of the largest Ponzi schemes to ever exist. A guy who stole another nine figures through fraudulently obtained loans on top of the hundreds of millions he stole through his Ponzi schemes. Today we are talking about this man, the myth, the legend, the asshole, the grifter, the creep, the guy who at least got a little bit of what he had long coming to him

when he died in prison, Lewis J. Perlman. On this true crime with a touch of boy band and a dash of blimp edition of TimeSuck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to TimeSuck. You're listening to Time Suck. Well, happy Monday, you're welcome or welcome back. There we go. I bit the inside of my cheek a little bit ago, so my mouth. Oh, it's going to be musher than ever possibly.

But yeah, welcome or welcome. Welcome back to the cult of the curious. I'm Dan Cummins, the head suck fuck, the wizard of the weird, and you are listening to TimeSuck. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, praise be to good boy Bojangles, and glory be to Triple M. Who has been in the news recently? Michael, motherfucker McDonald, has recently met a long-lost son, as many of you have been for me, thank you. 59-year-old Michael Gosling, born when he and his mother, born when, excuse me, Michael McDonald, and the mother of the mother of, of Michael Gosling were both only 14 years old.

Wow. His son was a fan, which is pretty cool going back to the Doobie Brothers days, had even gone to several Triple M concerts. Michael, the son, said of his young parents, initially they thought that maybe they would just go ahead and get married and figure it out and count on and rely on their family to support them, but ultimately the parents had other ideas, and it was determined collectively that I would be placed up for adoption

through Catholic charities. Young Mike had a great childhood in Missouri, with his adoptive parents. Finally found out Triple M was his dad, thanks to 23 and me. The pair also share a love of music. Ghazin plays a bit of guitar, also sings. They've met, they've hugged, they're now in touch. And Triple M said after admitting, carrying a lot of guilt for decades,

for Yamo not being there. Sorry, I had to try that at least. To know that he was okay, and then he had a good life and a life, I certainly probably wouldn't have been able to afford him at the time in my life. was a great reward, Michael said. So love that. Hail to all the people who adopt kids and give them great lives. And also hail to the people who realized they weren't ready to raise kids and were strong

enough to try and give them a better home. And that is where the feel good shit ends now for a bit. But a lot of silliness coming up. Now, the theme of creepy losers who want to make music with underage boys and have the world see them is a big shot carries over from the past few weeks of Wayne Williams and the Atlanta Child Murders. except this creepy dude did make a lot of hit music, like huge hits, huge hits, did become a dude.

Everybody saw as a big shot. If you were alive and aware of American pop culture from the mid-90s to the early 2000s, there's no way you escape the cultural influence of Lou Pearlman. He was one of the people who did help shift mainstream music away from the shitty, soulless, corporate grunge rock being pumped out by derivative clones like Nirvana.

Ugh. To the gritty, the raw, real and innovative underground 90s pop music being made by true artists

like the Backstreet Boys. Fuck yeah. This shit has soul. You know what I'm saying? Right? Oh my God, we're back again. Brother, sisters, everybody's saying.

I'm being sarcastic. I hope you know I'm being sarcastic. very successful not my thing uh lou perlman really was largely responsible for a cultural shift away from the anti-corporate alt rock moody grunge to glossy high produce corporate friendly bubble gum pop uh he created and helped i just love thinking of giovanna as corporate uh fucking clones uh he created and helped bring the backstreet boys in sync to frame uh to fame excuse me as well as many other lesser known bands he became one of the most well-known and successful music managers of all time uh he was a larger than life figure who flaunted his wealth and Orlando, Florida, where he lived at the height of his power, Pearlman was an absolute icon, to some, as recognizable as Mickey Mouse. This dude clearly had a massive hole inside of him that no amount of money could ever fill. He loved for people to know he was wealthy and successful. He wore a quarter of a million dollar Rolex watch.

He rented out entire nightclubs for parties and invite only huge crowds. Look at how many friends I have, Mommy! Look how cool I am! I'm not just a lonely blimp boy from Queens anymore, Mommy. I'm cool. I'm really right cool. This proves it. Proman often discorded his biggest bands to gigs on his very own Gulfstream jet. He took his whole team on vacations to places like the Bahamas on his planes to quote journalist Tyler Gray, the author of a major source for this episode.

The hit charade, Lou Pearlman, boy bands, and the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. At the height of his success, Pearlman feasted on three-pound lobsters at his own signature steakhouse and rarely dine with less than a dozen people. He always picked up the check. He zipped around in his stretched limo Orrower Blue Rolls-Royce Phantom. Look at me now, Mommy! All the guys in Galis who thought I was a weird, unfuckable blimp dork back in Queens. They were wrong.

I have the cornflower blue Rolls-Royce Phantom and lobster dinner receipts to prove it. And anyone who doesn't think I'm cool now, a bye-bye-bye. Promo was so insanely desperate to be loved and admired that he insisted his boy band members call him Big Papa. Fuck yeah, bro. Oh, that's so cool.

I want all you guys start calling me suck papa. Big suck papa. Or maybe it should be Big Suck Daddy. Or Big Papa Suck Daddy. Or Big Daddy Papa Suck. They're also super cool sounding and not creepy or desperate at all. Underneath the successful Big Spender, Lou was a small insecure man,

a liar and a thief who would step on anybody's back, crush anybody's financial future to climb up another step on the greed ladder. More than the boy bans and success. he had, Proman will be remembered most in the end for being a big fucking Ponzi scheme builder, where he stole over $300 million. Holy shit, that's a lot of money, and that's just from the Ponzi scheme. Stole from people who trusted him. He also ripped off boy bands. You know, he ripped them off by tying him up in shady contracts, and he'll be known for being accusations of being a sexual

predator. Who saw that coming? A creepy middle-aged con man, desperate for affection who insisted that young men call him Big Papa? He might have also been a sexual predator. No way. We're going to tackle today's suck with a quick look into what a Ponzi scheme is. Then we're going to deep dive into Lou Pearlman with a big old time-suck timeline

that will start with his birth, continue on until his death. In between, we will learn a lot about who he was, what made him tick, and the crimes he was both accused and convicted of. And now, as a wise man once said, he-ha-ha-ha-ha. So what is a Ponzi scheme?

Modern Ponzi schemes, although I'm sure other people ran very similar grifts long, long before this. It can be traced back to the 1860s in Germany. Wasn't called Germany there at that time. And then the 1870s in the U.S. where two different unrelated women ran a very similar con. Back when many women were not allowed to have their own fully autonomous bank accounts. At least no women in the U.S. could do that.

Single women in what is now Germany could, but only if they were legally recognized as adults. There was a little legal process there and not marriage. If married, only their husband could control the family's money. You know, back in the good old days, back when women submitted rightfully to their patriarchs, back when even the weakest, most noodle-armed, limp-dicked, weak-chin, smooth-brained beta-cuck of a man could still have more rights than the smartest women and therefore undeservedly feel like they must be superior. Back when the world made sense, back when, to quote, the late, great Andrew Tate,

Bitches, especially young bitches, had to suck on these nuts before bitch-ass dudes trying to make Nazi feminists like him and shit created a bit of bullshit age of consent loss. That might not be a quote from Andrew Tate, by the way, and unfortunately, he is still alive. He's unfortunately not dead. A once successful actress, Adel Spitzler in Germany, and Sarah Howe, possibly a lifelong fraudster in the U.S.,

both decided that a great way to make a lot of money was to become their own type of bank. Sarah Howe targeted only women due to the law. in the U.S. while Adele took money from both men and women. Adele promised her investors an astonishing rate of return 10% a month. And if you let that compound over the course of a year, meaning you don't take your money out and you just let it keep growing, keep building, that would translate to just over, or just under 214% growth a year, meaning that if you started with $10,000, in just a year,

you would have $31,384, just a bit better than the historical annual rate of return of the S&P 500, which is about 10%, meaning if you started the year with 10,000, put it in the S&P, 500, you would have 11,000 at the year's end. Much better than a typical savings account right now, which gives you an interest rate of anywhere, and I'm simplifying these numbers a little bit for math nerds, but much better than a typical savings account right now, which gives you an interest rate of anywhere from a third, a two-third of a percent, which means that $10,000, we're in between $30 and $60 bucks over the course of a year. So do you want your 10,000 to make the going guaranteed rate of about

50 bucks or over $21,000? Now does it maybe feel like $21,000 might be a little too high, a little too good to be true? Uh, yes, Sarah Howell promised almost the same amount, 8% a month guaranteed, baby. And how the fuck were these women making so much money off of the money that people were giving them to invest that they could pay out such exorbitant, outrageous returns? Well, they weren't investing it at all. Spitzeder and how both took the money they received from new clients and used that to pay any previous investors who insisted on reaping the rewards of their investments and getting their money back out. And they just hoped, I guess, that in order to keep their house of cards from folding, they would always have enough new investors to have enough money to pay old investors.

Spitzeder called her operation Spitzchia, a private bank, and it was no small operation. when a spitzerdr whenever you know not fucking when spitz bank it's fucking crazy combination of german words i don't need to say uh with shut down approximately 32 thousand people lost a total of 38 million in bavarian gulden causing a wave of suicides very hard to adjust that amount for inflation so let's just say it was a lot enough to lead to a lot of people apparently the exact number never given in sources to end their lives and spitzerder served just three years in jay because Ponzi schemes not illegal in Germany.

When she got out, she tried that shit again, numerous more times, while also working as a folk singer randomly or just as a lady of high society who would swindle various wealthy benefactors into supporting her. Every person around her was just a potential mark, someone to use as much as they would let her use them, a true sociopath, like all serious grifters.

She was unsurprisingly said to be highly manipulative and very attractive, at least in her. youth and she would use that attractiveness to help con people, just a rotten human being, who lived longer than she deserved to, dying at 68. Sociopath Sarah Howe called her bullshit investment company, the ladies deposit company, and through word of mouth, was able to attract around half a million dollars equivalent to probably much more than inflation calculators, the guess of about $18 million now, in deposits from 1,200 women roughly living in the Boston area.

Now, Howe also sent to prison for three years. Not sure how many suicide she helped cause, how many lives she ruined, but just like Adele, that grifty bitch got right back at it once she got out. Then fled after taking about $50,000 for more people in the Boston area, fled before she had to go to prison, made it to Chicago, did it again, then fled again, also lived too long, and that cockroach didn't die until the age of 68. When she wasn't running a Ponzi scheme, she worked as, get ready for a big eye roll, a fortune teller. Mm, grifter's gungrift.

It is I, the great comdini, pretty good guesser. And if you pay me to have your fortune read and think I actually have some kind of mystical knowledge and insight, I will guess that you are a fool, and your money shall be parted from you. You easily. So there's that. While both of those crimes fit the modern definition of a Ponzi scheme, the con didn't yet have that name. That came later in the 1920s when Charles Ponzi, a guy from Italy carried out a very similar scheme in the U.S. involving international reply coupons, IRCs.

I've gone over to this and some other episodes, but worth going over again here briefly, by June of 1920, less than a year after starting this scheme, and only a few months after it really took off, people had already invested a total of about two and a half million in Ponzi's scheme, equivalent to over 40 million now. Why were they giving him so much money? Because he made an even bigger ROI promise than those two other soulless fucks I talked about. He promised a return of 50% profit in only 45 days, or 100% in 90. And how could he make that much?

Born in Italy, pulling that shit off in Boston again, Ponzi acted like he'd figured out how to exploit a lucrative financial international loophole. Postal-reli coupons allow a person in one country or did when they were around back then to pay for the postage of a reply to a correspondent in another country. IRCs were priced at the cost of postage in the country of purchase, but could be exchanged for stamps to cover the cost of postage in the country where they would be redeemed. If those values were different, there actually was some potential profit to be made. Inflation after World War I had greatly decreased the cost. cost of postage in Italy, expressed in U.S. dollars, so an IRC could be bought very cheaply in Italy, and then Maserati-Bugara spaghetti and Dona Banderas.

Exchanged for U.S. stamps of higher value, which could then be sold. Ponzi claimed that the net profit on these transactions after expenses and exchange rates was in excess of 400 percent, which it wasn't, but he told a good tale. He was a skilled conman because this was not his first rodeo. He had tried something similar in Montreal years earlier after making it to North America with only a few dollars in his pocket because he had lost his life savings gambling on the ship, faring him across the Atlantic. In Montreal, he had bankrupted a bank called Banco Zorozo and then fled to Mexico after doing some robbing Peter to pay Paul bullshit, where he would promise an unusually high rate of return on savings accounts and other nonsense and use new customers money to pay previous customers' returns before it all collapsed. so a Ponzi scheme. He also served two years in prison in Atlanta after that, but before he did this shit in Boston, for running an illegal immigrant smuggling scheme.

This recent immigrant was taking advantage of new immigrants, just a special kind of gross. Then after getting married and running his in-laws fruit company into the ground and fucking over their financial futures when it went bankrupt, he pulled his biggest grift yet in Boston. Within a month, he was taken in roughly a million dollars per day from all the the people who were going to double their money in 90 days guaranteed. Another example of, does this sound way too good to be true? Yeah, that's because it fucking is. The shit always is too good to be true.

Then this griff came crashing down by the end of the summer of 1920, and Ponzi left the bulk of his approximately 15,000 investors in the lurch. The investors lost about $20 million in 1920, over $321 million in 2025. He would only serve, didn't go very long, before he got caught, luckily. He don't, but he's fucked over a lot of people, and then would only serve, excuse me,

three and a half years of a five-year sentence in prison. Many of his victims, though, faced lifelong financial ruin, as they always do in these cases. After getting out, he would head down to Florida and immediately start running a new Ponzi scheme involving real estate this time, and then get caught again,

and then be found guilty again. After that, he'd try to flee the country before starting his sentence, then get caught, then serve seven years in prison. After getting out that time, he would be deported back to Italy, where he would run numerous more schemes than flee to Brazil

where fortunately he would fucking die, broke, partially paralyzed, and blind in one eye at the age of 66. Couldn't happen to a better guy. His big grift in Boston became so well known that this type of fraud officially became named a Ponzi scheme. And now before our timeline,

after giving examples of some Ponzi schemers, let me spend just another minute or so describing what a Ponzi scheme is exactly. I mean, I've basically already done that, but it's nice to understand concretely what this is. So we truly understand just how big of a piece of shit you have to be to do this to other people. Because it's not like the people who run Ponzi schemes

are just better at investing than the rest of us. They're not good at investing. They don't invest it all in most cases. They just lie and steal and ruin people. I truly wish these people were punished so much more harshly than they often are. This level of fraud is tantamount to murder to me, in many cases, serial murder,

because they absolutely knowingly destroy people and families all to enrich themselves. Families who, in many cases, never recover. It's so morally disgusting. It takes so much premeditation, so much manipulation, looking so many people in the eyes, shaking their hand, assuring them that they're worries about their money or unfounded and then fucking annihilating them. I mean, imagine taking somebody's life savings away. Imagine talking someone into giving you their life savings,

knowing they'll never get it back. It's just stealing from them. You know, it's like figuring out somebody's passwords, robbing all the money out of their bank accounts, but then also burning their fucking house down and leaving them with nothing. Because the end result is often the same. These people, you know, they're ruined,

they have to, their houses get repossessed, all sorts of bad stuff. So these grifters are ruthless predators who truly have more in common with the average serial killer conscience-wise than they do with a good, loving, caring, trying to get through the world in an honest and non-hurtful way meat sack.

The U.S. government defines upon, Ponzi scheme is, quote, an investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often promise to invest your money and generate high returns with little or no risk. But in many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters do not invest the money. Instead, they use it to pay those who invested earlier and may keep some for themselves, or may keep a lot for themselves. With little or no legitimate earnings, Ponzi schemes require a constant flow of new money to survive when it becomes hard to recruit new investors or win large numbers of existing investors cash out,

these schemes tend to collapse. Now that we have a solid understanding of what a Ponzi scheme is, we'll dive into how the blimp barren, creepy-ass big papa, Lou, Secret Fingers, Pearlman, built his. Right after today's first to two mid-show sponsor breaks.

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Lewis J. Pearlman was born on June 19, 1954, just a couple months after my dad. Huh, interesting. Lou's parents were Herman High Pearlman and Irene Reney Perlman, a Jewish couple who lived at Mitchell Gardens and Flushing Queens. Mitchell Gardens, a community inside a neighborhood, inside a borough of New York City. Flushing was established as a settlement of New Netherland way back on October 10th, 1645 on the eastern bank of Flushing Creek. In recent decades, Flushing has become one of the largest Chinese,

or home to one of the largest Chinese populations in America, where people like a recent suck subject, Anthony Bourdain, would visit for authentic cuisine. Mitchell Gardens, a post-World War II community made up of a cluster of 19-brick-6-story apartment buildings and now primarily Chinese-American. But when Big Papa Blimp grew up there, primarily Jewish, the Mitchell Garden apartments were solidly middle class, but often felt a little nicer than that.

Each had a furnace lobby, two elevators, community rooms, laundries, carriage and storage rooms. There was also an incinerator on each floor. The Prolmans could afford a small apartment because, quote, under the terms of the FHA insured financing, which provided 40-year insured mortgages, apartments, and stock in the cooperative were being offered to qualified subscribers for total cash investments, starting at $490

for three and one-half rooms. And that's from a quote from the New York Times. These are total rooms, not bedrooms, by the way. They had a kitchen slash living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The Pro Men's lived in apartment 3F, a small third floor unit. Their building was built in 1952. The windows of 3F looked out on the old flushing airport. Blint Boy's mom, Rini Nevler, born in January of 1913, daughter of a Russian immigrant brushmaker, grew up in New York.

1940, she married High Promen. A man four years her senior, High was the owner of pleasant laundry and dry cleaning, a small business that had been started by his father. The Proma's desperately wanted kids, but suffered a series of miscarriages in the early years of their marriage. Rini would be 39 years old when she finally gave birth to her only living. living child Lou and it just hit me that, yeah, it's just like the last few weeks with Wayne Williams, you know, his parents tried for years, couldn't have a kid, finally have one, spoiled his shit out of that kid, kid turns out to be rotten. Same thing here, same thing here. Hi was a stereotypical 1950s husband who worked long hours to provide for his family while he left

childbearing or rearing, excuse me, almost entirely up to his wife, by all accounts. This was a setup that Rini was very happy with. She doted on Lou and he quickly. became what sources described as, quote, a fat and spoiled little boy. Harsh description, but accurate. Rini and High even gave Blimp Boy the only bedroom in their apartment, while they would sleep on a fold-out Castro couch in the living room. Get the fuck out of here.

