Hit Charade

The Hit Charade: Lou Pearlman, Boy Bands, and the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in US History by Tyler Gray, 265 pages

In 2007, Lou Pearlman, the svengali behind the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, Aaron Carter, Take 5, and O-Town, was arrested in Bali and extradited to the US for trial.  He would be convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for having been the architect of a web of fraud that cheated investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars.  This fraud began long before he assembled his first boy band, and continued long after his success had faded.  In fact, the most surprising thing about Pearlman's crimes may be that they hardly involved his music business at all.

As untangled by Tyler Gray, much of Pearlman's life seems to be a long series of failures from each of which he managed to emerge in a better position than before.  The key to his success was appearances - Pearlman took care to appear rich, and to give his financial house of cards the illusion of solidity.  The music business was both the perfect field for these tactics and the ultimate weapon - a wall of platinum records goes a long way towards convincing investors their money is secure.  Of course, it is the nature of Ponzi schemes to collapse, and the larger they become, the more spectacular that collapse.  Unfortunately, Gray writes with a detached outsider's view, denying the reader any kind of drama or emotional involvement.  The book's flat retelling of the high life of a lowlife suggests that most of the research consisted of rewriting old news stories, although alternatively it may primarily be a byproduct of the author's naked contempt for his subject.  Whatever the cause, the result is a book that manages to make pop superstardom and massive financial fraud both seem dull.