The Horrifying Legacy Of Lou Pearlman, Backstreet Boys Creator

It didn't matter if you were Team Backstreet Boys or Team NSYNC, if you were a young, boy-band-loving child of the mid-90s, you were being manipulated by svengali Lou Pearlman. The talent-assembler behind just about every pop act of that era — OTown and LFO are also up there — invented the genre after watching how young girls consume band merchandise, wanting to exploit their love of dreamy-eyed serenaders for profit. And yet that wasn't even the most chilling part of Lou's history, one that ended when he died behind bars in 2016 mid-sentence for running a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme.

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No, Lou Pearlman didn't just create a turn-of-millennium soundtrack; he created a shameful legacy that involved the financial rape of teenagers, and according to some reports, sexual abuse. Below, some disturbing accounts of the man who created '90s bubblegum pop.

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Lou was, objectively speaking, physically enormous.

Emblematic of greed and gluttony, Lou was anywhere between 315 to 350 pounds in his managing days. "He was so unbelievably fat—he used to sit down and his middle tire was down to the floor," Jennifer Emanuel, the daughter of one of his investors told Vanity Fair. "His favorite place was that all-you-could-eat buffet at Olive Garden." Ugh, God.

He pretty much created the rivalry between NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys…both bands under his control.

When Lou spoke to the New Yorker about it in 2014, he was candid about capitalizing on the idea of competition. "My feeling was, where there’s McDonald’s, there’s Burger King, and where there’s Coke there’s Pepsi, and where there’s Backstreet Boys there’s going to be someone else," he said. "Someone’s going to have it; why not us?”

And by the way, neither band was initially aware he was pulling the strings. BSB member Kevin Richardson confessed to being especially hurt in the 2015 doc, Backstreet Boys: Show 'Em What You're Made Of.
"Around 1995 I came off the road and Lou said, 'Come here, I want to show you something,'" Kevin explained. "He showed me a VHS tape of this group.We're molding them in your image, that's what they told us… Damn dude, I guess one wasn't enough? So now you gotta have 15 boy groups."

He stole millions from impressionable, hard-working teenagers, basically bleeding boy bands like Backstreet Boys dry.

Lou built his fortune on the backs of all his acts, but the Backstreet Boys faced the worst of it. In 1998, the band sued their manager having learned that they were worth 50 million dollars a piece. With Lou scamming them after four years of touring and recording, each member had made only $300,000. It was reported that that factors out to only $12,000 per person a year, "practically sweat-shop wages" compared to Lou's earnings.

And how was he able to do it? Apparently, the fine print of the contract had Lou as legally the sixth member of the Backstreet Boys. Shady AF.

Most disturbing were the accounts that Lou molested countless of his young protegés.

The 2007 Vanity Fair article, Mad About the Boys follows a series of accusations that Lou was cultivating these boy bands to curb his own sexual appetite. "Honestly, I don’t think Lou ever thought we would become stars," said the late LFO singer Rich Cronin."I just think he wanted cute guys around him; this was all an excuse. And then lightning crazily struck and an empire was created. It was all dumb luck. I think his motives for getting into music were very different."

Lance Bass elaborated on the hearsay in 2014. "He would always have young boy limo drivers for Trans Continental Records. " He told Hollywood Reporter. "Those limo drivers would always be put into different boy bands. Then I'd hear rumors that he would molest the boys before they would even get into the groups. I don't know how much of that is true, but to me, where there's smoke, there's fire."

He hit on his assistant, Basic Instinct style.

Steve Mooney, then an aspiring singer and Lou's personal assistant remembers exactly when his employer came onto him. Steve had gone to Lou asking what he had to do to achieve his boy band dreams. "I’ll never forget this as long as I live. He leaned back in his chair, in his white terry cloth robe and white underwear, and spread his legs,” he said in 2007. “And then he said, and these were his exact words, ‘You’re a smart boy. Figure it out.’"

There's especially suspicions that Lou may have gotten his hands on Nick and Aaron Carter.

That's right, with the Backstreet Boys member and his baby brother both managed by Lou, they may have been prey to his advances. Why? Well, Jane Carter, the boys' mother, was especially vocal in the Vanity Fair exposé. And although her words were cryptic, the message was loud and clear.

"Certain things happened, and it almost destroyed our family," she said. "I tried to warn everyone. I tried to warn other mothers, tried to expose him for what he was years ago. I hope you expose him, because the financial [scandal] is the least of his injustices."