Lou Pearlman, who has died at the age of 62, was a record producer and manager credited with starting the boy band craze and launching the careers of the Backstreet Boys and NSync; his career ended in disgrace when he was accused of being behind one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in US history, in which up to 1,700 investors were defrauded of $300-million. Pearlman, a first cousin of the singer Art Garfunkel, began his career as a pop impresario in 1992 when he set up a record label and placed a classified ad for teen male vocalists .The result was the Backstreet Boys, five hitherto unknown singers (AJ McLean, Howie D, Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson, and Brian Littrell).Their breakthrough came in 1997 with Quit Playing Games (With My Heart), which helped to fuel album sales of 14-million. They went on to become the bestselling boy band to date.Pearlman repeated the formula with NSync, which launched the career of Justin Timberlake.But band members began to notice that their pay cheques bore little relation to their earnings.Backstreet Boys initiated a lawsuit against Pearlman, having received only $300,000 for all of their work, while Pearlman had made millions. In 1999 NSync joined the queue of litigants, which eventually included all but one of Pearlman's artists.But it was the Ponzi scheme that proved his undoing. In the '80s he had founded Trans Continental Airlines and set about convincing would-be investors to get in on the ground floor of a fleet of charter planes.In reality there were no planes; the jumbo jet in the Trans Continental brochure was a toy aeroplane, and every dollar invested went into Pearlman's pockets.After he was arrested in 2007 he fled to Bali but was captured and sent back to the US. In 2008 he was sentenced to 25 years in jail.At around the time Pearlman was arrested, Vanity Fair ran an exposé that suggested he had acted inappropriately with some young male musicians, seeking to exchange sex for help with their careers.1954-2016..