The parents are on the couch, and the one kid gets the one room? Uh-uh. Nah, that's backwards. This arrangement would continue until Lou was in his 30s. Not kidding. Rini once had ambitions to become a teacher, but she would never attend college.

She did, however, find a way to work in education in order to stay close to and further spoiled baby boy. Once Lou was enrolled in grade school, Rini volunteered as a milk lady and as a teacher's aide. So she could be with him at lunch and in the classroom, always with baby boy. Lou is, by most accounts, a fucking dork. Weird little kid, painfully shy.

Other kids in his neighborhood mostly called him Fat Louis, because he was pretty big. Probably not a nickname he loved. He looked like a queen's version of Spanky from the Little Rascals. all he was missing was the freckles and friends he was the only kid in the building rocking a spare tire of a belly apparently he drew a lot of attention to that belly

by constantly wearing his favorite outfit combo of high-waisted pants and then he would tuck his t-shirts very tightly into those high-wasted pants it's a tough look for anybody to pull off somebody who has often had extra weight in their belly area that's not what you want to do

now loose fitting you want to go loose-fitting dark-colored shirts distract, distract, distract from that area. Don't advertise it. Young Lou had just one friend, Alan Gross, a kid who he would financially fuck over many years later, like he did everybody else. Alan was four years older than Lou,

only knew him because he lived in the same building. Alan lived right above Lou, the floor directly above him. The two met when Gross basically babysat him while their moms hung out and chatted. Alan eventually decided to take the kid called Fat Louis under his wing and he helped teach him some social skills and how to open up to other people. Lou, not always the best student.

He continued to be super fucking weird and awkward, even with Alan. Like, in attempts to try and seem cool and impress Alan, Lou would make up these elaborate stories about supposed adventures, claiming wild shit like he knew how to pilot a plane, that he had a variety of successful business ventures.

You know, he's a very little kid saying this. Alan said in a later interview about the young Lou, he would tell tall tales and stuff. He was a weird guy. Yeah, pathological liars are so weird. Entertaining in small doses, when they're not a close relative or friend,

super annoying otherwise. Love that he was trying to tell his upstairs neighbor and former babies there that he did all kinds of outrage of shit. When Alan could just be like, dude, what are you talking about? Our moms are friends. I know you've lived in this building

literally your whole life. You haven't done shit. Come on, dude. I'm your only friend. I'm literally your only friend. And your mom doesn't let you leave the building, ever, except for school without me.

So when were you doing any of this stuff? Lou's favorite stories about his adventures usually involved his relationship with folk singer Art Garfunkel as in Simon and Garfunkel you know as in here's to you Mrs. Robinson Art Garfunkel And here's to you

Mrs. Robinson Jesus loves you more than you will know while the adventures he was talking about weren't true he did know Garfunkel high sister Rose Perlman had married a man named

Jack Garfunkel. The couple had three kids, Jules, Jerome, and Arthur. Arthur, who went by Art, was 13 years older than Lou, big into music from a young age, started performing the same year that Lou was born. By the time, Lou was old enough to have memories. Cousin Art already met and was performing with a friend named Paul Simon. Art became Lou's role model. Lou saw his cousin's success, who he wasn't actually close with at all, and he wanted the fame and riches that being a star brought. And I can totally see a little kid thinking slash wanting all of that. As awkward and shy and just weird as he was, Lou was also a hustler from a young age. On July of 62, 9-year-old Lou knew that he wanted a lot of money and he was confident he was going to get it. That summer,

New York was going through a heat wave. So Lou decided the best way to get money was to open up a lemonade stand. Solid choice. Instead of going the usual route of setting up right out in front of the building where he lived, Lou opened his stand near a busy bus stop, little ways down the road on Union Street. Even though he was only nine, he already knew that the Q-14 stop was often jammed up with con Edison workers, other commuters on their way home after a long day. In the first week, Lou opened. He was charged a nickel a cup with all of his material costs considered. He's making about two cents a cup. After a few weeks of sales, the heat wave continued, and young Lou now had some regular customers, and he raised his price to seven cents a cup, doubled his profit when he

continued to sell out of whatever he brought with him. Right? Maybe he did have a really good head for business as a kit. It's 2002 entrepreneurial handbook titled Bands, Brands and Billions, My Top Ten Rules for Making Any Business Go Platinum, Lou explained that raising the price to seven cents, a cup, quote, worked out really well because most people gave me a dime, told me to keep the change. It helped that I didn't keep any pennies around, so I could make change anyway. I operated my curbside lemonade stand for an entire summer and cleared about $20 a month. $20 in 1962, worth somewhere between 220 and $2.50 to $2.50. today, 220 and 250.

That change part got my attention. I would have felt really guilty to that as a kid, raising it to seven cents knowing they would give me a dime, even though I didn't have change. But also, he did have change. Right, at some point, right, he'd have change in all likelihood after a few sales, right, sells a couple cups of lemonade to people

who aren't paying dimes and actually give him some pennies, and now he has the pennies for the next person who does pay with a dime. So was he already grifting a bit running that stand? Probably, if he even did that. He also had a problem stealing all the people, people's stories as we'll see here soon. By the fifth grade, Lou was already hooked on money-making ventures at just 10 years old. Lou said that one of his neighbors, a 15-year-old named David Liebenstein,

offered to sell Lou his paper route for 500 bucks. The route involved dropping off papers to Mitchell Gardens' 120 customers or so across this many buildings. Lou had been filling in for David on and off that year, and when he was working, he would add a personal touch. He said he would write down his customers' delivery preferences on index cards. Just write down notes like, ring the doorbell, don't ring the doorbell, knock quietly, knock loudly, slide the paper under the door, etc. Lou would later say that he learned these sales skills from his dad.

Lou said his quote, strongest memories of quality time with his dad involve him being carted all over Long Island in his father's Dodge and later Plymouth Station wagons delivering laundered shirts and slacks. I would teach Lou about customer service remembering each patron's preferences when it came to starch and hangers and folding.

There were notes for each of them, Lou got the impression it was High's personal touch that made the business hum. Back to the paper route, Lou told David he didn't have the money, but he had a proposition. If David and a few of his friends all sold Lou all of their routes, he could pay them back within 30 days. And if Lou failed to pay, the boys could repossess him with interest. So just 10 years old, Lou was already upside down with his first massive business loan. The boys agreed, and now Lou had more paper routes and he could handle. So he recruited a kid army of other young neighborhood boys to be his subcontractors and deliver the pay.

for a small fraction of the profit. Still, even with his underlings, Lou only had half of the agreed upon money at the end of 30 days. So Lou bargained for more time, offering an extra $50 to $100 per route for another month's worth of time by the end of the summer

actually did pay everybody back and made a good chunk of change for himself in the process. Maybe. This highly detailed story of his paper route hustle was something Lou loved to share, but when David Liebenstein was later asked about it, he laughed and then said,

yeah, he may have helped me. me out in a snowstorm or, you know, when I was sick or something, but I have no recollection of selling him that route. So was that an early hustle or just one of his lies? He would do a lot of his boat, a lot of both over his life. A lot of lies, a lot of hustle, you know, so it's hard to tell. Lou really did spend a lot of time doing stuff with his dad, didn't make that up. High Pearlman had been a World War II tail gunner who held a lifelong love of planes and flying and on days when High would bring Lou with him to work. They would often end the day by stopping by a gas station to pick up some U-hoo's, adorable,

and then head over to the small flushing airport. Highwood park a station wagon just outside of the fence near the runway, and the two of them would just sit and watch the planes take off and land for hours. These moments gave Lou his love of air travel. Backing up a bit, the first of two major core experiences, that would really change Lou Pearlman's life happened on April 22nd, 1964. He's only seven at this time. President Lyndon Big Jumbo Johnson,

Jumbo Bean the nickname that he gave his own dick, if you recall from that very early time-sick episode, opened the New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, Corona Park, to six miles from Mitchell Garden. The World's Fair theme was peace through understanding, and the fair ran for two six-month seasons, from April 22nd to October 18th, 1964, and then from April 21st to October 17th, 1965. Brought more than 51.6 million people to Flushing Queens. The 80 nations that came together for the fair brought some amazing things, video conferencing, the Ford Mustang, the Disney audio animatronics, whose success contributed to the construction of the Epcot Center, Belgian waffles, all first introduced to the world of the

fair, but none of that mattered to Lou Probin. All he cared about were two of the fucking Goodyear blimps floating around that fair, and better yet, they were docked at the flushing airport right across the street from the Perlman apartment. From 1964 on, Louis Blimp Boy was a certified, quote, helium head. For some reason, I don't feel like that. I probably helped him get a ton of new friends. Lou and Alan Gross, the older kid upstairs, both became obsessed with blimps.

And that helps me understand why Alan was spending so much time with a kid four years younger than him. I doubt that blimp dork. I had a lot of friends either. Alan got a hold of a business band radio from a friend who had a dad who worked in electronics, and Alan and Lou found a way to use the radio to listen to the blimp pilots,

communicating with the ground crew. Oh, I bet, oh man, I bet they heard so much exciting blimp talk. Number two, good year. This is ground control for forming a routine hourly check-in. Copy that, ground control. This is Captain Pendleton from number two speaking. We are still gently floating around. Still, we're still floating up above the city, just above the buildings.

Yeah. Yeah, we're going to keep floating around pretty much the same spot. more or less, till we gently float down to the ground in a few hours. Copy that good year. Sounds good to me. Just float on as you see fit. Just keep on floating, I guess. Eventually, the two worked up the courage to go over to the airport and see the blimps up close. Oh, what a day. They made it to the hangar in the days before TSA, where Lou begged to go on a ride in the blimp. The crew told Lou that only civilians who got the only civilians who got to write the blimp were those who were members of the press. So the very next day, Lou showed up,

back at the hangar with a story about the blimp that he'd written for the school paper in hand. A good year PR person got such a kick out of his moxie, he decided to get Lou some press credentials. Adorable, if true. Lou scored his very first blimp ride, and he chose to bring his mom Rini as his guest. Lou would later say that this first ride, quote, went way beyond mere fun for me. It was like being aboard a giant cruise ship in the sky, except not really giant because it's just a little tiny part.

At the bottom, you get to be in. From then on, Lou was a perpetual fixture at the hangar, and then he turned it into his first official job. He was the all-around Aaron Boy and cleaned up, washed the trucks, and on days he was super lucky. You got to catch the ropes, you know, hold on to the ropes. Help pull the blimp into the building or down for a landing. All for the big salary of $1.65.

an hour because he wasn't do that for the money he was doing it for love of the game love of the blimp and he would sometimes get blimp rights uh lew would tell the story of how he fell in love with blimps many many times over the years even writing it down in his big book of brands bands and billions but there is one problem with this story alan gross will claim years later that it's his story not lose and he has the receipts to prove it alan said he was the kid who first hung around the airport it was his mom who pushed him to ask one of the good year guys for a press kit alan does still still have that official press kit with his name on it. Alan used that kit to write a story for an October

1964 edition of the weekly paper, The North Shore News. Alan still has the clipping from that paper. It was that story that got Alan and his parents a ride in the Goodyear Blimp. Of course, it's Lou's word against Allen's here, but considering who Lou becomes and Alan's proof, I'm going to believe Alan. So Lou just fucking line his ass off by a lot of shit in his childhood. it. June of 1967, the kid called Fat Louis became a man. Kind of but not really. He turned 13.

Lou had his bar mitzvah at a popular Queens party venue called Leonard's. There was a traditional service and your average party for an awkward teen boy. There were snacks, cocktails, and one very special guest, his cousin Art. Art Garfunkel was truly a star, huge fucking star by the time of Luz Bar Mitzvah. Sound of silence had been the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 just the year before, 1966. That song stayed on the chart for 14 weeks. About six months after his party, the classic film The Graduate would come out, and the soundtrack

for the Graduate includes five songs from Simon and Garfunkel, including Mrs. Robinson. Lou followed art around like a puppy. The entire party made sure everybody knew that they were related. I can definitely picture it. Hello, Mrs. Hervitz. Have you met my first

cousin, hit singer, songwriter, Bonafide Star, Art Garfunkel. Oh, hi, Mr. Golfman. Let me introduce you to my family member, close personal friend art, as in Garfunkel,

as in Simon and Garfunkel. You might have, you know, seen one of his songs recently at the tip-top of the Billboard hit song charts. After the party, Lou started to blossom and gain some self-confidence. He and Alan started taking the bus into the city and they would wear sports coats with clip-on ties,

and they'd sneak into NBC studios just to watch something live that would end up on TV. TV soon after. Or did they? Is this story real? That same summer, the second experience that would change Lou's life forever happened. He would attend his first concert.

I believe this. I buy this one. It was his cousin arts concert. Simon Agarfonco played the Forest Hills tennis stadium on August 17th, 1967, right in Queens. I actually didn't realize Forest Hills was in Queens until this episode. I think I'm only driven through Queens, maybe one time. Paul Simon was actually a graduate of Forest Hills High,

and this would be the two's first performance there. Simon and Garfunkel played some of their greatest hits at night. They played the 59th Street Bridge song, Feeling Groovy. I fucking love that. I'm a rock, Homeward Bound, the sound of silence. But none of that is what changed Lou. It was the opening band that blew his fucking mind.

Blew a lot of people's minds back then, the doors. Arms are changes, eyes and line. Break on through to the other side. Break on through to the other side. Break on new. Oh! Oh, yeah! Most agree, it was an odd match, right?

Simon de Garfunkel in the doors. The performance did not go very well that night for Jim Morrison. The crowd was there for Simon and Garfunkel. They were at best just ambivalent to the much harder rock sounds of the doors. Just 48 minutes after taking the stage, the often volatile Jim Morrison slammed his mic down and stormed off. But I didn't bother Lou. He probably loved it. Thought it was fucking cool.

Seeing Jim Morrison made him want to be a rock star. Lou begged his parents until they agreed to buy him a $250 guild accrued. to guitar and sign him up for lessons at the Wabash and Babbage Music Store in downtown flushing, the cost of $3.50 per lesson, which is about $40 less than today. By middle school, young Lou had fully gotten

over his shyness. Still very overweight. He would always be overweight for the entirety of his life, like very overweight. But he wasn't getting teased for it like he used to be, at least according to him. He now loved attention, really wanted the admiration of others around him. He quickly formed a band with some of his junior high classmates at

JHS-185, Edward bleaker. They called themselves the starlighters. And Lou played rhythm guitar. Band played a few talent shows and school functions. Nothing much. But they played. Group was in a constant state of flux, like a lot of bands of built-up of kids that age are. A lot of new members, new instruments coming in and out. Then in 1970, when Lou was either 15 or 16, they rebranded themselves as Flyer. And they did get some paid gigs at local nightclubs. There are old Flyers out there about Flyer. Flyer opened for touring headliners, cool in the gang, Gloria Gain Barry White and Donna Summer. Lou would eventually stopped playing to the band to become their manager. He claimed he was drawn more to the business side than performing. Of course, right? Best way to hustle the band members for their money. Then as Lou was getting a flyer going to 1971, Simon and Garfunkel parted ways.

So who has the biggest band in the family now, Arthur? While still in high school, Lou joined the AV Club, audio visual. He would spend as much of his free periods, wheel and TVs and projectors around to various classrooms as he could use these opportunities to chat up all of his peers, quickly made casual friends across, you know, various cliques, also made his second long-time friend in the AV club, future employee Ray Seiden. Lou spent a lot of time spearhead and a lot of weekend road trips with his buddies now to Florida and Ray and with Ray, you know, and other buddies around this time.

Lou and all of his buddies, they would load up in a car or two cars split the 16 to 20-hour drive time down south, driving straight through the night so they could soak up a little bit of some before they had to drive back. and he fell in love with his future sunny home. No matter of the final destination, Lou always made a point to stop by one of his favorite haunts. One of the franchises of this chain of fast food restaurants called Chicken Unlimited.

Chicken Unlimited is pretty much what it sounds like. They offered all you could eat chicken, all you could eat fried chicken, and the big guy would later brag about how much fried chicken he could eat one city. Dude loved excess. More wealth, more chicken, more blimps, whatever it was. He wanted more.

In about an hour, he would knock down 15 pieces of chicken along with big heaping sides of coleslaw and several helpings of mashed potatoes smothered in gravy. Throughout all high school, Lou also remained enthralled with blimps and planes, right? Even though he likely lied about his first blimp trip

near graduation, he even got an official part-time job with Goodyear at the Teeterboro private airport, allowing him to spend free time around planes, blimps, and helicopters. Teterboro and aviation nerds wet dream. Both Charles Lindberg and Amelia Earhart spent time in Teterboro and 1972 was home to the newly opened Aviation Hall of Fame in New Jersey.

Even better for Lou Pearlman, Teterboro, just 12 miles away from Manhattan. It is and was the biggest hub for private jets near New York City. The famous Bob grew in 1973 photo of Led Zeppelin, stand in front of a Boeing 720 private jet, the starship, taking at Teterboro. Unfortunately years later, Teterboro would come to fame for being the airport that Jeffrey Epstein used as the major hub in his sex trafficking ring, also where he was arrested for the final time,

before he was murdered, to keep him from confessing about all the politicians, academics, business leaders, and others who were in a lot of contact with him and took a lot of trips to his island towards the end, many of whom probably almost certainly fuck kids. I mean, before he committed suicide, of course.

After graduating high school, Lou enrolled at Queens College in the fall of 1972 when he was 18. He still lived at home. Parents were still sleeping in the fucking living room. And he commuted to campus. Lou enrolled in the fall of the fall of 172. the account courses and was determined to go or like you know courses to be an accountant and was

determined to go into business for himself. According to Hitcherade author Tyler Gray, Lou quote, dedicated his spare time to scouring for business ideas. He cherry picked shortcuts and tax loopholes from his business and accounting class lessons and worked them into his entrepreneurial exploits whenever possible. I'm sure he did. In one of his senior year classes, Lou was given an assignment to think of a business idea, something that did not currently exist. From there, he had to write up a business plan and a marketing plan. He was inspired by something he noticed during his part-time job at Teterboro Airport. And bands, brands, and billions.

