The CON Accounting : A Research Thread

[Steel Magnolia]

New additions to the Chronological Timeline...

...

June 19, 1954 - Lou Pearlman is born in Flushing, a suburb of Queens, New York.

July 24, 1963 - Larry Rudolph is born in The Bronx, across the river from Queens, New York.

July 1997 - Lou Pearlman’s lawyer Larry Rudolph arranges auditions for Britney with a number of record labels in New York, accompanied by promo pictures featuring her lounging around her back garden in denim hot pants. Mercury and Epic, unimpressed with her demeanour and vocal range, turn her down.

[Ghoulia]

7 hours ago, RebellionSparkles said:

Did Lou Pearlman invest in Innosense? 

Yes!

[Ghoulia]

6 hours ago, Steel Magnolia said:

New additions to the Chronological Timeline...

...

June 19, 1954 - Lou Pearlman is born in Flushing, a suburb of Queens, New York.

July 24, 1963 - Larry Rudolph is born in The Bronx, across the river from Queens, New York.

July 1997 - Lou Pearlman’s lawyer Larry Rudolph arranges auditions for Britney with a number of record labels in New York, accompanied by promo pictures featuring her lounging around her back garden in denim hot pants. Mercury and Epic, unimpressed with her demeanour and vocal range, turn her down.

I am still working on Lou Pearlman.

The official connection between Lou Pearlman and Larry Rudolph, I think, will be through Jive Records. Steven Beer and Larry Rudolph are thanked on the first BSB album (1996) as part of "The Jive Clan". 

https://www.discogs.com/master/48132-Backstreet-Boys-Backstreet-Boys

[Steel Magnolia]

1 hour ago, Ghoulia said:

I am still working on Lou Pearlman.

The official connection between Lou Pearlman and Larry Rudolph, I think, will be through Jive Records. Steven Beer and Larry Rudolph are thanked on the first BSB album (1996) as part of "The Jive Clan". 

https://www.discogs.com/master/48132-Backstreet-Boys-Backstreet-Boys

 

Aug. 9, 1960 - Johnny Wright is born in Hyannis, Massachusetts, and grows up in Cape Cod.

1992 - Johnny Wright relocates to Orlando, Florida and begins managing the Backstreet Boys. With funding provided by Lou Pearlman, Wright moves the group to Europe to begin honing their act.

[Steel Magnolia]

1 hour ago, Ghoulia said:

I am still working on Lou Pearlman.

The official connection between Lou Pearlman and Larry Rudolph, I think, will be through Jive Records. Steven Beer and Larry Rudolph are thanked on the first BSB album (1996) as part of "The Jive Clan". 

https://www.discogs.com/master/48132-Backstreet-Boys-Backstreet-Boys

May 6, 1996 - The Backstreet Boys release their debut album, “Backstreet Boys” in Germany through Jive Records. The credits thank Larry Rudolph and Steven Beer as part of the “Jive Clan.”

[Ghoulia]

16 minutes ago, Steel Magnolia said:

May 6, 1996 - The Backstreet Boys release their debut album, “Backstreet Boys” in Germany through Jive Records. The credits thank Larry Rudolph and Steven Beer as part of the “Jive Clan.”

When did Larry Rudolph and Johnny Wright begin working together? That might help narrow down a specific Pearlman-Rudolph connection. 

[Ghoulia]

8 minutes ago, Ghoulia said:

When did Larry Rudolph and Johnny Wright begin working together? That might help narrow down a specific Pearlman-Rudolph connection. 

Lou Pearlman and Johnny Wright are partners in Transcontinental Entertainment, Inc. Incorporated 1995. 

Spoiler

 

[sunny_liston]

I unfort don't have time to contribute but just wanna say that I love following your investigations. The accounting criminality is so obvious in that Britney's wealth should be ~1 order of magnitude above what is currently reported. I wonder if she even knows that.

[Ghoulia]

Probably unrelated to the con accountings, but in my search to track down Larry's Orlando connection, I found this trademark he registered in 1997.

 

[Steel Magnolia]

15 hours ago, Ghoulia said:

Yes!

Do we have a source for this?

That Pearlman funded Innosense?

...

1997 - During this year, Britney joins the girl group “Innosense.” The group is managed by Lou Pearlman and Lynn Harless (mother of Justin Timberlake).

[Ghoulia]

 January 20, 2011 https://cyinterview.com/johnny-wright-whats-right-for-music-his-talent-search-and-britney-spears/

Johnny Wright: “I started with Britney when she was 15, just as she recorded Hit Me Baby. I put her as the opening act on the NSYNC tour. That’s really how our relationship started. She came through me with a good friend of mine Larry Rudolph. Then once she got on the NSYNC Tour, he was like, look, I need you to partner up with me on this and let’s do this."

