The former boy band svengali and now disgraced businessman has swapped his 16,000 square foot Florida mansion for an 8ft-by-16ft prison cell.
The bankruptcy court tracking down Pearlman's assets may receive an influx of cash if that Orlando mansion sells at auction on Saturday, although it is believed there are large mortgages on the property. Once valued at $7.1m (£3.52m) it is now thought to be worth $5m ... due to Florida's much publicized housing market collapse.
"The court hopes to recoup some of the money owed through the sale of Pearlman's multimillion dollar Florida home," said Lamar Fisher, CEO of Fisher Auction Company, which is conducting the sale tomorrow. He is expecting large international interest because of the low dollar.
Based on the plea agreement discussed on Thursday in an Orlando courtroom where Pearlman pleaded guilty to charges with a maximum sentence of 25 years, every assistance he gives in helping to recover assets will likely lighten his sentence.
Prosecutors believe there is money somewhere. But Pearlman had previously told the court he was broke, and was in fact represented by lawyers, who were assigned at free by the court.
"I think you all were able to see he was unequivocal in accepting responsibility, and now we have to get on with the job of making the investors as whole as we possibly can," his court-appointed defence lawyer Fletcher Peacock said after Thursday hearing.
No clues were given in the 50 minute hearing as to where the millions are. Pearlman himself was vague about where the money had gone. "In different investments ... aircraft, living expenses, working capital," he told the Judge G. Kendall Sharp.
Bankruptcy trustee Soneet Kapila, who is recovering money for investors, was at the trial and he said Pearlman had accumulated a meager $2.5m.
His one-time attorney J. Cheney Mason, who represented him in numerous music industry lawsuits alleging unfair and fraudulent business practices, told Associated Press Pearlman could not have possibly spent it all. Mason alone helped put $60m in judgments in his pockets, he said.
Mason says Pearlman owes him some $19m, but he does not expect to see any of it. Mason also said he had no idea Pearlman was operating the fraudulent stock and investment schemes, despite representing him for years. "It just shows you how masterful Pearlman was at being a crook," he said.
Mason's connection was with one Pearlman company that did actually exist; Transcontinental Records, which brought many millions to the man his proteges called Big Poppa. Too many million, according to the members of the pop groups he founded; as all but one of the relationships ended with lawsuits accusing Pearlman of taking too large a slice of revenues. According to cable channel VH1's 100 Most Shocking Rock & Roll Moments, Pearlman and the record company BMG claimed nearly all of the $300m *NSYNC had made from record, tour, and merchandise sales. This left only $7m dollars for the five members of the band. They eventually moved to another label after a lawsuit.
Former *NSYNC star Justin Timberlake famously said, during a September 2006 interview with US magazine Rolling Stone: "I was being monetarily raped by a svengali"
Less metaphorical were allegations that Pearlman behaved inappropriately with the young teenage members of various bands. The US magazine Vanity Fair wrote about the allegations late last year as part of a long article - Mad About The Boys - about Pearlman's life and times but no charges were ever filed.
In a separate interview former *NSYNC member Lance Bass, who wrote a successful autobiography Out of Sync , said that though he never witnessed inappropriate touching or lewd behavior, but he admitted he found Pearlman "odd".
There is no doubt that Pearlman could have been a successful businessman without turning to dishonesty. His business career began in the early 1980s when he started a helicopter-taxi service ferrying business people from New York airports to Manhattan. Then came a blimp-advertising business and then a move to Florida.
In his 2003 autobiography, Bands, Brands, & Billions: My Top 10 Rules for Making Any Business Go Platinum he saw the potential in boy bands after seeing New Kids on the Block on television.
He organized his first auditions in 1992 with an advert in a Florida newspaper and there then followed 15 years piecing together new boy bands, either from scratch of latterly from reality TV shows. In fact he was working with the band US5 in Germany last year when his empire-of-cards began to collapse.
His yen for the music business was also said to be influenced by the success of his first cousin Art Garfunkel, who today possibly regrets the tribute scribed to his relative for the back cover of Bands, Brands etc. He wrote that Pearlman's "decency and his love of having fun at life earned him my trust many years ago".