Lou explained this in his own words. He said, I got to peek into the lifestyles of the rich and famous as a teenager when I was working at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. Teterboro serves as a major commuting point for corporate jets and private planes used by top executives, movie and television stars, and professional athletes. From the first few days I worked there, it struck me as odd that the rich and famous would come jetting into Teterboro and their sleek, high-speed aircraft, jump into their limousines,

and then hit the wall as they join the rest of the world in the traffic gridlock that perpetually surrounds Manhattan. I knew that there were five or six helicopter landing pads scattered around the city, so it occurred to me that people wealthy enough to have their own planes and jets could probably afford to pay for a helicopter ride to avoid all that traffic. Time is money, especially when you are making millions and millions a year, right? I asked the guys around the airport if there was any sort of helicopter taxi operating in the area. They said there was a small operation island helicopter on Long Island that did a little commuter trade, but mostly focused on flying tourists on sightseeing excursions.

Some felt that it wasn't financially feasible to run a major helicopter taxi service because there would be so much downtime for the choppers and pilots between rush hours. I thought there was probably something you could do with a helicopter and pilot to generate revenue during off-peak hours. Lou wrote up a business and marketing plan for his class focused on a commuter helicopter service that would ferry busy Manhattanites to their Wall Street offices and celebrities around to wherever they needed to go.

Just before Lou's graduation, on 1976, one of his professors, David Deutsch, called him into his office and Deutsch told Lou that his business plan for the helicopter service was fucking solid, that he should try and do something with it. And Lou took that advice to heart. His first plan of action was to ask his cousin,

Art Garfunkel, of Simon and Garfunkel, if you've heard of them, previously for a loan for the starter money to buy a helicopter. Art told Lou that his dad, Lou's Uncle Jack, was actually the moneyman, and that he'd need to ask him. Lou brought a complete business plan to Uncle Jack. Uncle Jack trusted his nephew, and he believed in the idea he wanted to see proof of concept, right? Smart guy.

And he told Lou, I'll gladly help you buy your second helicopter. Lou was not deterred. He made a pivot, started hitting up banks all around Queens and Manhattan to secure a loan to start his business and got turned down again and again. He had no proven track record, nothing to offer his collateral. Some said they'd only give that kind of loan to businesses that were already in operation while most just politely listened for a few minutes before they said no and then showed Lou the door. But he didn't give up. One day he caught an ad on TV for the E.F. Hutton, financial services company. E. F. Hutton, primarily an investment firm.

But the particular ad that Lou saw said that E.F. Hutton also had a venture capital division that financed business startups. Soon after that, Lou dropped into the first E.F. Hutton office he could find. He later wrote about this encounter and bans brands and billions. who fucking knows exactly how true it is, but he did get into the helicopter business, so maybe it's not bullshit. He wrote the first guy I talked to cut me off short,

after I'd laid out only the basics of my idea. We aren't in the business of buying helicopters, he said. I hadn't been with him for more than five minutes, and we were already doing the quick step toward the door. As he escorted me through the reception area, he asked me something about the cost of helicopters, just out of curiosity, he said.

As I replied to his question, another guy in his suit stopped us, said, did I hear you mention something about helicopters? Figuring I had nothing to lose, I made my pitch to him there in the hallway. He could have been a well-dressed janitor, for all I knew, but he seemed much more willing to listen than anybody else I'd run into in the previous month. Turned out that guy was no janitor. He finally introduced himself as Jim Smith, a senior vice president at E.F. Hutton.

He said he was fed up with commuting by car every day from his home on Long Island. He told me, in fact, I was just talking this morning with my neighbors who carpool with me. We were saying, we ought to get a helicopter, but none of us have any idea of how to fly it or how to make it financially feasible. They couldn't justify the cost of buying a helicopter for just 30 minutes of commuting each day. I told him that I could make it cost effective. I promised that if he and his friends helped me buy my first helicopter, I would get them to work faster and I would make their investment a lucrative one.

He was intrigued. Let's go to my office, he said. Well, commuter, Helicopter Service Incorporated launched that same year. And it was backed by the Wall Street group that actually bought the choppers and leased them to loo. So he did it. I did it fresh out of college and only 22 years old. had his first real business. He ran commuter helicopters for a few years before merging it with island helicopters, which would become the largest tourist helicopter service in New York City and remained so for about 20 years until 1997.

He was foolish shit about a lot of things, but also very smart and a true high achiever, which I think makes what he did later worse. He didn't actually need the money from his future Ponzi schemes. He didn't need to griff people. He got rich legitimately, made good money, but still ruined a bunch of lives, stole hundreds of millions of dollars, all so he could just just, you know, live a more lavish lifestyle. To feed that monster, agree, the monster of more, more, more. Lou spent these early years making connections with others in the industry and slowly leasing planes in addition to the helicopters. He leased a Piper-Az-Tek twin-propped plane flew runs from the Moorestown Airport, New Jersey, to Newark,

JFK to LaGuardia or in the LaGuardia airports. They were still shuttling business travelers, but it was cheaper to maintain leased planes instead of helicopters. An early connection lude made this time doing all that was with a guy named Theodore Wulinkemper super famous rock star years earlier I actually love a lot of

Vuelen Kemper's early shit when it was a little more experimental but his later stuff, you know, more produced, very solid first three times the Rolling Stones toured the U.S., they opened for Wulen Kemper and he showed up in a lot of collaborations with his next band that he has sometimes referred to as the sixth beetle

fucking Theodore Wulenkenter, so I'm jealous of this. Is anyone actually still considering Theodore Wollenkeper as possibly being a famous rock star that they've never heard of right now? If you are, I want you to knock it off.

Stop being ridiculous. No one gets famous with the last name of Wolling Kemper. No, he was not a rock star and there were only four Beatles. He was a German industrialist, an airship manufacturer, head of the then 24-year-old aviation company West Deutsche Luftwerbung.

aka the much easier to say acronym of WDL. Let's go with that. Wulenk camper had enlisted in Nazi Germany's Air Force, the Luftwaffe, in 1943, the age of 17, to train as a fighter pilot. So that's not cool. I tried to enlist when he was young. Maybe he really wanted to make sure the Allies didn't stop the Holocaust.

Or maybe he really wanted to fly. Maybe both. I don't know. He never saw combat by the time he finished training. The war was over. Wollen Kemper then headed to England and Switzerland after the war to continue to train as a pilot. And after the restrictions on Germany,

were lifted in 1955, one of the first Germans to be granted a pilot's license by the Allies. With this new license, he built WDL up from nothing, a truly talented pilot and businessman. Wollingkamper started with work flights, holiday flights, sightseeing flights, trained around 300 pilots, including Zabina Truba, who later would become one of the first women to fly large jet airliners. Wolling Kemper got into aerial advertising, first with planes, then with blimps. Lou would first become aware of Ooling Kemper while working for Goodyn. He was known in aviation circles for according to hit charade author Tyler Gray, quote, his majestic fleet of airships, precision blimp building,

and being a sort of timeless titan who would literally bang on the table if the eyes of the person he was talking to veered from his own. He always traveled with an entourage, usually a couple of much younger, attractive women, and his ground crews drove Mercedes, docking trucks, and were matching jumpsuits. Matching jumpsuits, Mercedes, and blimps! Oh man, that dude gave Lou the biggest blimp boner of his life. Lou was immediately drawn to Wollehn Kemper's style and success. When Lou learned that Wulen Kemper was attempting to launch his own airline

with flights out of New York, he was determined to get a meeting with him. Vulen Kemper's travels to New York aligned with his 50th birthday. So Lou mailed him a two-foot-tall glitter and construction paper birthday card offered the services of island helicopters while he was in town in exchange for a meeting. A few days later, a telex message arrived from Germany. agreeing to this. So the glitter worked. What did you get the man who has everything?

A helicopter ride and a big-ass glitter card. Sometime in late 1975 or early 1976, the now 24-year-old blimp boy has his first meeting with the 50-year-old suave German titan of blimps. And when the meeting began, there would be no handshake, there would be no warm greeting. Wolling camper communicated German style

through eye contact and subtle facial expressions alone. And he communicated that he wanted Blimp Boy to take off all of the, his clothes in front of him and his entourage of stoic young German men and women all wearing matching tracksuits, then turn around, then bend over a conference room table, placing his hands out from front of him. Blumen Kemper then pulled down his own tractsuit pants, just enough to bring out his broadwurst, and he raw-dog Lou Pearlman for approximately five minutes until he finished, never making a sound. None of his entourage made a sound either. Blimp boy didn't speak,

but he did grunt, and he made some heavy breathing sounds. And he groaned with pleasure a few times, which almost cost him the deal. Sorry, I don't know where that image you came from. I don't know why it popped up in my head so easily. You might assume that Lou would have picked a swanky restaurant or hotel for this meeting, but you would be wrong. Lou decided the best course of action would be to bring the former Nazi pilots

and business tycoon to his Jewish parents, small apartment in Mitchell Garden. Risky! Voolenkampur, not alone either. He had two guests along for dinner, both beautiful women. Barbara and Inga. Is there a more northern European name than Inga? Mamma Rina, or Rini, excuse me, prepared a large traditional Jewish feast, a potted meatballs, stuffed cabbage, and the star of the show, her rump roast. Sounds fucking delicious.

Interesting choice for a dinner venue. Remember, Papa High, a veteran, specifically a former U.S. World War II tail gunner, who flew many missions over Nazi Germany. During the war, he grilled Vulin Kemper about his time with the Nazis. It's just kind of a sort of, you know, what the fuck were you thinking? Coming to my house? You fucking Nazi piece of shit? Maybe something a little bit like that. Voolen camper explained, though, that he was forced to fly for the Nazis under threat of being shot for treason.

He called Hitler a monster, said he had since traveled to Israel and met with Holocaust survivors. So solid recovery. Lou made the right call with his homemade meal because at least according to Lou, he and Wulenkampur left that dinner with a verbal business agreement. Wulenkamper would build a blimp for Lou and sell it to him for a reasonable price of $1.2 million. I guess that was quite the blimp deal. And also have his team teach Lou's team how to operate and maintain this blimp. Blimp boy now has an opportunity to get his very own cruise ship in the sky, a very, very tiny cruise ship, said you only get to walk around

and that tiny little trailer part stuck to the bottom of the balloon. But still, Lou said in Bands brands of billions that Vulin Kemper became a role model for him, type of father figure that a close enough relationship to the two would later form transcontinental airlines, kind of on paper, but not really. But Lou would say they did that together. More on that, gigantic scam later. So much more. By early 1979, 24-year-old Lou was the head of island helicopters, been running his commuter helicopter business for four years, had a plan in place to buy his first fucking blimp. That's so cool. In the near future, sorry, some of you probably love blimps. I just don't give a shit about him. Lou spent much of 1979 in Tokyo with his mentors, WDL crew, learning the ins and outs of blimpin.

back in the U.S., Lou's childhood friends, Alan Gross, and Ray Sidon, excuse me, were working for Lou, running the commuter helicopter and small plane show. Promen also managed to create a side business, Transcom Airways, different than Transcom Airlines. He'll have a lot of different transcom businesses. It gets a bit confusing, which I think was the point, was intentional.

This transcom business was real. Under an umbrella agreement, he made with himself at Island Helicopters. Lou started to lease planes to run quick jobs carrying money for banks. These were still the days before wire transfers were common, so many banks wanted to speed up the process for how checks for loan payments were transported to their clearing houses because, you know, the quicker the check is received, the more interest the banks can earn. A few days on interest on millions and millions of dollars, you know, in loans, that adds up fast. So the banks would use Luz Transcom Airways to curry their checks across the country.

Smart business. Transcom Airways was a quick cash business that allowed Lou to lease more commercial jets for a discount travel company he was supposedly launching. They just mentioned transcontinental Airlines travel service. And they wouldn't be a real business in the way he described, but they would lease planes. This airline would offer round trips from New York to Paris on Big 747s. By late 1979, Lou leveraged all the connections he had with wealthy friends and family and with big money passengers on his commuter helicopters and asked them to make an investment

in his Transcontinental Airlines business. A business that was supposedly exist, as he averaged. it for roughly 20 years, but it would never do that. The Ponzi scheme began when he took investment money for this fake company, or, you know, company not real in the way he marketed it. At first, he only sought those who can invest a million or more dollars apiece, and then Lou said he used that money to start buying planes, big planes, 727, 747s, and the like.

He told his investors he used what he learned at Queens College and during his time in the aviation industry to create a way for them to use their investments into planes as tax shelter as well. And he promised him huge returns based on the company's growth. In bands, brands, and billions, Lou would write about this time. I recruited friends and relatives as well as a substantial number of people I had met through my other aviation business to form those partnerships. Today, those investors include corporate executives, lawyers, doctors, professional athletes, entertainers, and celebrities of all kinds. I'd name some of them, but we have confidentially confidentiality agreements built into the limited partnerships.

while both Alan Gross and Ray Seiden will report that Lou never owned any of those jets. I've never flown on anything that said transcontinental on it, Siden said. The only transcontinental airliner Gross ever saw still sits in his living room, a plastic Model 747 adorned with the yellow striped transcontinental logo and lettering. He and Lou took photos of that toy, literal toy, set against the backdrop of JFK Airport in the late 70s. Just out of frame in those pictures is the tail of the jet where Gross says, Roman's fingers were holding it up. Dude would use photos of that model to make investors think this was the kind of

plane they were actually investing in, that phony fuck. At that time, even Gross and Siden, though, thought the business overall was legit. And they both invested heavily with Lou. Old childhood friend Alan Gross would invest his life savings. He trusted the guy he had known since Lou was barely in grade school. The little kid who lived in the apartment on the floor below him, he used to babysit while their moms chatted. It takes a special kind of narcissistic dirtbag

to rip off your childhood friend like that. Lou would head over to Japan for, he was over in Japan for some training and then returned from Tokyo in 1980, ready to resume his spot at the helm of his businesses, some real, some fake. Then Lou formed yet another business when airship enterprises open an office in Manhattan,

located right next to the offices of Transcontinental Airlines and the Transcontinental Airlines Travel Service at 521 Fifth Avenue. His singular purpose with this new venture to launch the blimp he's stoop he still wait not. Even with the promised discount on a Wulin Kemper blimp, Primo blimp, Lou couldn't afford it. But he didn't want to wait a longer, so he went a different route,

a weird route. Airship Enterprises purchased an old industrial logging balloon that it once been used to lift trees out of densely populated forests in northwest. I didn't know that was a thing. And it's not a thing anymore, but it used to be. Check out this old clip. Cable yarding with balloons was attempted in the late 1950s. But the first successful effort was made in 1964 by the Bohemia Lumber Company of Eugene, Oregon. Featuring an onion-shaped balloon, this system has since been used successfully by several companies in the Pacific Northwest. Did you think you would get a brief balloon logging tutorial this week? Proman ordered this old log-in balloon hacked into pieces.

Then he had fabricators reconfigure the pieces along with other scraps to form the traditional oblong shape of a blimp, a metal, applicator designed fins in a gondola to replicate those on the much sturdier WDL airships. If this sounds like a super sketchy plan, that's because it is. Oh, it's so is. This is going to end horribly. Many of the airship enterprise employees who worked on the project thought it was fucking doomed to fail from the very beginning. Employee Don Gooth was a teenager in 1980, employed that year to work on welding the skeleton of the blimp. In a later interview, he would say, quote, it was a piece of crap. It was heavy when we put it together out in California. you know, we take it outside, let the sun bake on it. As the helium on the inside got hotter, it would produce more lift,

but that was the only way he was getting off the deck. And his landing gear was pretty fragile also. It was in the shape of an airship, but it was never meant to fly. Yeah, maybe not the best idea to hire a teenager, you know, as far as a welder, to work on the balloon's very important frame. Maybe a better idea to hire somebody a little bit older with a bit more welding experience for such an important job. While the team was putting together that frank and blimp,

Airship Enterprises, one and only salesperson, Paul LaFaro, hit the road hard looking for an advertiser for this doomed blimp. LaFarro believed that he was, you know, going to get his sponsor. He would pay big money to advertise on a fancy German-made blimp, not some fucking doomed old country login blimp. The promise of 15% commissions on the sale lured him to the job. He first approached Seagram's, a liquor company, and was told, quote, if you could tell me that I could open up that window and see that blimp, I'd sign a contract right now with you. that became the most common response as Lafarro was shot down again and again. No one wanted to buy advertised on a blimp

that did not exist yet that they couldn't see. They wanted to see it, right? Totally fair. Paul Lafarro undeterred. He finally found somebody who was jumping in excitement about the idea. The Nukash brothers, creators of fashion label Jordash. They signed up to be the first partner

for airship enterprises. Do you remember JorDash jeans? Would you have wanted some because you saw their name on the side of a rickety old, forest blimp, which actually is not what they were sold on. They were sold on a German blimp. But would you want to buy Jor-Dash jeans?

Because you saw that name on a blimp? This is also strange. Real quick, part of another old Jor-Dash 80s commercial. These are just such funny commercials to me. They definitely had their own vibe. You got that look. Ooh, you got style and perfection. The Jor-Dash collection is you.

Doing a time hanging around. Doing whatever you do. The whole commercial is just this lady walking around in tight jordan-ass jeans at a place like where no one else, like a party where no one else is wearing jeans. And at least a third of the commercial, just like close-up shots of her butt. The Nekash brothers were the type of businessman that Lou Proman loved. A decade earlier, the brothers owned four discount clothing stores throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan. They were moderately successful.

But then a fire during the 1977, New York Blackout, destroyed the largest outlet they had in the city. And they use the insurance money from the fire, not to ever build the store, but on tons of advertising featuring the sexy curve-hugging Jor Dash-look jeans. A sexy topless woman rode a horse on a beach through the surf in the jeans in this one ad that was banned for most major TV networks. But the people who did see it fucking talked about it a lot. Got a lot of buzz. The brothers spent $120,000 hyping up their jeans before they ever mass produced them, and it worked.

