Lou Pearlman: the fraudster who made more than $300m in scams

The man who brought the world the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, music mogul Lou Pearlman was a charmer and a chancer who conned $300m from anyone he could, including family, friends and pensioners.

"He could make you believe anything. Anything at all," is how his publicist, Jay Marose, summed up the charms of the man who liked to be known as "big Poppa" in Vanity Fair. His client, 53-year-old music mogul Lou Pearlman, has just been sentenced to 25 years in prison for a two-decade scam that conned American banks and investors out of more than $300m (see below).

However, even in court he hadn't lost his touch: the presiding judge, who listed some of the ex-impresario's victims in court as "his family, close friends and people in their 70s and 80s who have lost their life savings", agreed to reduce the 25-year sentence by one month for every $1m Pearlman manages to repay.

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