Book Review: The Hit Charade: Lou Pearlman, Boy Bands, and the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in U.S. History

The best business books are almost always the ones about scandal.

Success is great, but it's much more interesting to read about a convoluted web of lies designed to bilk investors out of $500 million over 20 years in what is possibly the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history (with the exception of Social Security).

In The Hit Charade: Lou Pearlman, Boy Bands, and the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in U.S. History, Radar reporter Tyler Gray examines boy band mogul Lou Perlman's illustrious career that involved deception from the beginning. It started with an airline that didn't own any planes but was able to raise hundreds of millions to fund a lavish lifestyle and later provide the start-up capital to form hit boy bands including N'SYNC, The Backstreet Boys, and O-Town.

Gray writes well, with an eye for what's interesting and relevant -- I read the entire book in an afternoon, and The Hit Charade isn't bogged down with the minutiae of the scam the way that so many of these books are. Instead it paints an interesting portrait of a complex charlatan -- Gray was the only reporter to interview Pearlman while he was behind bars.

What sets Pearlman apart from so many other frauds is that his impact is so enduring: He created the soundtrack for a generation of teenage girls, and paved the way for Justin Timberlake to become one of the biggest pop stars ever. Without Lou Pearlman, there never would have been this.