An insane level of demand followed. that drove the quick production of thousands of pairs of jeans, and it made the Nacosch brothers multi-millionaires. Lou himself provided in his own handwriting the Jordash PR people, specs that described a 170-foot pristine airship capable of seating five people in addition to the pilot, or in addition to the pilot, it could rev up to 70 miles an hour, had a range of 500 miles, and could soar as high as 7,500 feet.

Well, the brothers were, they were pumped about that, but they did have another ask. they did not want the aircraft to be painted in standard blimp silver. They wanted that shit to be gold, baby. Lou said, great idea. A gold blimp it is. The plan was to launch this golden blimp

October 8th, 1980. It was to fly from New Jersey to Manhattan, dock at the sheep meadow in Central Park for a big fancy press-friendly party. Everybody'd be wearing fucking tight-ass, jordan-ass jeans. But there were problems right from the start. The city said the landing was too risky.

They wouldn't grant them the permit. So Lofaro pivoted. Track down the developers of Battery Park City, a place under construction in downtown Manhattan. The developers quickly agreed eager to garner attention for their own massive office and residential project. So now the new plan was after the blimp landed, a group of sexy models wearing tight, short-ass jeans, would exit the craft on a catwalk. A large press showing would already be gathered to document this event. Oh, fuck out. You got the look.

Mm. George D. You've got the look. George Dash. There could also be drinks, or there would also be drinks, music, headlines in the next day's paper, you know, TV reports. Jordash's goal was to position itself as the label of choice for jet-setting beautiful people, rich people who were so unique that they would choose to travel by a majestic golden balloon.

Everything was ready. Everything. for this big fucking event, except for the blimp. It had just completely failed its test flight. Was that a dead giveaway that this was going to be a complete disaster? Every day. Also, do you remember those specs that Lou gave Jordash? 170-foot airship was seating for five plus pilot, 70 miles per hour, range of 500 miles,

goes as high as 7,500 feet? Well, the real craft, not quite like that. It was a little bit shorter, 105 feet long. So that's quite a bit shorter, actually, than 170 feet. Instead of 7,500 feet, it could get up to about a thousand feet. Instead of 75 or 70 miles per hour, it could probably reach 30 miles an hour. And instead of like a 500 mile range, it could probably like 50, 60, right away. To add insult to injury, the glorious gold paint that they had chosen for the blimp's color,

well after baking in the sun for a few days it faded into a shade of brown that Alan Gross would describe as duty so it was shit color good God so now so now instead of a big majestic golden German blimp

they had a small floating turd poop balloon I want to know better you've got to look that's all together working balloon Joe dash got a

Poop balloon Jordash had a poop balloon Fly around the city in a Jordash poop balloon George Ash poop balloon George Ash loon Jordash poop balloon The Jordash Loan

The Newcaste brothers They looked visibly distressed When they saw it that morning I wish I could have been there To watch them watch that poop balloon A home video capture the moment The Blimp took off in New Jersey for the big event.

The blimp barely sputtered a life, then rose up to a great height of around 30 feet, then floated limply before it spiraled into a lopsided clockwise circle, because the aircraft could only turn right for some reason. The blimp then slowly corkscrewed toward the end of the airstrip, and before it could even start the journey to battery park, they got stuck in a pine tree.

And that was it. That's all it ever did. That was this one and only flight. incredible. The poop balloon took a shit on the only brand ever associated with it. The Associated Press, United Press, International, New York Times, various local news stations, ran stories, photos, you know, none were flattering. One memorable headline read, The Blimp goes limp. Lou addressed that failure in his book. He said, it wasn't sort of publicity we had hoped for. How you think? But as I told the Jordash brothers, their name was all over the news that night.

They were glad to get all the attention and relieved that no one. But were they? Were they glad? Before moving on from this poop balloon disaster, time for our second and two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thank you for listening to those sponsors.

I hope you heard some deals that you liked. Now, did the poop balloon fiasco shit on Lou Pearlman's rise to wealth and fame? This might seem like a big setback for Lou Pearlman, but he had an ace up asleep. He had taken out a massive insurance policy

worth several million dollars on that fucking poop limp. many looking back at this thought it was a scam from the start insurance fraud, a pump and dump insurance scheme. A January 16th, 1921 memo sent by the aviation claims manager at Marsh and McLennan Incorporated stated, Based upon our investigation, we have determined that the airship involved in this loss is not the same as the airship that was presented to us for coverage. And for which we issued the caption policy number HL 53-0078. The airship presented to us for coverage was represented to have been, excuse me,

manufactured in Germany by West Deutsche Luftwerbung and was said to have been a type that had been operated for 10 years in Europe loss slash accident-free. However, the airship which crashed on October 8, 1980 in Lakehurst, New Jersey, and for which a proof of loss has been filed was an airship manufactured by airship enterprises, limited, which was not of a proven type and, in fact, had never been flown. It is our position that the above constitutes material misrepresentations inherent in the underlying placement of the risk, and we therefore elect to rescind the policy. Yeah, basically they were like, uh, we insured a big-ass, big old German blimp for several million dollars, not a little poop balloon. Well, the company reported the premiums paid, or excuse me, they returned to lieu the premiums paid of $18,504. But Blimp Boy did not accept that.

He took him to court to get his insurance money. On October 8, 1980, in court Marsh and McLennan argued that this was a bait and switch, a jerry-rigged logging balloon being substituted for a precision German craft. Perlman's defense team, though, presented some documents, one of which showed that Perlman had in fact provided the insurance company proper specs of the new ship, showing its actual length, origin of manufacture, and flying capacity. It had been sent nonchalantly on an informal memo. He truly just snuck it in there.

And Lou had technically covered himself. The company had not done their due diligence, looked closely enough at it, and did not compare the specs to the originally submitted paperwork. Fuck. The insurance company never adjusted its coverage of the blimp based on Lou's new specs, and they ended up settling thanks to this mistake for $2.5 million. Ethically, Lou was in the wrong here. He knew what he fucking did. Legally, though, he was in the right, and I loathe people who do this kind of shit. And there's so many people like that in the world.

Lou took the big insurance payout, bought that blimp that Vulin Kemper had a good. agreed two years ago. So now he does have his German blimp. Proman's oldest friend Alan Gross, his former childhood neighbor, did not like how all of this went down at all. He'd been with Lou every step of the way with his aviation business. He was becoming more convinced day by day that the Jor-Dash blimp failure had been an elaborate insurance fraud scam the entire time. He also felt that Lou was icing him out with a new WDL blimp deal. He feared that he'd wasted more than a decade of his life following Perlman and was now risking his professional reputation in the industry he'd love since he was a boy. On some,

September 26, 1981, Gross wrote a letter to Wollingkemper. The letter detailed what he considered to be Lou's double dealing and the fact that he often took credit for the ideas and words of his employees. Alan claimed that it was him who did the bulk of the legwork to stand the business up. Lou Perlman found out about that letter, understandably, furious. He screamed at Allen telling him that he had not only risked the insurance money with that letter, but the business as a whole. Lou agreed that Gross was in fact probably owed money from airship enterprises

that he hadn't gotten, but he didn't care. Proman threatened to cut Gross out altogether If the letter affected his relationship with Wollin Kemper at all Wolling Kemper was pissed And now Alan Gross was Had to play that. How could I not? While Alan was no longer part of Lou's blimp business The two would still talk to each other

Alan still has most of his money Invested in want to lose scams So now it's 1982 And Lou Perlman has fucked over his oldest friend Bought himself a blimp with money he made in the gross way a real German-made WDL Blimp. Blimp salesman Paul Lofaro is gone now. Lou tended to fire people instead of reward them when they did his bidding

and probably wanted, you know, a reward for that. Lou still had their ideas and blueprints for success of the people he had fired. Blimp Boy now said his sights on a man named Dick Christian. Are you fucking kidding me? We just had a dick hand the past few weeks. Now we have a Dick Christian. Not even a Richard Christian. Just a Dick Christian.

Dick Christian was the regional vice president of McDonald's in New York Lou found a way to sneak into the McDonald's corporate office, forced himself onto Cod Christ, managed to give him a sales pitch with what had to be the world's best cold call. Pro Men came prepared, he played a video presentation, showed a cartoon McDonald's blimp, cruising over the Manhattan skyline,

then displayed his masterpiece, a 20-foot self-inflating McDonald's blimp mock-up stretched almost wall-to-wall in Dong Savior's office, and it worked. Lou landed himself a whale of a deal A big old holy shlong of a deal All thanks to Dick Christian saying yes After signing the deal, Lou would brag about being loaded Proman was just 28 years old now

Told others that he had made more than 400 million dollars From his helicopter blimp and airline businesses But did he? Even with his claimed $72 million in assets Lou still lived in his parents' one-bedroom apartment in Queens Motherfucker still slept in the bedroom While mom and dad, Rini and high, still slept on the pull-out couch

and that would continue until High passed away in August of 1982 at the age of 73 fucking died on that couch Fuck that weird mama's boy For making his elderly dad Spend the last years of his life sleeping on a pull-out couch

In the living room Interestingly, Lou never talked about His father's death With those closest to him While Lou's team was getting everything Ready to launch to McBlimp Perlman turned his attention Back to the music industry

Lou's old band Flyer was still around Although it looked nothing like the original lineup Lou still the manager by the early 80s Lou said he was in full manager mode and in 1983 Lou Pearlman's Flyers took to took the My Father's Place stage. My Father's Place was a historic venue on Long Island, known since it opened in 1971

for given unknown and aspiring musicians a chance to perform. My Father's Place promoter Michael Epstein booked more than 6,000 shows from over 3,000 diverse artists over the venue's 16-year run. Those 3,000 acts included both comedy and music famously Billy Crystal Eddie Murphy Andy Kaufman as well as Black Flag

Fuck yeah uh Billy Joel Bruce Springsteen Madonna Aerosmith the police oh my god Tom Petty and Moore played that venue holy shit uh the flyers not listed amongst the notable bands they play there for some reason uh but according to the legend lou probably made up about their 1983 performance quote the line to get in that Sunday night formed hours early and stretched around the building band members said the players were coaxed on stage by rousing chance of flyer, flyer, flyer. By the time they started their set, the crowd at the bar was eight people deep and thirsty patrons were waving $100 bills, competing for the bartender's attention.

Lou arrived in his limo and played the role of the Fat Cat manager. At the end of the show, Lou told the band to get their passports ready, because he was going to be booking them on a world fucking tour, baby. And he was going to get the band a record deal with Columbia Records. Flyer! Flyer! Flyer! Flyer. Well, in the weeks to come, no deal, no tour, no record would ever materialize. I said in the weeks to come, it would never happen ever. And of course it didn't. Did I mention this band was a bar cover band?

Lou goes to them. Flyer remained a cover band for many years to come, but never had any commercial success because they were cover band. They were a bar cover band. 9.85 was a big year for Lou Pearlman. The McBlimp was finally ready to launch. McDonald signed a two-year agreement to advertise with the blimp. The agreement was potentially worth $2.5 million. Fucking Christcock came through. Dick Christian did it. I thought it'd be more since he claimed he's worth, you know, $400 million or whatever, but okay.

In June of 1985, Proman took Airship International Public. The company would be traded on Wall Street with the ticker symbol, BLMP. Blimp boy fucking did it. This company was actually real, but never as profitable as he claimed, I'm sure. No one loved as you will see, forging financial documents more than Lou Proven. It would truly offer.

operated number of real blimps, though, securing advertising and corporate clients like MetLife and SeaWorld in addition to McDonald's. Proman found a perfect partner to underwrite the deal with. He worked with Nor Bay Securities, a now defunct Bayside New York penny stock operation with the deep history of extremely fraudulent sales and cons. That tracks. Airship International Limited was officially traded at $2 a share. A month later, Lou hosted a small gathering at a hangar in New Jersey to celebrate the launching of the McBlimp. Oh, Mamarini Perlman was there. still sleeping on the pull-out couch in the living room alone now.

Not kidding, even though her son as a multimillionaire and 31 years old. German rock star, I mean German blimp guy, Theodore Wulinkemper, is there at the party. Luckily or unluckly, depending on how you look at it. Unlike the Jor-Dash disaster from a few years earlier, the 193-foot WD-L-Bil-McBlimp performed flawlessly. In August of 1985, 31-year-old blimp boy, finally ready to move out of his mother's apartment.

A Pearlman purchased, quote, a penthouse and queens at the Bay Club, a gated, guarded, brand new high-rise, complete with billiards and racquetball rooms, tennis courts, and an on-site deli. What the fuck? Library and movie theater. It's the Burroughs version of a Trump Tower, the kind of place that folks

and otherwise working-class neighborhood associate with new money. Did he buy his mom, Rini, now 17 years old, a cool house, too? Thank you for letting him live in her one-bedroom apartment and have the bedroom to himself now for the past 31 years?

No. No, mom stayed there, it seems. But at least she probably got to have the bedroom for herself now, I guess. Nope, no pan-house for mom, but bedroom. In addition to swanky new digs, Lou had new wheels to show off. He'd driven a cheap dodge for years, but now had both a burgundy-stretched Lincoln Continental limo

that he claimed was for the business and a matching Rolls-Royce Phantom. The base price for a new Phantom, by the way, almost half million dollars. Proman also used a limo to take an entourage to the Peter Lugar Steakhouse and Great Neck on Long Island where a single a la carte serving his steak would start at $40, about $124 today. He'd flaunt a bunch of cash, then pick up the entire tab on a business restaurant account.

He's a big man, big, blimp boy, mommy's boy, doing big, mommy boy, big things. All this was confusing to Ray Seidon, the longtime friend, Lou had met back at the AV club in high school. He was still a lose business partner, but life looked very different for him now than I did for Blimp Boy. By 1925, Seiden had worked for Lou for over eight years and through all of his various companies. but even now, after all their business success, Siden was being paid so little by Lue that he had to work a side gig at his father's shoe shop just to make ends meet.

So Siden approached Proman to ask about where all his money was coming from. Proman implied that his cousin Art was pitching in and confided in Siden that he wasn't doing well as he claimed. He was doing the whole fake it till you make it, shuck and jive. He had as much as $50,000 in debt on his Amex, equivalent to about 160 grand today. Now, fuck this guy.

He wasn't just fake. He had just bought a huge penthouse, right? A Rolls-Royce Phantom. A new Phantom in 1985 cost well over $100,000 for a base model. Up to $200,000. He's lying to his friend. A friend since high school. Now, his longest tenured employed,

just so he can continue to take advantage of him financially. A greedy fuck. Near the end of the same year, Lou started to approach those in his social network to buy a stake in his other business, the completely fake one, well, the 80% fake one. Transcontinental Airlines, that travel service. His blimp business, very profitable.

now doesn't need to do this for any other reason than greed. After seeing his success with airship international, many took him up on the offer. Old buddy old pal, Ray Seiden bought a stake in Transcontinental Airlines travel service. Seiden held a promissory note for 383 shares worth about $7,000 in theory, but in reality worth nothing. The Grift continues. In 1987, when his McDonald's blimp contract ran out, Lou lined up another customer, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. They needed to revamp the McBlimp,

It was painted blue and white, featured a giant Snoopy logo. Metropolitan Life signed a multi-year deal that had the potential to be worth more than $8 million should the company continue to renew. Again, he's actually making good money. While Snoopy is gracing the skies, Blimp Boy starts to line up his next target. He has his heart set on the beer giant Anheuser Bush. A friend to Luz, Harry Milner, had a connection on Anheiser. Lou said that they would go into business together if Milner made the introduction. However, once Lou had his in, he just immediately cut Milner out.

right he always does this classic lou oh you just got blimped miller right he has somebody do something big for them and instead of rewarding them he fires them or cuts them out in 1988 now that he had their attention lou started to pitch the team at anheiser bush he wanted budwiser beer to be on the blip next but mid negotiations with anaheiser a tragedy strikes lou proman when on mother's day rene suffers a blood clot is rushed to the hospital but unfortunately does not survive the ensuing operation lou who had always been a mama's boy devastated by the loss. Fuck, had she lived, he probably would have agreed to move back in with her and sometimes leave the bedroom to check on her while she slept and recovered on the couch.

While Alan Gross was not working with Lou as a partner anymore, he was still a childhood friend and was around after Rini's death. Gross would later say in an interview, Lou became more and more secretive and devious following his mother's death. He no longer had her looking over his shoulder,

so he intensified his scheming ways. He seemed to grow greedier and shadier and the people he associated with had questionable moral values. As long as he had people to feed his ego, his negative propensities grew exponentially. Uh-oh. Blimp boy already a big piece of shit. How much worse is he going to get?

After more than a year of talks, Perlman sold Anheiser Bush on a long-term $3 million blimp leasing deal, plus additional deals, terms not disclosed in sources for Shamu, the killer whale themed blimps in Florida, promoting the Anheiser Bush's new purchase, sea world, right, in Orlando. The beer company owned that park From 1979 to 2009

In June of 1999 Blimp Boy had some blimp troubles The MetLife Blimp was en route to an event In California from Texas Where it was moored When a freak windstorm swept through And Lou Pearlman's First and only WDL Blimp was ripped to shreds

But he would turn that Blimp Lemon Into Blimpinade real quick As we know, Proman was an old pro At Insurance and Blimp accidents So by November of 1989 He already filed an insurance claim and a new blimp was lined up. Not German, but instead,

Lou went with a $6 million sky ship built by English company airship industries. This blimp was an upgrade as it was equipped with cameras and lights for nighttime signs. It was a fancy-ass fucking blimp. Must have given Lou such an inflated blimp owner. Then still not content with how much money

his blimp business was making him and not happy with running just the one fuck over everybody I know, fake airline investment scam. Sometime between late 1989 and early 1990, Lou launched a new scheme. He went to all of his various employees. This one's arguably worse.

Went to all his current investors in Transcontinental Airlines and presented them with a new opportunity. He was pitching an in-house retirement plan called an employee investment savings account in ESA. Promen explained to investors not employed by him that because they were shareholders

in the fake transcontinental airlines, they were eligible to participate in a fake ESA. I mean, he didn't call it fake, but that's what it was. Lou created brochures featuring a picture of a transcontinental jumbo jet but not really. It was just still that fucking toy plane. The Proman of growth at stage for photos years ago.

