The story of boy band Svengali turned Ponzi schemer Lou Pearlman is the focus of an upcoming YouTube documentary. In the first trailer for The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story, former boy banders discuss how, despite selling millions of records and selling out arenas, the mastermind behind the pop groups ripped off the young singers.
“Things were going great for us, this was going to be our first check presentation,” N’Sync’s Lance Bass says in the trailer. “I open up the envelope, I see the check and oh my gosh, my heart sunk. I couldn’t believe the number I was looking at.”
Backstreet Boys’ A.J. McLean shares a similar anecdote, “Something isn’t adding up. Lou’s getting paid. Promoters are getting paid. Never in a million years thought a person that I entrusted my life with could do something like this. And then to find out how many other people this thing that he did affected.”
The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story, premiering today at SXSW ahead of its April 3rd debut on YouTube, features new interviews with Bass and McLean as well as N’Sync’s JC Chasez and Chris Kirkpatrick, O-Town’s Ashley Parker Angel, Aaron Carter and Lynn Harless, Justin Timberlake’s mother.
“The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story is a documentary feature that tells the story of famed boy band impresario Lou Pearlman,” YouTube added of the film. “The film tracks his life from his childhood in Queens, through discovering mega-bands *NSYNC and The Backstreet Boys, and chronicles his later life, including his perpetration of one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history.” Pearlman died in prison while awaiting surgery following a cardiac arrest in August 2016.