Backstreet Boys mogul faces 25 year sentence

The impresario behind the Backstreet Boys is set to plead guilty to charges of embezzling $300m. Lou Pearlman, 53, who also represented Justin Timberlake's band N'Sync, has been in a US jail since he was spotted by a couple of German tourists and arrested in Indonesia in December 2006. The charges he faces, for enticing investors and major banks into putting money into a fictitious travel agency, a fake German bank and a South Florida accounting firm that only existed on paper, carry a maximum sentence of 25 years behind bars. He is set to make a plea agreement in court on Thursday.

Pearlman (pictured), a cousin of Art Garfunkel, is no stranger to scandal. A brilliant salesman, he worked in the aviation industry in the 1980s, where he ran a helicopter commuter service. At one stage he owned a functioning German blimp. This crashed, leaving a dubious insurance claim amongst the debris.

It was after he became involved with the Chippendales male dance troupe that Pearlman set about creating the Backstreet Boys, a band that sold 100m records. Pearlman became the biggest boy band mogul in the world, but all but one of the groups he represented have taken him to court for misrepresentation and fraud. As Timberlake remarked, "I was being monetarily raped by a Svengali".

In 2007, a Vanity Fair article alleged that Pearlman had initiated inappropriate relationships with several of the boys he had worked with. The mother of Nick Carter, one of the Backstreet Boys, said that "certain things happened, and it almost destroyed our family". Rich Cronin, the lead singer of another boy band, said that Pearlman used the notion of realigning boys' auras as an excuse to touch them.

Another Pearlman ruse involved setting up websites which encouraged aspiring performers to pay $2,000 in the mistaken belief they would be talent-scouted. Pearlman is now planning to help investigators to prosecute his accomplices in the scam based on the Transcontinental Airlines Travel Services which he established in 1981. The Bank of America was amongst those duped. The company only ever existed on paper, and since 1999 it simply hasn't existed at all.