He was the person behind many successful s boy bands , having formed and funded the Backstreet Boys. After attempting to evade capture, Pearlman was apprehended in Bali , Indonesia in June He pled guilty to conspiracy , money laundering , and making false statements during bankruptcy proceedings. In , Pearlman was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Lou Pearlman was born and raised in Queens , New York , the only child of Jewish parents Hy Pearlman, who ran a dry cleaning business, and Reenie Pearlman, a school lunchroom aide.
Pearlman's home at Mitchell Gardens Apartments was located across from Flushing Airport , where he and childhood friend Alan Gross would watch blimps take off and land. This is disputed by Gross, who claims he was the school reporter, and allowed Pearlman to tag along.
Garfunkel's fame and wealth helped inspire Pearlman's own interest in the music business. As a teenager he managed a band, but when success in music proved elusive, he turned his attention to aviation. During his first year as a student at Queens College , Pearlman wrote a business plan for a class project based on the idea of a helicopter taxi service in New York City.
By the late s, he had launched the business based on his business plan, starting with one helicopter. Returning to the U. He used the funds from Jordache to construct a blimp, which promptly crashed. He leased the blimp to McDonald's for advertising. Airship International suffered when one of its clients left and three of the aircraft crashed. After he took the company public in , Pearlman became personally and professionally close to Jerome Rosen, a partner at small-cap trading firm Norbay Securities.
