Dirty secret behind huge boy bands exposed in new Netflix docuseries

A new Netflix docuseries explores the “disgusting” underbelly of massive pop acts N*SYNC and the Backstreet Boys in their ’90s heyday.

The controversial figure behind two of the music industry’s biggest-ever pop acts is the subject of a fascinating new three-part Netflix docuseries, Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam.

The series takes a close look at Lou Pearlman, the mysterious figure who created both the Backstreet Boys and N*SYNC in the 90s, before he was exposed as running one of the largest Ponzi schemes in US history, with more than $300 million in debts.

Perhaps the most fascinating element of the story, for those who had only a passing knowledge in Pearlman’s dodgy dealings, was that it wasn’t strictly a case of the music manager robbing his boy bands to make himself rich.

Sure, Pearlman did that – it’s revealed that he even secretly made himself a sixth member of both bands, meaning he was paid as both a member and a manager.

Lou Pearlman with the Backstreet Boys.

The Backstreet Boys sued him for fraud and misrepresentation when they learnt the scale of the disparity: At he hight of their career, having been on tour for two years, they had been paid only $300,000 while he’d made $10 million from them.

It was the same story for N*SYNC.

“I was in the biggest band in the world and selling millions of records … but I can’t even afford my apartment in Orlando. I couldn’t even get a car,” band member Lance Bass told ABC’s 20/20.

But the success of the Backstreet Boys and later N*SYNC acted as sort of a front for Pearlman’s bigger scam, the Ponzi scheme he ran duping investors out of their hard-earned money. An expert forger of official documents, he lured them with materials promising a risk-free, high-yield investment program. The program didn’t actually exist: Pearlman could only pay those who’d invested using the money new victims were giving him. Eventually, his luck would run out.

Lance Bass (centre) from N*SYNC said that at the height of the band’s career, he couldn’t even afford to buy a car.

But until it did, the boy bands he’d created were the perfect lure. Pearlman travelled the world on private jets with chart-topping pop acts – who wouldn’t want to invest their money with this guy?

By 2006, the walls were closing in, and as investors started to demand their money back, Pearlman went on the run. He was spotted across several countries before finally being arrested in Bali, where his time evading police came to an end when a fellow tourist recognised him at their hotel restaurant from a newspaper report.

Lou Pearlman with the boy band O-Town.

Two years later, Pearlman was convicted of charges including conspiracy and money laundering, and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

His hustling didn’t stop there – he even unsuccessfully pitched an idea for a reality show centred around his new life in prison. But in 2016, Pearlman died in prison from a heart attack. He was 62.

One fascinating element of the docuseries is how, almost a decade after his death, many of Pearlman’s associates are reluctant to speak ill of the convicted fraudster. Several of his employees interviewed on camera insist he was a great man who helped many people (despite all evidence to the contrary).

Members of his biggest boy bands N*SYNC, the Backstreet Boys and O-Town are also interviewed, and all wrestle with an uncomfortable dichotomy: Pearlman cheated them, and many others, out of millions, but they also owe their entire careers to him.

“It was success on a level that has never been seen in pop history,” says Michael Johnson, a member of another Pearlman act called Natural, of the music mogul’s glory years.

“But the fact that all of this was financed by people’s life savings... is disgusting.”