Used that for the pitch deck. Must have laughed his ass off about that. Proman proudly told investors in person and wrote in brochures that the program was insured by the FDIC up to $100,000. No. Beyond that, the ESAs were further backed

by insurance policies purchased through AIG and Lloyds of London quote, as maintained on file in our office. Another lie. Attached the marketing materials for the ESA program was what Luce said. was the Lloyd's policy,

which looked like the cover page of an insurance policy, even had a policy number, 823, AM9-10-780, motherfucker made all that up, just so we could steal more money from people he was already stealing from. People quickly began to take Lou up on his new offer. The ESA sounded very similar

to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act in ERISA, a legitimate U.S. Department of Labor Regulation that covered all kinds of savings plans. This paired with the fact that Perlman's EAS were only promising slightly better returns than traditional savings account made them seem legitimate in a smart move. But of course, Pearlman's,

ESA, you know, these were not insured, not guaranteed in any way, because there were, in fact, no accounts. Blimp Boy just putting all this money into his banking accounts. Or spending it, you know, another Ponzi scheme. While he was peddling the ESA scheme, no one questioned the success of Transcontinental Airlines.

They were constantly busy renting out charter flights for the rich and famous, including rock stars on tour like Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Art Garfunkel. Right? So this is the real part of the business, but they're faking this, again, to present that these planes are theirs.

Transcon got a one-month booking for a band Promen I never heard of called New Kids on the Block. He was shocked when they booked one of Transcon's pricier planes at $250,000 a month. Promen really surprised when the group's management

paid for this in cash, just like handed a brown paper sack full of cash. And I bet he thought something along the lines of, holy shit, these are some motherfuckers I can grift. I need to get me a boy band. Perlman soon learned that they were the creation of Maurice Starr, the guy who originally produced or created Pop Sensation New Edition, then learned that new kids had raked in $200 million in concert sales

and another $800 million in merchandising revenue since their debut album had come out just three years earlier. That's insane. They were a cash machine. Lou thought he could build himself a new cash machine, just like him. Before we leave 1989, and he will eventually. A couple actually, and many smaller ones. Before we leave 1989, another big thing happened for Blimp Boy.

He met somebody who had quickly become his new best friend, Julian Bencher. Bencher everything Perlman wished he was. A proper Englishman who'd grown up in the lap of luxury. I don't know if he wished he was English, but he wanted to be grown up, you know, I haven't grown up in the lap of luxury. As a boy, he'd been waited on by servants, chauffured, and his family's roles, Royce, traveled around the globe, staying in the finest hotels.

The venture family money came from Julian's father, Gabby, who built up Campari International, this Britain-based sports and leisure clothing group, not actually the massive Italian alcohol corporation, the same name, but still a company that made, you know, millions and millions. Gabby had died in a tragic accident just before Julian's 14th birthday, and this is pretty crazy.

dude came home from work for lunch to inspect a tiling job on his house's roof slipped and fell from a scaffolding about 30 feet up in the air landed head first on the ground cracked his skull on the concrete just dead instantly just insane one moment that guy is

completely healthy and fine he's young and rich a few moments later dead in the sidewalk Julian's inheritance put into a trust one he would not be able to access until after he completed school once he graduated Julian went to his father's lawyers that were appointed trustees for the money

and they turned him away saying that Gabby had also stipulated that Julian was not to have access to any family money until he had made a million pounds on his own. And I love that actually, right? A great way to give his son incentive to make something of himself, not just become some kind of nepo baby trust fund douche. My experience, those people rarely turn out well. Much like Pearlman and Gross venture had grown up with fascination for blimps, he borrowed $20,000 from his mother, head to Hong Kong to, or $20,000 pounds, excuse me, head to Hong Kong to conduct some blimp business. trying to, you know, make that million pounds. A venture's plan was simple. He was going to buy a blimp, then dock it over a highly visible spot above the bustling harbor, where he would then be able to entice companies to pay top dollar to advertise with him.

And I think that's pretty much the only real blimp plan that there is, isn't it? Have somebody pay to put their logo on it, then float it around in the highly visible area? Is there any other blimp plans out there? Hear me out. Okay, you're going to give me $5 billion. You're going to wrap that blimp with your logo. and then we were going to launch that blimp, floated around way up

near the northern tip of Alaska, where almost no one lives, and we'll do it in the winter when it's so dark all day long that even if people were there, they wouldn't be able to see it. So what do you think? Bencher soon secured a meeting

with Australian tycoon Alan Bond's Blimp Company airship industries. He convinced airship industries to partner with him, and they scheduled a business meeting with the harbor civil aviation authority with the harbors, but then things quickly fell apart

when right before that meeting, airship industries, people suddenly backed out because their company had begun to collapse back in Australia. Alan Bond had built airship industries and the rest of his empire on shady business dealings. And when all was said and done, the scandal bond was involved in became the biggest corporate collapse in Australian history. So many shady fuckers in and around the blimp game. Who knew?

Needless to say, the meeting went poorly. Julian had spent the bulk of his loan from his mom, did not have a backup plan, but he did come up with an idea to make Alan Bond's problems his. his success. He devised a way to make a bid for bond-backed airship industry's land holdings, a more modest backdoor approach to owning a chunk of the blimp company. If successful, he would become the landlord to airship's manufacturing facilities. A bolshebaugh's family name, as well as the merits of his plan and a background in finance, venture finagled a $12 million loan that used to buy 180 acres in the quiet English hamlet of Cardington, the airship industry's land

where historic military blimps had once been constructed. The press caught wind of what Bencher was attempting. He was painted as the savior multi-millionaire poised to inject $12 million into the alien airship industries. The deal worked out. Bencher made his first million and then some off all this. And then walked back into his father's lawyer's office expecting to finally get that big inheritance.

But it didn't happen. The lawyers revealed the last of Gabby Bencher's wishes for his son. They told him that his father had stipulated that if he was able to make it that far on his own, right, to get the million dollars, then he didn't need an inheritance. not sure if I love that part. I mean, kind of funny, but kind of fucked up.

Maybe not the worst way to light a fire under your son's ass. Julian then refocused his attention on Hong Kong and finished his plan of buying airship industries. It was at an airship industry event in London meant to draw on some investors where Julian Venture would meet Lou Pearlman. The group was having a dinner at the Intercontinental Hotel. The two ended up being sat next to each other.

Lou was loud and braggadocious, telling anyone who would listen that he had purchased a blimp from airship. He would purchase a bit. blint from airship, and was poised to buy a few more. At the end of the meal, Lou quietly asked Julian if he'd like to join him for a second dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. Julian was not hungry.

He literally just had dinner, but he was curious, and so he agreed. Once they arrived at the Hard Rock, Lou ordered a burger. He wasn't fucking about when he said he wanted a second dinner. And the two started talking business. It became to start of a long-lasting friendship and business partnership. Right after Lou had made his new buddy, his old buddy, Alan Gross, oldest childhood friend, broke up with him after relationship

had already been strained, right, Rocky since Alan's firing. On April 1st, 1990, Alan Gross mailed a handwritten letter to Lou. And it wasn't an April Fool's joke. The letter made it clear that Gross was now completely done with Lou. He claimed that Pearlman still owed him over $20,000 between his airship international shareholders' rights

and other personal investments. Along with the letter, Gross included a copy of his airship international shareholders' agreement, his job description, a business card, receipts for, expenses and services rendered and copies of canceled checks as proof. Lou Perlman didn't even bother responding to his old friend personally. Three weeks later, he had his attorney send a response back to Gross offering a lump sum of

$10,000. What a piece of shit. They would eventually agree to $11,000. For fuck's sake. By the end of 1990, Julian Bencher had become Lou's business partner, some new guy he could fuck over, which you will, with Airship International, not to be confused with airship industries that Julian was trying to buy. So many similar sounding companies, and there will be more.

In December of that year, Blimp Boy invited his new buddy Julian to the Bahamas, where he's meeting with his old German blimp baron, Theodore Wollingkamper, that rock star. Wulenkamper host of the two men at his big house on Paradise Island. Bencher shared in a later interview that Wulen Kemper was referring to Lou the whole time as his son, which is weird. While the relationships between Perlman and Wulenkemper and Perlman and Bencher, seemed to soar. The profit of Liu's publicly traded Airship International company had begun to freefall. Airship International reported a loss of $4.5 million in 1990, almost that exact same amount

in 1991. While Airship International was in crisis and Transcom was being buoyed by the fraudulent Ponzi scheme, ESA program, Lou decided to relocate all of his operations to a sunnier place, seemingly a lot more friendly when it comes to look in the other way at the crimes of white-collar criminals. Florida. He moved everything, including many of the employees of his inner circle, from a high-rise in Manhattan to Orlando. Amongst the transplants was Frankie Vasquez, the son of the maintenance man at Mitchell Gardens, who became a licensed aircraft mechanic at Lou's urging. Also making the move was Paul Russo, a neighborhood friend.

Lou knew from a bodega, would become a driver for Lou for his Queen's Manhattan commute. There was also Franks Socoli, one-time guitarist for one of the early incarnations of Flyer, and Alan Siegel, another neighborhood guy who drove Lou's cars. And he'll rip off all these people, too. He rips off everybody around him. his old AV club high school buddy Ray Seid and declined to make the move to Florida. While Perlman was busy with the relocation,

Bencher was able to deliver the first profitable quarter in years. Airship International posted a profit of $104,000 in the second quarter, $513,000 in the third. But that wasn't enough for Lou. Perlman, maybe after too many investors, wanted their money back from one of his Ponzi schemes, needed an influx of cash, and he approached Colorado-based brokerage,

Chathfield Dean and Company, to help sell some stocks. Chatfield Dean and Co, the exact kind of organization that was featured in Wolf of Wall Street. The reps spent all day, every day, cold calling, doing their best to talk anybody who answered the phone into buying super high-risk, low-value stocks with the lure of quick wealth. And they were fucking good at it. Good at selling people, fools gold. What a cool job.

Chatfield Dean raised a staggering $17 million for Airship International. Also, through his Chatfield Dean campaign, Lou came to know of Dr. Joseph Chow. Chicago engineering professor whose wife ran a successful healthcare business. Dr. Chow would go on to be one of Perlman's largest investors and be fucked out of so many millions. On June 1st, 1992, there was a tragic blimp accident. Lou Pearlman was being pressured by MetLife to get his skyship, 600 adorn with their Snoopy logo, out of its Weeksville, North Carolina hangar, and into the fucking sky. So the assembly was rushed and in their haste.

The mechanics accidentally wired the blimp steering controls backward. When it was released from its mooring truck, the blimp rose about 150 feet, then promptly took a dive right into the giant post on the truck, ripping the bag open, completely destroying the blimp. But that's not the tragedy. The tragedy is that Lou Pearlman was not on board,

and he was completely unharmed. So sorry to have to show that with you. This was Lou's third destroyed blimp, probably his second insurance fraud, at least. Wall authorities and the insurance company both suspected lieu of foul play. Nothing could be proved. And so if he did anything,

he got away with it again. By the time this third blimp was destroyed, Blimp boy, finally getting tired of blimps. He'd been thinking a lot about new kids on the block. Now, did some of those thoughts include imagining all of them naked and singing to him while they all groped one another? Perhaps.

How is it so bad? How was that band so popular? I actually thought when I first listened that video that that was a spoof making fun of them. No, that's a real song. That's a fucking mega hit song. Okay. Lou sold his British buddy Julian Bencher, the majority, but not all of his blimp interests now.

And he's still going to keep his toes dipped in the blimp game, but not, you know, so many. And also sold him a big chunk of the fictitious trans co. He pawnsied him hard. You got blimped, Bencher. What a pal. Who needs enemies if you have a pal like Lou Perlman? Okay, just after selling off some bullshit in 1992, Lou told Julian he wanted to create and manage a pop band, something like New Kids on the Block. Bencher thought it was actually a solid business idea

and so they fucked each other and 18 years later each man would give birth anally to one of the island boys Because I'm an island boy And I've been trying to me Oh I'm an island boy I'm just island boy

I'm just island boy I'm gonna keep that gun You gonna keep that gun Nubik you're staring at the sun Nams out, fool gazing Dda-Di-Dong-Doo Sing-a-Hung-Hing-Ding-Ding D'n, gong-dang-doo

No, no, sorry for tortureing with that. I don't know why the island boys popped up, maybe just, I don't know, Florida boy bands, they're not really a boy band, but maybe just thinking about if you did shit somebody out, that was possible. If you could shit out another human being,

what would they look like? Maybe like one of the island boys. No, Bencher now considered Lou a great friend and business partner. So he went in with Lou on his pop music dream, agreeing to put up half of the money to make a band up to a million dollars. So up to a million dollars of money he would put in. Now it is bubblegum pop teen, heartthrob,

boy band time. Fuck yeah, bro. Blimp Boy started to assemble his team to create a boy band in June of 92. The first person he chose was Gloria Sokolie, an experienced singer who worked at Universal Studios Orlando, the wife of Transcon, exec, Franksackely, old Queens buddy a Loo's one-time guitarist for a fucking flyer. Flyer! Flyer!

Sicoli had strong relationships with the number of local community theater groups and was used to working with kids. Perlman and Socoli quickly placed an ad in the Orlando Sentinel. It read, Teen male vocalists, producer seeks male singers that move well between 16, 19 years of age. Unc circumcumcised cock of between 5 and 9 inches in length, erect, preferred.

No cocks less than 4 inches will be considered or tolerated. Wanted for new kids type singing slash dance group good dancing or singing skills not entirely necessary if cock is truly magnificent send photo or bio of any kind several photos of cock if nice is preferred

I might have added the language about the cock but the rest of that was the actual ad in the first month they got about 40 responses Perlman and Socoli started holding auditions at Lou Pearlman's house in April of 92 the three ran the boys through nonstop drills for a few days

Secoly videotaped the audition small loo just watched did he watch from the shadows far away or no one could tell if he's wearing pants or underwear or not? I'm not sure source is not clear on that. At the end of the audition, no one was blown away by the looks, talent, or attitude of the guys

in the first group. So Gloria Secoly reached out to one of her contacts at a local theater asked if she could go through their audition archives. And they agreed. Glory found two boys she thought fit the mold that they were looking for. Alexander James A.J. McLean, 14, and Tony Donetti, 18. Now, AJ had already been cast in over 30 theater productions around his home, and Boynton Beach had worked for Disney. He'd landed small roles in Nickelodeon shows like guts, welcome freshmen, and Hi, Honey, I'm Home. And a first place contest win. He had a win that netted him, a thousand dollars cash at Miami's Latin Carnival for one man singing.

Donetti had actually came in second place to McLean in that same Latin Carnival competition, had also just missed a slot in the massive Latin boy band of. Menudo. Promen and Sicily, blown away by Dennady's audition and his polite, charming demeanor. They agreed the McLean and Denni were the first two members, unfortunately, neither Promen nor Secoly could then find Dennetti's phone number to let him know that. Both searched forever via talent contacts, could not reach him. More on that in just a bit. A.J. McLean signed on, and with him, his manager, Gene.

Tanzi Williams. Tanzi Williams was a former performer who'd been on the scene for years. She was a New York transplant in Florida with deep connections to the Orlando talent pool. Proman immediately brought Tanzi in on a selection with him and Sicoli. Things are moving. And then in Blimp news,

the agreement Lou worked on years ago with Anheiser Bush finally came to fruition when Airship International launched the Bud won Blimp and the promised SeaWorld Shamu blimps. Oh, so much blimp victory. In the late summer of 9th century. Tansy Williams called up various agents for headshots and more boys. The Future Group also had a rehearsal space built on Luz Dime,

and he moved the auditions from his house to a blimp parts warehouse in Kissimmee on Michigan Avenue. Casimi, there we go. It's always a weird one for me to say. I always want to say Kissimmee. Nope, Kissimmee. Probably still fucking it up, but that's how I heard it. So Michigan Avenue, known as Orlando's Gadi Discount Outlet District. This place a bunch of neon signs on the very outskirts.

to the city's big attractions. He found a space described as cavernous and swelteringly hot, but it would work for what they wanted. Also found more promising boys. Tanzi Williams had 13-year-old Nick Carter come in an audition, although he was very young.

Nick already a season performance veteran. At the age of only 10, he'd started to perform with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheerleaders. Also had recently been offered a role on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club with a guaranteed $50,000 contract, which he turned down because he was convinced

he could become a pop star, which he will do. Now, along with 59 other boys, he was invited to a two-day audition. They would be expected to sing and dance their way through routines lasting up to 20 minutes apiece. Nick Carter performed bridge over troubled water for his audition.

Blimpy boy loved it, a little garfunkel connection. He came so hard. I mean, clap so hard when he was done. I mean, when Nick was done, he clapped or came hard. One of those two. Promen also thrilled, maybe both.

Proman also thrilled when a young man named Howie Doro showed up for an audition and Lou immediately recognized him as Tony Dennetti, the stage name that had been given to him by his previous agent. So Tony's back, baby. Perlman and Tansy already had AJ locked up in a basement somewhere, I mean, signed up to a contract. And with this round of auditions,

they selected Nick Carter and Howie D. This round also brought Sam Lakata, a talented singer and songwriter who came with his own roster of original music, who happened to be a community college buddy of Howie D's. Team also picked Charles Edwards, an Orlando kid, he was a bit weak vocally, but had a good look and showed what Lou called potential. Now, by potential, did Lou mean a truly magnificent cock?

Sources don't say, unclear. In the fall of 1992, Blimp Boy rented a fully furnished four-bedroom house in suburban Kissimmee on Baltimore Street near where Tansy Williams lived with her husband. Nick Carter and his mom moved into one room, totally normal. Sam La Cotta moved into another room. And finally, a keyboard player who worked with a group, moved into a room.

