Just a week into his 25-year stay in an Atlanta federal prison, former touchy-feely boy-band impresario and Ponzi schemer Lou Pearlman thinks he's found a new way to early release: snitchin'.
Pearlman, the 54-year-old who started *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and others, was moved about a week ago to the Georgia facility after spending more than a year in the Orange County Florida jail while awaiting trial for his financial fraud. He pleaded guilty to federal charges in exchange for a 25-year sentence. A judge told him he could get a month knocked off of his sentence for every $1 million he helped recover for his bilked investors. But it was always pretty clear that Pearlman, a guy who once owned a 16,000-square-foot mansion, a $250,000 diamond studded Rolex, a Gulfstream private jet, a golf cart made to look like a Cadillac Escalade, and life size statues of R2D2 and Anakin Skywalker, spent or gave away all of the stolen cash. He was floating 84 mostly bogus companies when he got busted. So instead of hunting down money he knows he spent faster than Brewster's Millions, he's ratting out a fellow inmate from his old digs in Orange County.