Netflix’s Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam documentary is revisiting details surrounding Lou Pearlman’s death.
The disgraced talent manager, best known for forming famous music groups like *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, died in August 2016 while serving his 25-year sentence for money laundering at a Miami prison. He was convicted of fraud, conspiracy and more crimes after authorities discovered he stole more than $300 million from investors through one of the largest and longest-running Ponzi schemes in U.S. history — much of which is explored in the final episode of Netflix’s three-part docuseries, which premiered on Wednesday, July 24.
The first half of the series focuses on how Pearlman created and funded his old boy bands while taking a large portion of their profits as a “sixth member,” per their recording contracts. According to Billboard, he was eventually sued by nearly every single act — including *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys in the late ‘90s — after building a business empire on fraud.
The end of Dirty Pop recounts how Pearlman spent his final years behind bars for his crimes before ultimately dying of cardiac arrest at age 62. The documentary also reveals what happened after his death was reported, including how apparently no one attempted to claim his body from the Florida morgue.
“I remember calling the coroner a couple days later, and he was like, ‘Man, I was starting to wonder what to do with his body ‘cause nobody has contacted me,’” Michael Johnson, a former member of Y2K boy band Natural (which Pearlman also formed), recalls.
As the singer, 41, notes, it was a “roller coaster circus” trying to find someone who could claim Pearlman’s body. Ultimately, the talent manager ended up being buried in a family plot in New York without a tombstone. According to the doc, “only five people” went to his funeral. To this day, there’s no stone that marks where he’s buried in the cemetery.