The other boys all lived elsewhere in town. but were at the house every day. Oh, and there may have been some kind of control room in this house, possibly in the attic where Blimp Boy could watch camera feeds he had set up all over the house using his old AV club skills and then jerk off. Shources again, not clear on that. Lou had the garage converted into a wood-floored mirror dance studio, and he ran a tight ship for his boys,

which is a creepy sense to say, but also true. They were required to rehearse six days a week. Typical day. Look like the boys meeting at the house for a breakfast, which was often prepared by Jane Carter. Those who were in school would work with tutors until noon. Then it was time for a group lunch before they headed out into the garage

to fucking rock their body right. The boys would get straight into dance and vocal rehearsals. Practices would last for hours. After rehearsal was over, Proman frequently took the whole group to dinner at TGI Fridays. Oh, YOLO! Loaded potato skins for everybody. Over dinner, they would brainstorm stuff like named for the group. across the street from Fridays.

There was a popular teen hangout called Black Angus Steakhouse a Nightclub. I mean the Backstreet Market. Lou suggested Backstreet and since they were generally known as the boys, they settled on Backstreet Boys over a steaming hot plate of fried cheese with zesty marinera, a dipping sauce. Things were not, unfortunately,

working out with Charles Edwards. Guess his cock was not truly magnificent after all. He was always a weak singer compared to the rest of the guys and all the practice was not helping him improve and blend vocally with the rest of the group. Additionally, he was having trouble getting into the groove with the dancing routines.

His fucking groove was just, it was off. And if you know anything at all about boy bands, the entire foundation of everything they do is the groove. Thank you, delight. It is in the heart. But Edwards, his heart didn't have it. No groove. All the other boys had what Lou Proman called a natural R&B style.

But Edwards, he was stiff. Perlman decided, excuse me, that Charles Edwards had to be fired and he wanted to do it in an unnecessarily cruel way. He left the dirty work

to Tansy Williams and business partners slash BFF, Julian Bencher. Most awkward part was that Lou insisted that it'd be done in a very public group setting because at his core

he's a cruel fuck. Lou took the group out to dinner to go to TGI Fridays. Soon, Tansy, visibly crying over her mozzarella stick. I don't know what she was crying over, but something. It was very uncomfortable

for everybody. After some awkward small talk, Pearlman gave Tansy the sign. I don't know if you pulled on an earlobe or what. And she fired Edwards right there at dinner. She would later say that, quote, it was the worst part of her early experience with the boys. It was like drowning a puppy. Not totally sure what happened to Charles after that.

Only articles I can find that talk about him, talk about him being arrested for trespassing many years later and looking pretty rugged in his mugshot. So sadly, I don't think a lot good happened to him after that. A month or so later, Sam La Cotta decided that he was not feeling the group and would rather work on his career as a solo artist so he too departed on his own terms

and he will reinvent himself many years later, two decades later, as a country singer going by Phoenix Stone. When no whiskey doesn't work when the tears don't drown the hurt when my fear won't chill the pain when the sun won't stop the rain. I mean, good voice.

I had a good look, but his solo career never took off. Seems like he transitioned into being a music execute out in L.A., I think, based on what I found. Pro Men and Williams, they went back to looking for talent after that. Kevin Richardson, recommended by an acquaintance who was a trans-con employee.

He had met Richardson around Orlando. Richardson was a 21-year-old model and actor in Walt Disney World's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle show. He also played Aladdin in the Disney Parade. Richardson grew up as the quintessential, All-American boy, grew up in the Appalachian Foothill. in Kentucky had worked as a wedding singer before he had made the big move to Orlando

to further his career, not professionally trained, but he had raw talent. He had groove. He had groove in his heart. There were still a short one member, though. And so Richardson recommended his cousin, Brian Latrell, or LaTroll. Richardson called Tate's Creek High, had the troll pulled out of his history class.

What a fucking moment for him looking back. Kevin made Brian sing over the phone for Lou right then and there and big Papa blimp. He loved it. Just a day after the call from Richardson, LaTroll took his first flight ever to anywhere heading from Kentucky to Orlando for a full audition. Lou had LaTrol brought directly to SeaWorld where he would make him suck his dick while Shamu watched. What? I don't know why he had him brought to SeaWorld, but he did do that.

Latrol audition in the stands, belt and outlines from pop singers as a trained orca swam nearby in the saltwater pool. Okay. Lou brought him into the group immediately after that unusual audition. Proman, over the moon now. He would later tell the reporter why. See, you had five different personalities, and so five different types of fans, all in one group. It makes a real phenomenon.

You needed a younger anchor, as Joey McIntyre was to new kids, and Nick Carter was to us. Then you needed an edge on it. You know, Donnie Wahlberg was a little edgy, so we got AJ to be edgy. And I thought it would be nice to add a little Latino spice because Minuto, you know, was out there too.

So Howie Dee added that. Then Kevin was the big brother, and, you know, Brian had the sweet melodies. Okay, soulless approach. but also, you know, smart business-wise. Lou had, I mean, zero artistic integrity, but he also had no integrity, period. But a good mind for business.

Good mind for a hustle. Just two weeks after Brian LaTroll joins the Backstreet Boys, Lou Pearlman, books their very first performance at the Orlando Black Angus Steakhouse and Nightclub. Well, look at here now, Orlando. You already know you can come down to a Black Angus Steakhouse, Nightclub.

Enjoy a nice steak for a load of baked potato for just $8.99, and you can cut loose in Orlando with a cocktail next door in our night. But did you also know that you can listen to live music at the Black Angus? Hell yes, you can. Uh-huh. Lock your body right. Backstreet, back. All right. All right. Backstreet boys is back.

Hold on for a second. I'm pushing buttons myself. Get the country There we go No, goddain That's the next video You wait Hold on to Black Angus

Sometimes you hear a song You're not supposed to hear yet Hey, hey, that's the one I'm talking about Yeeh So come on down To Church Street Church Street location Black Angus

Get a big old manly steak Then watch some very slender young men and boys Hypnotically gyrates Their masculine pelvises On the dance floor Black Angus Steakhouse And Night Club

Where the crowd's always safe and the only thing getting killed is probably your boner. Okay. You know what? I thought maybe I should do that a little more smoothly, but come on. It feels right.

It felt right how I did it, I think. They did not, unfortunately, perform my favorite American 90s nightclub chain, Black Angus. Luce scheduled to perform at one of the most profitable nights of the year at SeaWorld, Grad Night. Promen had secured the group of Slot at the Nautilus Theater. It was a humid spring night like most in Orlando, and the boys arrived,

ready to rock your body right. Lose obsession with new kids. Even had the boys all show up and perfectly feathered, quaffed, new kids in the block style, mushroom haircuts, kind of like the broccoli haircuts a lot of kids have now. They took the stage right after a water skiing show specialized in human pyramids.

Not sexual pyramids, that's probably a more exciting show, but fucking harder to pull off on, you know, water skis. Long distance launches, that kind of stuff. The backstreet boys open with the cover of the temptations get ready and a bunch of teen girls and probably mostly tween girls went fucking crazy. Almost everybody else

probably wanted to jam pencils into their ears to make the nightmare finally end. But those girls loved it. It is wild. How girls lost their fucking minds

for the Backstreet Boys back then. I remember my little sister doing that. Jesus Christ. All her friends. I was like, shut the fuck up about the Backstree Boys.

The gig went well enough to get them noticed by a local DJ on FM 106.7. Backstreet Boys' first demo got a player or two the following week. Boy, he's not heavy record deal yet,

but Lou had already spent around $3 million on the project if you can trust him, which you probably can't, but he did seem to spend a lot of money on him. Right after the first big gig, Big Papa,

big blimp boy, Lou Pearlman, fired Tansy Williams, saying the boys needed a stronger manager to lend them a record deal, or he just again follows this pattern of somebody starts to make some progress with him, you know, things start to be moving forward

in a project they're involved in that they're leading, and he fires them rather than pay them more down the road. You got blimped. Tansy, you just got blimped. Johnny Wright and his wife, Donna, took over as the Backstreet Boys' day-to-day managers. But of course, the real manager was Lou.

In the fall of 1992, Donna Wright got the boys booked on a national tour of high school, so every performance featured at least one a cappella performance to prove the boys really could sing. This was something Donna had them do at every radio station they visited as well, building a buzz back before the internet. When Backstreet Boys played a show in Cleveland,

that, you know, soon after that, A friend of Donna Wrights named Osra Called a guy she knew at Mercury Records Bobby Duckett. Duckett didn't answer but Osra held the phone up to record the performance and the fan's reaction to it on his answering machine. Duckett liked what you heard well enough to tell Mercury's A&R manager David McPherson about it all

And McPherson loved it They recorded some demos at the expense of Lou Pearlman to give McPherson in the spring of 94 But then even with McPherson's buy-in, the upper execs that Mercury did not want to move forward and offer a record deal. Lou later said about that decision, feel it was derailed by longtime Mercury recording artist John Cougar Mellencamp.

He threatened to walk away from the label if they got into the boy band business. That's hilarious. Good for him having his principles. In early June of 1994, Proman stood as the best man at British buddy, Julian Bencher's wedding. Backstree Boys would perform at the reception. On the 27th of that month, Airship International Skyship, Bud won, ripped to fucking shreds by a windstorm in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. another blimp goes down. Another insurance claim. Pays Lou too much money.

A few months later, September 11th, 94, another blimp goes down. This one was flying for Gulf oil, crashed in a Long Island neighborhood on its way to the finals of the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Flushing Queens. No one was injured. But more people were getting suspicious. This is Lou's fifth blimp crash that resulted in an insurance claim. Following year, in early 1995, Mercury's A&R manager, David McPherson, or McPherson, excuse me, being courted by another label, Jive Records.

Oh man, they were a fucking powerhouse this time. Jive was the label side of a music publishing company called Zamba, founded by South African music entrepreneur Clive Calder in the 1970s. Clive, today worth about $10 billion, largely thanks to Jive, having so many huge acts signed in the 90s, including Backstreet Boys. McPherson went over to Jive to help them round out their pop music catalog and make the label more appealing to the European market. in May of 95, Jive brought Lou and the boys

together with AJ's mom, Denise McLean, out to New York to sign a contract. One already approved by a lawyer hired by Proman. Proman and the lawyer added a few non-standard clauses to the record deal. That would come up in court years later. Proman recognized not only as the band's nominal manager, but also as the sixth member of the Backstreet Boys, even though he did not perform on stage,

playing an instrument on the records, etc. This is fucking crazy, beyond shady. Just again, him stealing blatantly from the people closest to him. By naming himself a member, Perlman was entitled to participate in the BSB record sales, merchandising, and touring income. He'd get all of that for life because he was in the band, even if they somehow fired him as a manager. He's still a backstreet boy now, legally speaking. A.J. McLean's mom thought there was something off about this agreement. Asked if she could take the contract back to Florida, have her own lawyer look at it. Lou Perlman said, that's not happening.

It was either signed now or walk away from the band forever. In her memoir, Backstreet mom, McLean would write, By that point, we had put all of our trust in Lou. He had taken a big risk financially, and by that time, we felt that we owed him so much. On more than one occasion, Lou told the boys how he was going to make them into millionaires. The way he lived was the way we all wanted to live.

Nice house, nice car, fame, and fortune. What parent could turn that down for their child? So AJ signed. They all signed Backstreet Boys officially have a record deal. And to celebrate, Perlman took the entire group out to the Cocoa Cabana Club, and then in a scene out of a Disney channel, original movie,

The Backstreet Boys end of the night in front of the Virgin Megastore and Times Square harmonizing for passerbyes. While Backstreet Boy were celebrating their first big win, Lou Pearlman, secretly preparing to do it all over again. He was already loosely working with another boy band. Early 1995,

Proman had met 23-year-old Chris Kirkpatrick, who was working in Universal Studios and singing in the Hollywood high tones. Proman promised to finance a band if Kirk Patrick Patrick Patrick, my mouth is not quite. If you could find other singers to join him, so K-Dog set out to make that happen. And he found Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z Chaz.

I always thought it was Chazez, and I was fucking so off, watched several interviews. And they're like, everyone said Chazzo. Joey Fetone and Jason Galasso. I had no idea the names of any of these people, at least how to say them, other than Justin Timberlake. The group named themselves in sync, a play on the last letter of each of the initial band members' names. Justin, Chris, Joey, Jason, and Jay, and J.C. I mean, it's got a real catchy beat. I can't hate that.

Not my style of music, but I respect the talent. Lou Pearlman was on board. In the summer of 95, now that Proman had signed a band to a record deal, what he hoped would be his biggest moneymaker yet. He took some steps to protect his current biggest source of income, the Issa Ponzi scheme. Lou had one of his underlings set up an account with a small, secretarial business called Coral Gable Services.

He instructed them to create a dedicated phone line, and the freelance secretarial staff will be directed to answer the phone with good morning or good afternoon, Cohen and Siegel. The secretarial staff were told that most of the calls will be for Stanley Cohen, someone they would never meet because he does not exist. And if anybody called for Mr. Cohen or Mr. Segal,

Mr. Siegel also doesn't exist, they should be told that Mr. Cohen or Mr. Segal is out of the office at a meeting and then take a message. Luthan crafted the fictitious law firm of Cohen and Siegel based in Coral Gables, Florida, on paper, so that it would show up in business directories. He named his fake law firm after gangsters, Mickey Cohen, and Bugsy Siegel, guys who helped found Las Vegas. Man, did he truly think he was never going to get caught for this bullshit?

Around the time that Cohen and Siegel of Coral Gables was created, record label owner Clive Calder set Lou Pearlman and BSB to Sweden sent them for a week to work with hip producers and songwriters Dennis Pop and Max Martin. Together they recorded BSB's first single. We've got it going on in just two days. I mean, it's got a fun beat. We've Got It Going On was released in the U.S. in September of 95,

made it to 69 on the Billboard charts before it stalled. A lot of radio stations refused to play the song because they thought it sounded too European. It was a big hit in places like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, elsewhere in Europe. And because of that, Jive sent the band on a six-month European tour paid for in part initially before it became profitable by Proman, who was also still working on launching Insink. And he was having some problems with Insink because Galasso had just dropped out, due to go on to become a mortgage loan broker with one hell of a backstory. And now the group needed somebody else to sing bass.

Justin Timberlake had a possible solution. His vocal coach suggested a 16-year-old kid from Mississippi, Lance Bass. Lou Perlman flew out Lance Bass and his mom to meet with. with the other boys, NSYNC at his house, and this was all kept from the Backstreet Boys. Lance immediately hit it off with the group and joined. Proman implemented the same formula he had used with the Backstreet Boys to streamline training. I'd have them all hang out in a house, just day after day after day.

Just three weeks after Lance Bass joined Insink. Lou booked that group's first performance for an audience of 300 people at Disney's Pleasure Island and recorded the performance to shop around for record deals. Proman brought on Johnny Wright again, day-to-day manage Insync. In addition to Backstreet Boys, he was told. to not let each group know about the other one. Lou about to have two huge cash machines, two bands that will make him so much fucking money.

Enough I'm guessing where he could have shut down all of his bullshit Ponzi scheme nonsense or at least tried to and still been wealthy, but he didn't want to. And on that front, the feds are about to start looking into what he was doing with his bullshit employee retirement plans. An anonymous insider was starting to get suspicious of the ESA plan.

They were being asked to sell, and they reached out to the FDIC, the federal deposit insurance, Corporation on November 2nd of 1995. FDIC attorney, a senior attorney, J. Michael Payne, was assigned to look into the matter. Payne was unsure what these ESAs could be. It seemed like a corporate CD or a broker deposit, but if either was the case, the ESAS violated several regulations governing those two products.

The most egregious was that the Transcon fake airline not registered as a dealer as the law required. And a final effort to get to the bottom of the investment program, Payne called Lou Perlman himself to ask about the nature of the ESA plan. Lou, of course, lied his ass off. Perlman told Payne, it was nothing more than a standard 401k plan available only to employees and shareholders. But Payne knew that was bullshit because the whistleblower had provided proof that he was tasked with selling Issa to non-trans con employees. Still, Payne didn't pursue this matter.

Just sort of gave up. Doesn't sound like he was amazed in his job. Maybe he was worried that all the paperwork the investigation would entail would cut into his time for fucking golf or some shit. He sent the following response to the original whistleblower. Without a complete understanding of exactly what the product is, no definitive determination of deposit insurance coverage can be made. In light of the foregoing, I would strongly recommend that you obtain a complete written description of the product prior to making a decision to market it.

So just like a little warning. Not much. And with that, the FDIC's first look into ESA and Lou Perman has effectively ended. Later in 1995, Promen approached Anthony DeCammillis, a member of the Chatfield Dean team, that it previously helped airship international raise $17 million. Pearlman and the Camillis, part of the form a new business that was completely outside of the Transcon umbrella,

a charter plane venture called Planet Airways. And it was real. They would actually own three seven-27s. Such a strange brew of real and fake business he was going. Makes my fucking headspin. As they launched Planet Together, Doug Camillas also invested more than a half million dollars in Transcon and Issa himself.

So he fucks over another. business partner. In order to secure DeComelis' investment, Pearlman told him that the ESA was backed by Transcontin airlines, which owned 47 planes, you know, a mix of 747, 707, more, all bullshit. DeCumelis takes him at his word. Lou said he was the second largest shareholder in the Germany-based airline fleet worth a total of $700 million. And Lou provided documents, documents he had forged, that backed up his claims. The Transcom was raking in about $80 million in profit a year. The document signed by his attorneys from his fake law firm, Cohen and Siegel. God damn. Seems like he was spending a lot of his free time, forging documents.

The Backstreet Boys recorded their first album then in the spring of 96. So much going on with this dude in the 90s. The album simply called Backstreet Boys, or Backstreet Boys full of future hits would eventually sell over 10 million copies worldwide. Meanwhile, in sync, shipped off to Sweden to spend time with the same hit producers, Dennis Pop, Max Martin, They would craft some hits. Also in spring of the spring of 96, the Backstreet Boys European Tour is a huge massive success. They were playing sold-out shows,

being mobbed by screaming teen girls. After Europe, the Backstreet Boys immediately launched an extensive Asian tour, playing huge venues in Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere fans going crazy for them. Many credit the Backstreet Boys and their Asian tour for helping to bring the bubblegum pop sound over to Korea that would transfer over to K-pop.

