The man behind the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync is getting ready to do a long jailhouse rock.
Boy band impresario Lou Pearlman pleaded guilty Thursday to swindling more than $300 million from banks and investors.
As part of a deal with federal prosecutors to avoid even more heinous charges, the 53-year-old Pearlman pleaded guilty in an Orlando courtroom to two counts of conspiracy for orchestrating a Ponzi scheme, along with single counts of money laundering and making false claims in a bankruptcy filing.
"I'm accepting full responsibility," the portly music svengali told U.S. District Judge G. Kendall Sharp, who quizzed him about the details of the fraud for almost an hour.
Sentencing was set for May 21, and he faces up to 25 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
But prosecutors said they will seek a shortened prison term for Pearlman, depending on how much he cooperates with prosecutors, bankruptcy trustees, the FBI, the IRS and state regulatory agencies in tracking down unnamed coconspirators and help recover the loot to repay investors.
Pearlman is accused of bilking nearly $200 million from 1,800 investors by selling worthless stock in bogus companies. He also managed to bilk an additional $140 million in fraudulent bank loans using phony financial statements and tax returns supplied by a nonexistent accounting firm.
The feds were clued into the scheme by several victims, who claimed they gave the persuasive Pearlman money for high-yield savings accounts only to later discover that the he and his various corporate entities pocketed the money.
That sparked a probe by the FBI and IRS, who raided Pearlman's Orlando offices early last year. Pearlman subsequently disappeared during a European tour with his latest teenybop creation, US5, and went on the lam, turning up in Israel, Russia, Panama and Brazil before finally being collared in Bali, and carted back Florida.
Pearlman admitted to Sharp that he lied to investors on numerous occasions, such as when he claimed he had a German investment associate with a $50 million line of bailout capital, or when he alleged his Transcontinental Airlines had 41 planes in its fleet, when in reality there were only two.
Pearlman also copped to using the signature of a late associate, Harry Milner, who died in 2003, to avoid repayments.
When Sharp asked where all the millions went, Pearlman couldn't give a detailed accounting, only saying that the cash bankrolled various investments, along with "aircraft, living expenses, [and] working capital."