The one place that the Backstreet Boys were not gaining any attraction in, initially was the U.S. Jive pushed Backstreet Boys on MTV, but the channel would not play them. Also around this time, Proman had his bullshit transcontinental airline, purchased the fucking Chippendales.

Yes, the banana hammock swinging, bowtie wearing, all-male nude dance troupe. I'm assuming Lou Got them for a bargain because three years earlier in 1993, the founder of the Chippendales was arrested on charges of murder for hire, racketeering and attempted arson.

What the fuck? He was sent to, 26 years in prison on a plea bargain. And that's a whole other story. Blimp Boy all over the place. In October of 96 now, Backstreet Boy's first album is released in Canada and becomes an immediate success there.

Still nothing in the U.S. though. Lou sent them right back to the studio to start working on their second album, Backstreet's Back. Meanwhile, on October 7th, and Sinks lead single, I Want You Back, released in Germany. And that month,

Lou has assist on his liver rupture. During treatment for that, he meets a nurse named Tammy Hilton, someone who will kind of become Lou's first and only longtime girlfriend, but more of a beard. They'll date for about a decade, and then later she'll say that they never once consummated their relationship, because Lou, you know, was so deeply religious. Get the fuck out of here. No, he wasn't.

He just was not sexually attracted to women, obviously. He was wealthy, loved to party, surrounded himself with boy bands and Shippendales, never took home many women. Everybody's gay dar should have been going off non-fucking stop. Like, well, yeah, yeah, he's attracted to fucking. men. I mean, sadly, he was attracted to some men who were underage. Coming into 1997, Lou's first pop project is really going well for him. Backstreet Boys have already sold more than 8.5 million records worldwide.

And their first record still hasn't even gone out for sale or isn't even on sale yet in the U.S. In May of 97, Lou used his Backstreet Boys formula to have InSink released their self-titled first album into the German market. Within a week, it hits number one. and now in sync also blows up across Europe. Then that August, Backstreet Boy's second album, Backstreet's Back, released in the U.S. and worldwide the day after their first album is officially released there as an entire album.

Backstreet Back debuts at number one in Canada, selling 67,000 copies there in his first week. Doesn't really hit in the U.S. again, though, weirdly. The Backstreet Boys, Kevin Richardson, who is now 26, gave an interview to the Orlando Sentinel the following month where he talked about that. He said, we have to start from scratch in the U.S. A lot of people are skeptical.

It's good because it's humbly. In Europe, there will be maybe 500,000 people waiting for us at the airport. When I got off the plane in Orlando, it was like nobody knew who I was. That had to have been pretty surreal. Not long after that interview, though, the boys would blow up in the U.S., just like they had worldwide. They would start to finally get MTV rotation. The boys in Lou then set off on a 60-city, 20-country tour in December of 97. Perlman promised the backstreet boys a fucking blimp when they reached a certain level of sales.

they did hit that number, and he did give them a blimp, kind of. It was actually Bencher's blimp, but they would have a backstreet boy's logo plaster on the side. Lou Perlman also now insisting that everyone call him Big Papa. That's when the Big Papa thing firmly kicks off. He certainly was big by this point. The kid once known as Fat Louis was a man who weighed well over 300 pounds. And not muscle. Also, in 1997, some people in the boy band world start to realize that Big Papa is probably a big fucking creep.

something happened with backstreet boy Nick Carter that changed the way the young artist and his family felt about Lou. He suddenly was not so interested in hanging around Lou's house and his mom Jane went from playing Den Mom and took all the boys' breakfast and Lou's rented communal house to reportedly calling him a sexual predator

and saying that Lou revealed a side that changed her attitude about his relationship with the boys. Nick Carter was just 17 years old at this time. A decade later in a interview for Vanity Fair his mom said, certain things happened and it almost destroyed our family. family. I tried to warn everyone. I tried to warn all the mothers. And then, uh, when Jane was told of this article, uh, would detail allegations that Proman had made unwanted passes at other young men

by Vanity Fair. She replied, if you're doing that and exposing that, I give you a big flag. I tried to expose him for what he was years ago. I hope you expose him because the financial scandal is the least of his injustices. I can't say anything more. These children are fearful and they want to go on with their careers. Nick Carter was the first, uh, but not the last. person to allude that Lou Perlman was a sexual predator on top of everything else. 1998, Backstreet Boys in sync, both at the top of the charts. But things are getting a bit stressful for Lou, who is now 43 years old. His British buddy old pal, Julian Bencher, finally asking for a huge return on all of the money he had invested in Transcon in the 90s.

Why now? Because Bencher had recently seen internal Transcon documents that indicated the company was paying a big dividend to stockholders. He was a huge shareholder. and he had never received anything. He was under the impression that he was the third largest shareholder after Lou himself and his Bavarian blimp daddy,

Theodore Wulinkemper. Benscher asked Lou about the money and Perlman quickly made up some bullshit about how it was actually a Wulencomper who had tied it up the money and, you know, he just would not release the cash. Not a great lie.

Oh, oh, your money? Yeah. Yeah, no, I know it's like invested in my company. But this other shareholder, this fucking, oh, this German guy. he said he said he can't have it so you know it just it is what it is tough break don't worry about it though

I'll cheer you up let's go to Tjjc Fridays I'll buy you some loaded potato skins we can talk about blimps until we both feel better Bencher was close to Vulten Kemper by this point so he went to Germany to ask him directly about that bullshit when Julian spoke with Wolling Kemper he was met with a completely puzzled look

and then the German asked him what the who is like he asked him who is or what is transcontinental airlines like he did he had to even heard of this company. Uh-oh. Julian told him it was a company that Wollenkir, was supposed to have been the second biggest shareholder in, a company that also on paper owned the Backstreet Boys in sync, 40-some-odd jets, hundreds of millions and assets in Germany alone. Benchers' discovery, not the only big problem to hit Lou in 1998. Also, that fall in September, on the 11th, actually,

the Bass Street Boys, Backstreet Boys led by Brian LaTrol. They filed a massive lawsuit against Pearlman and his transcontinental records. Dude fucking love sneaking the name transcon into everything. So many transcon businesses. The suit accused big creepy daddy blimp papa of pocketing over $10 million in profits so far while the members of the band had only taken home a mere $300,000 split five ways,

despite over a hundred sold-out shows and two records that have gone number one in multiple countries. That's insane. Perlman called the whole matter when speaking to a reporter a family disagreement. Perlman at least was not having problems with Insync. Not yet, but he will very soon. only two months later

November of 98 Jan Bolt president of BMG records in Munich Germany and Lou Proman met with members of InSync in Las Vegas they had gathered together

to give the boys their first checks Bolt and Promen put together a private ceremony where they both made sappy speeches about the massive movement the boys had created

in the pop music world NSYN had just finished a record-setting tour which combined with album sales amounted to revenue of more than half a billion dollars holy shit the boys

were of course fucking hyped, expecting to be each-handed checks for many millions of dollars as they should have been, but instead, each member got a check for $25,000. Over 500 million of revenue

and they each got $25,000. A dead giveaway. They were being fucking robbed. Every day. Lance Bass ripped his check in half and stormed out of the room. After lawyering up, when Insink went to renegotiate their contracts

early the next year in 1999, they discovered that just like the Backstreet Boys before them, when they'd first sign, they'd hastily agreed, hastily agreed to declare that Lou was the sixth member of the band. And somehow the sixth member was collecting a full half of all of the recording royalties, 100% of all the advances,

plus another 25% of recording income as a management commission, that's robbery. He was pocketing a full 37.5% of all the band's profits, contractually, but actually in reality, taking home almost everything. One of the only times Justin Timberlake ever spoke publicly about his feelings about Lou Perlman was in a 2006 Rolling Stone interview, and Timberlake said about the situation, quote, I was being monetarily raped.

Fortunately, NSYN's new lawyers found a loophole. There was an out in the contract that required Lou to find a legitimate label to put out an album within a year of its recording, which he had not done in time. The group's attorneys claimed their contracts for Nellin Void, and the boy signed a new deal with Jive, the same one that the Backstreet Boys had signed all those years ago. In December of 99, Pearlman and InSink settled out of court, some's not disclosed, and partways. That same month, Transcontinental Airlines technically ceased to exist as the registration for the corporation based in Delaware was had expired. Lou never even bothered to renew it, but he was still selling its shares and savings plan.

That motherfucker. InSink will release their next album, March 21st, 2000, and the title is a dig at Lou Pearlman, No strings attached. Three days after that, though, Proman, after working with ABC and MTV for months to create a new reality television show, the first episode of Making the Band airs. So he has another hit. He keeps getting hits.

The premise was a show that followed Lou as he embarked on a nationwide talent search, cutting auditions in eight cities down to 25 young men, eventually to eight finalists. Those eight young men would compete for five spots in Proman's newest boy band creation to be signed to his TransCon record label. Lou was the executive producer, uh, the first three seasons

centered around Lou's band of O-Town. After those three seasons, led by an even bigger creep, P. Diddy. That motherfucker attempted to make a new girl group. God, fuck all these creeps. Can we please?

Please replace the MAGA movement with a movement called maybe Malk. Make America less creepy. What the fuck? Despite being on TV and everything and seeming the super wealthy, in July of 2000, Lou took out the first in a first of a long series of loans that he will never pay back. His latest grift. Loans based on forged financial documents. The first was a loan for $2.8 million from Integra Bank in Illinois to cover a portion of Planet Airways debt.

A few months later in early 2001, Proman took out another loan with Florida's mercantile bank for a cool $6 million. Then the following year, a few days before Halloween in 2001, the FDIC once again caught wind of Lou's ESA scheme. But this time, all they did was send a letter to Lou stating, quote, I am writing you concerning FDIC insurance of employee investment savings accounts at Transcontinental Airlines. My concern sent around the use of the word FDIC and the confusing manner in which insurance on the employee investment savings account is discussed.

Perlman replied in writing, our company is Transcontinental Airlines Incorporated. we do not offer to anyone other than employees or our private shareholders are employee investment savings account plan. Our employees have their own individual account set up with approved bank institutions. Our matching plan is based on years of service. We have not solicited anyone,

nor have accepted anyone to the plan that does not qualify and certainly not the general public. And again, the FDIC is basically like, oh, okay, cool. And they just drop it. Early the following year. In 2002, despite needing those big loans,

Perlman purchases the internet-based talent company options talent group when it was already under an investigation by the state attorney general's office. Why? He wanted another scam to run and this business was already a bait and switch scam. Reps would lure in average people from shopping malls and other public places with a flattering approach asking questions like, you ever considered modeling? Oh my God, you're gorgeous. If they got somebody on the hook, they would have them show up for casting calls. There were really just massive sales pitches. In these presentations, the potential models were shown glimpses of glamorous lives in front of cameras,

then quickly asked to pony up $1,000 to $2,000 a piece on photo and promotional packages that cost in all reality, more like $100 bucks, options, promised to get these packages seen by top talent agents and perpetuated this fantasy of high dollar work and placement in top fashion magazines.

While the photos, of course, would never make their way to any real talent agencies. Again, just so fucking gross. All these people feeling this could be their big break and they're just being laughed at and robbed and rejected just by scumbags. Lou formed a new company, Fashion Rock,

using essentially the exact same staff and resources as options with a slightly different business model. This time he held massive meetings where prospective talent and agents would supposedly mingle at convention boots, but these agents weren't real fucking agents. While busy with his new scam,

Lou took out another loan, $5 million from MB Financial. The next year in March of 2003, Perlman bought Church Street Station. He's just doing so much shit. This four-acre 200,000 square foot complex in downtown Atlanta, Orlando, decorated with hand-carved wood accoutrements, chandeliers, fountains, a glass elevator,

authentic by and tri-wing planes hanging down from the ceiling of the main building. His vague plan was to turn it into the crown jewel of transcon talent. What exactly he planned to do with it is unclear. He didn't really have any stars anymore, not huge ones. He was underwater in every direction. Transcon didn't even really exist. Beyond all that, the music scene was changing. Bubblegum pop is.

his fading rap is moving into focus. Lou hated that. He said in an interview, you're not going to be in an elevator a year from now and hear any rap songs. You're not going to hear Eminem in a restaurant where you're having a nice five-course meal, but you will hear the Backstreet Boys in sync.

Our music lasts. It has melodies, and it's clean, wholesome fun. And you know what? The majority of America really wants that. Well, maybe. I would rather hear Eminem at a restaurant at a boy band, but, you know, that's just me. While Lou struggled to find success

with a new Bander project. He was finding a lot of success and taking out more and more bank loans. He didn't want to pay back. Also in 2003, he convinced Washington Mutual to give him a $5 million line of credit. Then Bank America gave him a $10 million loan. When $15 million wasn't enough

for the Lou that year, he paid another visit to Mercantile Bank where they gave him another $6 million. There were other loans I didn't mention. In the past three years, he'd taken out $34.8 million in loans. He secured each and every one of them with bullshit Cohen and Siegel financials

worth of transcon stock, the same personal assets he would put up over and over as collateral to multiple lenders, use the same phony reputation as a tycoon he'd been selling for years to unsuspecting investors. Man, I cannot handle the stress of living like that. No fucking way. Every time the doorbell rang or I got a call for an unexpected number, I'd be like, that's it! They got me!

They got me dead to rights. It's all over. On October 20, 2003, Promen sent FNB Bank in Pennsylvania, a 2002 federal income tax return showing his income in the millions of dollars in order to get another big loan, also sent another forged document,

also sent the bank of Form 4868, showing that he paid over $4.8 million in estimated taxes for 2002, more bullshit. He hadn't filed any real tax documents since 2001. That December, one of the bi-annual ESA statements issued to Dr. Joseph Chow showed he had about $14 million invested in Luz companies now, and very soon people are going to start coming for that money.

The very next month, in January 2004, Florida's office of financial regulation was looking in DeLu and its Isas and the sale of shares in Pearlman's transcon companies. Prolman's attorney Peter Antanachi responded by saying, neither of these products has been offered for sale to the public by the company since at least 2002. Another lie. Blint Boy, bitch, and his agents had collected 13.8 million ESA money in 2003 alone from all kinds of investors, including members of the public, taking all that money and still needing loan after loan. That same month, Dr. Joseph Chow died, and his family now comes after Lou, looking for, you know, that $14 fucking million.

Other people wanting their money, too. So in April of that year, Lou goes after his biggest loan yet. He sends more false income tax filings to Bank of America, cooks up bullshit for the non-existent transcon airlines, documents audited by a non-existent law firm of Cohen and Siegel, and the Bank of America gives him $34 million. Luke claimed he was using that for Church Street and various TV and. concert plans. Two months later, Transcon Records employees throw a massive 50th birthday party, at Walt Disney World's Dolphin Resort, fully catered with a big carving station and open bar. Casey and the Sunshine Band perform along with a slew of transcontinental artists. Brooke Hogan, Hulk Hogan's daughter, hey brother, who also signed with Pro Men as an artist,

sang a few songs and played the piano. Then she slinked down into the crowd and serenaded Pearlman like Marilyn Monroe serenated JFK singing an inappropriately sultry rendition of Happy Birthday to Lou, she had just turned 16 and he was again 50. The fuck is wrong with anybody who is there and doesn't show disgust over that. That party would be one of Pro Men's last hurrahs before everything came crashing down. Two months later, Lou sued the Chow family as a way to postpone them from collecting their dad's investments. What a huge piece of shit. Suing people trying to get their dead fucking father's money that is owed to them.

while Lou is not paying the Chow family back, he is taking out more loans. January of 2005, Mercantile Bank, gives Lou another $2 million. March, he's back in Integrra Bank. He wants a $3 million revolving credit note and a $16 million term note loan. To try and get it,

he crafted a false income tax return for Transcontinental Airlines for the 2004 fiscal year, and Cohen and Siegel, of course, audited it. But he fucked up. Paperwork had been, quote, signed by Harry Milner, Lou's former friend who kicked off the Bud 1 blimp deal,

and then was promptly cut out of business. According to these documents, Milner was now Transcon's corporate financial officer, except he had been dead for two years. Still, that does not bring him crashing down, not yet. Also around this time, the Chow family hired attorney Edwin Brooks to go after Proman. By mid-2005, Brooks realized that if he ever was going to get the money for the Chow's,

he'd have to go after Liu's personal assets. And that meant getting Lou to turn over personal financial statements, which he did agree to. Too easily, he felt. Pearlman handed Brooks, a stack of documents audited by, of course, Cohen and Siegel. And finally,

Brooks did some due diligence and discovered what no one else had for a decade, that Cohen and Siegel were not real. This is when Brooks realized that what was going on was way more than a guy just not wanted to pay a single investor back.

Brooks was allowed to look through Transcon Financials as part of the discovery process. And according to Tyler Gray, author of The Hitcherade, quote, during his first day spent in the dank room, Brooks poured over documents for companies that seemed to run on no income other than giant cash and fusions from LJP, Lewis J. Proman Enterprises. The money actually came from investors, of which Chow was the largest. Brooks said in a later interview, it was pretty clear to me at that point that this guy was running a Ponzi scheme.

I saw enough to know I could pierce the corporate veil. Well, while Brooks continued making his way through years of records, Lou kept stopping by to visit him and see how it was going. and each time he stopped by, Brooks said he was visibly shaken, sweaty, a nervous mess. He knew the end is near. Lou tried to make it all go away by offering the Chow family a settlement of a couple million, not 14, a couple that was going to be paid over time. Brooks, now with evidence of a Ponzi scheme, counted for $9 million to be paid immediately. Brooks would later say he, quote, knew that he had the ammo to force a settlement that would please the Chow's.

He also had an opportunity to turn Perlman over to the authorities, but he chose the interest of his client. He said, if I turn all this stuff over, the house of cards comes down, that doesn't help my client. So we kept pursuing it, hoping that Lou would know we had the goods on him. A few months later in March 2006, Lou told a bank in Minnesota that he was going to purchase top of the pops a long-running weekly music show. The BBC had canceled in 2005. He was going to bring it back. He's going to be huge. To that end, American Bank is St. Paul loaned, Proman, $28.5 million.

But he would never bring that show back. Five months later, Proman looking for yet another loan. The target this time, Northside Bank in Georgia. Asking for $2.5 million to the name of Transcon Studios now, and he gets it. That same summer at his Church Street Station Complex in Orlando, Lou opened a restaurant, Pearl Steakhouse, just keeps chugging along. Still isn't paid back to Chowse. Around the same time, the Florida office over the financial regulation of financial regulation, intensified his investigation into Lou's ESA and hit him with another round of questions.

That fall, things finally really start to crumble. Over the past five years, Lou had now successfully. taken more than $160 million in loans out from various banks. The more he took out, the more payments he had that were due, the more money he had to pull from various places to try and make them, right? Also paying back his fucking Ponzi scheme people. Getting sloppy. Employees aware that something is wrong.

The church street station offices were freaking out with everything that was going on. Frankie Vasquez, one of Perlman's longtime employees who'd followed into Florida from Queens. He knew shit was bad. He'd invested with Lou too. He'd worked for him for around two decades. now his future is looking fucked like it might be ruined. So on November 11th, 2006, while Frankie was his normal self at the office,

after work, he drove home, neatly laid out a stack of unpaid bills, a list of computer passwords, a will, and other personal effects. Then he went out into his garage, climbed into his pride and joy, a 1987 Porsche, a wrapped a green t-shirt around his face,

cranked the gas, and asphyxated himself. A suicide. But really, his trust in Lou had killed him. The next month, uh, Perlman's attorneys, real attorneys, agreed with OFR to stop selling ESA on December 20th. But a few days later, another ESA sale went through in Clearwater, Florida for a million dollars.

Finally, in January of 2007, a bank pushes back. The American Bank of St. Paul filed a lawsuit against Lou Proman for failing to pay back any of the $28.5 million in the loan money he had taken out in March of 2006. Lou hired Frank Amadeo, a former attorney who had been disbarred in Georgia, after an alleged role in a scheme to steal from seniors, God damn, grifters love another grifters. Frank brought on an accountant, Paul Glover, who was not a piece of shit. Amadeo intended for Glover to figure out what assets Lou could pledge as a way to make restitution,

something he could offer state regulators, the banks, hundreds of investors, all of whom were now starting to come down hard on Lou in late 2006. Glove later explained, we had a plan in place, one that would have let Lou make restitution, avoid jail, and keep his house, and some modicum of his high-flying lifestyle. It would have been quite a thing if Lou would have signed the agreement we prepared. Blue had not signed it by the time, you know, he was supposed to. Lou was clearly looking to run, Glover said later, and that didn't sit right with Glover.

He did not want that to happen, didn't want to see it happen. So, or I think I was calling Glover, Glover decided he couldn't do what was asked of him and just keep, you know, working on behalf of Lou. And instead of covering for Lou, he became a whistleblower. He gathered of a box evidence, walked out of the building, and handed it over to the authorities. Hail Nimrod, right? Well done, Glover. Well done. Thanks to Glover, the Florida Office of Financial Regulation filed a civil suit against Pearlman on February 1, 2007, detailing what it said were 15 years worth of fraud and hawking his employee investment savings accounts. Lou was, at the time, in Berlin, for the Golden Camera Awards because one of his newer bands had some traction.

His group, US5, had just won the award for Best Pop International Band. I think that's to look in your eyes and be with you I think that song is supposed to be calming but it makes me want to punch holes in the wall Lou is wearing a tux beaming for the cameras

at the award show also US5 member Jay Kahn he will later publicly detail sexual abuse and unwanted physical advances by Lou Promen in his autobiography and LFO boy band member Rich Kronin

will later state in interviews including with Howard Stern Blint Boy also managed LFO, that Pearlman had made predatory advances and attempted to seduce multiple young artists, he managed. Just two weeks later, February 15th, a judge ordered a raid on Perlman's offices and home. The FBI storms in, a budget rental truck loaded up with boxes and boxes of files from the Transcon headquarters. Five days later, Church Street Station was entered into voluntary bankruptcy, and then on March 1, Lou was personally put into involuntary

bankruptcy. That had mattered to Lou, though, because he was still outside the country with no plans to return. Four months later, June 12, 2007, while he was still out of the country, a public auction was held at Church Street station to sell off all of Lou's assets. Former client, pop star, Aaron Carter, bought Lou's ski boat for $11,000. Proman had signed and managed Aaron Carter early in his career after Carter had started performing as an opening act for the Backstreet Boy since his brother Nick was a member. He would also sue Lou along with N-Sync in the Backstank in the Backstores. Boys. Other items included just weird shit like a life-sized R2D tube, life-size Anakin Skywalker, frozen Han Solo figures, all life-size toy jets, fake million-dollar bill, giant one tangle

a backstage passes, Disney Kitch, an oozy machine gun, why not? Oh, and a golf cart, a version of a Cadillac escalate. The auction raised about $200,000, so not much. Meanwhile, Promo was bopping around the world on stolen money from Germany to Madrid, Spain, to Panama, where he looked into citizenship, then on to Hong Kong, finally to Indonesia. Two days later on June 14th, 2007, a German tourist spotted Lou

ten on the beach in Bali, a motherfucker. He snapped a photo, then promptly called the police and was connected with the FBI. The FBI then worked with the Indonesian National Police in Bali who agreed to deem Perlman

an undesirable visitor. He was arrested on bank and wire fraud charges and flown back to the U.S. It's finally over. Lou Promen, indicted by a federal grand jury, June 27th, 2007, a grifter till the day he died, he would tell fellow inmates, he was actually working with the police to turn over the persons or person, you know, who are really committing all this fraud.

Even told his girlfriend, Tammy, that, his beard, and that he told her that it went all the way up to the top, to the governor of Florida, to the mayor of Orlando. It didn't. A year later, May 21st, 2008, Lewis J. Pearlman sentenced to 25 years in prison on charges of conspiracy, money laundering, and making false. statements during a bankruptcy proceeding. Man, should have been so many more years than that. He was convicted

of stealing from roughly 2,000 individual investors, many of them elderly Florida retirees whose retirees and golden years he had fucking ruined forever. Inheritances also down the drain. The total amount may never be truly known, but it was north of $317 million from the

Ponzi scheme. And beyond the Ponzi scheme, a dozen banks were out for more than $130 million in back loans. He had paid some of the banks back a little bit of that $160 million he had borrowed roughly, and motherfucker stole almost $450 million, almost a half a billion dollars that we know of. Where did it all go? We will never know.

After, you know, he is convicted and sentenced and everything. His financial empire, of course, has collapsed. It goes in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. When he was sentenced to prison, the court appointed bankruptcy trustee managed to recover a limited pool of assets that would total roughly $35 million from asset sales, settlements, and royalties resulting in a general unsecured creditors and individual Ponzi scheme victims receiving an initial payout of about four cents on the dollar. And that includes Dr. Chow's descendants.

So we don't know exactly how much they got, but probably like, instead of 14 million, probably a lot less than one million. God damn. Lewis J. Proman died in prison on August 19, 2016, alone on a cheap hospital bed, not surrounded by any loved ones. he didn't have anybody left who loved him by that point died a heart complication at the age of 62 so you know

a little bit of a kind of not really happy ending but a little bit of justice his gluttony and greed finally caught up with that piece of shit with Blimp Boy now six feet under that will take us out of this time suck timeline good job soldier you've made it back barely

that was a lot of info that guy was all over the place Before some final thoughts, just a bit more about the sexual misconduct allegations. Lou Proman never charged any sexual crimes officially, but it was an open secret for many, many years, that something felt off with Lou and the young boys he surrounded himself with. In 2007, in Vanity Fair, as I mentioned, there was that long article addressing the rumors. The article included an interview with Steve Mooney, Prozman's assistant, who had lived with him in his house for two years, so somebody who saw a lot. And Mooney said, quote, some guys joked about it. I remember one singer asking me, have you let Lou blow you yet?

I would absolutely say the guy was a sexual predator. All the talent knew what Lou's game was. If they say no, they're lying to you. And you know, a lot of the theories of why people haven't talked about this more is because, yeah, just image, embarrassment, shame. But especially at that time, if people would have come forward, you know, all these girls love them. They would have been confused, especially in the 90s, you know, early 2000s, been like, wait, is this guy gay? I don't understand now. they wouldn't fucking understand the nature of the predatory behavior possibly.

And so it's thought that, like, yeah, he did this shit a lot. Dennis McLean, backstreet boy, A.J. McLean's mom gave an interview as well and said, as a mother, you kind of put two and two together. Yet there was always that fine line where you sat back and went, okay, is this a guy who always wanted to be a father or an uncle? Is this all innocent or is it more? I kind of thought there may have been some strange things going on, but you just didn't know. Article also stated, to this day, the question of Perlman's behavior remains a sensitive topic

amongst former members of his boy bands. For every young man or parent who says he experienced or saw something inappropriate, there are two who won't discuss it. And three more who deny hearing anything but rumors. More than a dozen insiders told me they heard stories of prominent behavior while insisting they experienced nothing untoward themselves.

So everybody was basically like, yeah, I heard stuff, but never me. Do you think he was a creep? I definitely think he was a fucking creep. I think he used his position of power to sexually take advantage of both young men and minors. I mean, taking advantage of people with his bread and bun.

I mean, he did it financially nonstop. And then he, you know, with all these rumors, like, yeah, could I see him doing that in the sexual realm and just kind of what, you know, we know about him and his vibe? Absolutely. Man, dude was definitely a predator. I mean, if you get people to invest, you know, money with you, especially like their life savings and something you know is a scam, I mean, you are morally bankrupt, a true scumback. And if somebody took advantage of finds out and beats the fuck out of you or better yet kills you, oh, man, good. You deserve it. I wish this episode would have ended not with Lou Pearlman's, you know, death in a hospital bed, but his fucking murder, violent murder.

Fuck, Blimp Boy. And all the con artists like him, you know, you're not smarter than everybody else. You're just more disgusting. Time for the takeaways. Time shock. Top five takeaways. Number one, Lou Pearlman, a lifelong liar. I always tried to show himself in the best light.

Wanted to flaunt wealth, let everybody know around him, how cool things. he was. One of the few stories that seemed like a childhood live, but turned out to be true is that he was first cousins with Art Garfunkel. Number two, Lou Proman, a lifelong fan of all things aviation, but mostly blimp's. Blimp boy grew up with his small bedroom face in the old Flushing Queens Airport. World's Fair brought the Goodyear Blimp, and thus Lou met the first love of his life. He was able to take that love from a childhood

interest into a teenage part-time job and finally into a career. Or the childhood stuff could all be a stolen story from Alan Gross. and Lou just managed to con his way to the top on borrowed history. Number three, regardless of where his history with Blimps began, Lou truly did have success in that industry. His Jordash failure slash possible insurance fraud scheme

did result in Lou running a company that signed advertising contracts with McDonald's, the McBlimp, you know, MetLife, Budweiser, and Seaworld. Number four, after Lou Promen got bored with Blimps, he became obsessed with new kids on the block, decided he could make his own boy band, and somehow he did, and then made more boy bands.

Lou brought together both the Backstreet Boys and InSync two of the most successful boy bands of all time and worked with a lot of other and very impressive acts many of whom he formed O-Town, LFO, Take 5, US5, Solid Harmony, Innocence, which was a girl group he co-managed with Justin Timberlake's mom, which briefly included Britney Spears, Aaron Carter, Jordan Knight, Marshall Dillon,

country pop boy group co-created with Kenny Fucking Rogers and Brooke Brooke Hogan. Brooke Hogan. Now number five, new info. Now that we know that Lou was already in mid-collapse with his Ponzi scheme, when his 2002 entrepreneurial handbook bans, brands, and billions. My top 10 rules for making any business go platinum was being published.

Let's take a look at the best advice he gave about money. This piece of shit. Here are Lou Pearlman's seven rules for borrowing from friends and family. He wrote, I never asked anyone to invest if one, they couldn't understand what the deal was or the amount of risk invalienable. or if they couldn't afford to lose all the money they'd invested. Two, I never misled any of them because they would respect and forgive me if I tried and

failed, but not if I lied to them. Three, I didn't ask anybody whom I knew to have homicidal tendencies, and I never pushed anyone who had misgivings. The homicidal part's weird. Four, I put everything in writing and insisted that they have their lawyers, look it over. Five, I made damn sure the deal worked. Six, I made damn sure the deal worked. Seven, I'm a damn sure the deal worked.

God, he just had no fucking conscience or soul. He wrote that shit. What are he thinking when he writes that, knowing he's the exact opposite of that? He just didn't give a fuck about integrity. Man, fuck him forever. Rot in hell, Blimp Boy, a born grifter who lied as easily as he breathed

and stole from basically everybody he met. Time shock. Top five take away. Lou Pearlman, boy bands, blimps, and a $300 million scam has been sucked. But really, it's fucking even a bigger scam than that. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for their help in making time suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins. Thanks to Logan Keith helping publish this episode, designing merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com.

Thanks to Heather Rylinder. Thanks to my fucking, thanks to my mouth for deciding to fucking be fucked up today. Thanks for a fun one. Thanks to the All Seen Eyes, moderating, the cult of the curious private Facebook page, the mod squad, making sure Discord keeps running smooth and everybody over on the TimeSuck and bad magic subreddits.

And now, time for some updates. Get your TimeSucker updates. Our first update this week from those sent in, Bojangles at Timesuckpodcast.com comes from a young woman with a truly superior genetics. She could probably hit a 350-foot home run right now without warming up. Even if she's never swung a bat.

I'm going to believe that. based on her parentage alone. Another triple M. Madison, motherfucking Murphy. Sent in a message with the subject line of, my dad is Dale Murphy. She wrote, oh man, 12-year-old me right now is thrilled. She wrote, hi, Dan and Crew. My name is Maddie.

I'm a longtime time-sook super fan. When I heard this week's episode, I had to email you immediately. My jaw nearly hit the floor when I heard you mention my dad. I'm the youngest of my family, born in 93, so I never had the chance to see my dad play the way my older brothers did. However, I'm incredibly proud to be his daughter and love any chance I get to brag about him. He truly is the best.

And I agree with you so deserving of the Hall of Fame. Maybe one day. Anyway, thank you for the podcast. It's been a comfort listen to mine for almost a decade. You're a huge inspiration to me for my own career of podcasting, my comedy, and the way I see the world. You can read this on Time Zucker updates if you want, but either way, I just wanted to reach out. Big fan forever, Maddie. And Maddie, ah, you sound awesome.

And I love hearing that Dale Murphy is also a great dad. For the rest of you, let me nerd out for a second. I love baseball. I was obsessed with it as a kid in the mid-to-late 80s. And I watched more Braves games than any other games because Pop Award, it was his favorite team, and thanks to TBS, we were actually able to watch most of their games in small-town, Idaho.

Dale Murphy played with the Braves throughout the 80s when he won the NL MVP back to back in 1982 and 1993 as a silver-slugging gold-gloved outfielder, even though he'd been a first. first basement, just a few years before. Then the next two years in 84 and 85, he led the NL in home runs. Then in 1987, had a career high of 44 home runs. I watched several of those be hit that season.

The cumulative effects of four knee surgeries and the arthritis that came from that cut his career short, but he was truly one of baseball's best players in the decade of the 80s when six of those years, he was a top 12 candidate as far as MVP votes go. and a great guy. Cooper's Town or not will always be an MVP to me. So thank you, Maddie. Tell him, I love him.

Let's end on a message now. I came in from the Oak, sent him with the subject line of Motherfucker Jones has a bone to pick with you. And the branding. This will make sense. So, Dan, Suck King,

and Hoover Man of Idaho. I would like to start this email by saying I've been a fan of yours since the early days of Pandora, at least 10, 12 years. I truly appreciate your positivity, depth and girthy commentary. Your brain is truly wet and wrinkled.

That being said, now on to some disrespect. I work with a guy who goes by the nickname of Motherfucker Jones. We'd call him that because he tells new hires that Jamie Fox, he tells him the Motherfucker Jones story the Jamie Fox did in that movie Horrible Bosses, as if it happened and lets them believe it for a while, which cracks us up every time. One late night, we needed something to listen to, so I decided to introduce him with his suck and put on Dick Bird's tail. He enjoyed it so much, I decided to cut the episode off at the end,

you know, before I say it's fucking bullshit, and elected to not tell him the dude wasn't real, as a joke to myself. And so, not to spoil it. Fast forward two weeks or so, and we've been quoting the episode occasionally. I'm talking about hairbrushes when he says, okay, I have to know what that dude looks like.

Knowing the jig was up, I explained the situation, and he was incredibly disappointed. He now jokingly says, when I put on the podcast, you tell him motherfucker Jones is out here, and I've got a problem with the sucker. A little anecdote,

while we were listening to the episode loudly on my Bluetooth speaker, I was TIG welding stainless steel right next to an open overhead door. It's 8 p.m. The two of us are the only ones there. So a delivery guy walks right up behind me, taps me on the shoulder. I proceed to jump, a foot in the air, jam a piece of red hot stainless steel directly into my stomach.

He wanted to ask what in the hell I was listening to. So now I carry a brand because of Cummins law. Sorry, not sorry for the length is email. Three out of five stars. Only would change the pain of the brand. Apologies for spelling and spacing, whatever. I'm typing this out intoxicated on my phone. phone.

Uh, the oak, sorry about the branding, but I love the vibe of your message. You guys sound super fun and like you have a great time of work. And Motherfucker Jones, uh, it has the best ring to it. I got to play part of that scene now so everybody understands. Are you a businessman? Yeah. Motherfucker Jones. How's that?

Motherfucker Jones. Your first name is Motherfucker? Not motherfucker, motherfucker. White people say er, Negroes say fuck God. I got it. You say E-R, I say A-H. Cool. Cool.

It is a cool name. Tell Motherfucker Jones that I want no trouble. And thanks everybody for the messages. I'm suckers. I needed that. We all did. Well, thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Be sure in rate and review time suck if you haven't already.

Don't rip off anybody this week, especially your close friends and family and biggest supporters. you don't actually have to get rich other people's expense. You can actually do it in a way that helps others instead of hurts them. So suck on that or you keep on sucking. And Magic Productions.

A modern abetter. That's all together. Poop balloon. Pooh-balloon. Joe Dash has a moot-a-loon. Poop-balloon. George-ash poop balloon.

Loon! Joy, Ashla.