--> Wikipedia says BOMT was recorded in May of 1998, so that makes Britney 16 at the time, but okay. Johnny Wright did tour internationally with BSB and Nsync, so that checks out.

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-great-and-terrible-lou-pearlman-boy-band-architect-and-ponzi-schemer-c453bd342d26/

"So is Lou the person who brought Britney to Jive? Because he wanted her for his girl group, the atrociously-named Innosense, and she decided to go solo instead?

It was Britney Spears’ agent, Larry Rudolph*, who is now one of the biggest agents in the music business, who, I think, advised her not to sign with Lou Pearlman. He’d represented Lou on some other deals, so he knew Lou, and for whatever reason, Larry advised her not to sign with Lou and he was the one who set up the meeting at Jive."

---> I cannot find these "other deals", which is super frustrating. One of the problems that I'm running into is that Pearlman lied about everything. For example, I tried for a while to connect Larry Rudolph & his CD copyright history (see boring article under spoiler, Larry reference on second page).

Spoiler

In 1997, Lou Pearlman had a trademark applied for a patent on cds in fun shapes (name of the company was Shape, CD).  I SO thought I could find a connection to Larry. 

So I found the paperwork for the patent and looked through all of the things Lou wanted to trademark/patent. That was fun, especially when I found the Humility Records logo. But I hit a wall when I realized that Lou Pearlman made up an entire law firm.

Spoiler

See the name Alan Siegel? That's NOT A REAL PERSON. 

See article here: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2007-03-12-cohensiegel12-story.html

"There is no Alan Siegel licensed as an accountant in Florida. There was an Alan Siegel who was once a vice president of Trans Continental Records. And court records from a 2005 lawsuit filed in Chicago, by the estate of one of Pearlman's investors, show that in 1995 that Alan Siegel helped arrange for a Coral Gables answering service to answer Cohen & Siegel's phone calls. Yet the former Trans Continental Records executive has long denied that he is the Alan Siegel of the accounting firm. "It's definitely not me," he said in a deposition in that 2005 lawsuit. Nancy Morgan, owner of Coral Gables Secretarial Services Inc., testified in that 2005 case that her company sent mail and faxes for Cohen & Siegel to Pearlman. And when the secretarial service would forward phone messages to the accounting firm, a machine would often answer with the message, "It's Lou Pearlman." Trans Continental was not only taking the messages for its independent auditor, it was footing the bills."

I did find reference to Rudolph & Beer making a special appearance at the October 10-14, 1996 Peter Thomas Entertainment Group's 'How Can I Be Down?' summit held in South Beach in Miami. https://957thebeat.iheart.com/content/2017-05-21-check-out-dj-khaled-in-1996/

Entire article here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MbayWgCcdq6YpWhN9PC_1w9JHU7j4SbP/view?usp=sharing

 

 

And lastly, the other connection I found, which is FAR from a smoking gun, is this guy, Kendall Minter who says he worked with Rudolph & Beer at some point between 1987-1995. https://mediaassetvault.com/about.html

"Over Kendall's 35+ year career he has represented political leaders such as Desmond Tutu, governmental agencies such as the Jamaican Cultural Development Commission, a variety of music artists ranging from Lena Horne, Third World, Shabba Ranks, Roy Ayers, Najee, Cassandra Wilson, Kirk Franklin, Dr. Creflo Dollar Music Ministry, Ashanti, The Backstreet Boys, Jermaine Dupri, Teddy Riley & Evander Holyfield."

 

 

[Ghoulia]

1 hour ago, Steel Magnolia said:

Do we have a source for this?

That Pearlman funded Innosense?

...

1997 - During this year, Britney joins the girl group “Innosense.” The group is managed by Lou Pearlman and Lynn Harless (mother of Justin Timberlake).

This article is pretty good: https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2007/11/mad-about-the-boys

"By his own estimate, Pearlman sank $3 million into the Backstreet Boys before he saw a penny of profit. Still, the music business thrilled him. Even before the band hit it big, he began planning more groups. The first was ’NSync—composed of Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, and three other singers—which Pearlman formed and dispatched to tour in Europe in 1995. Other groups were soon in the works, including a five-teen band named Take 5, a three-teen group called LFO, and an all-girl group named Innosense. With money pouring in from investors, Pearlman began work on a state-of-the-art recording studio. When it was finished, artists as varied as Kenny Rogers and the Bee Gees would record there."

...

“He totally deceived me,” Kevin Richardson told Rolling Stone in 2000. “It’s ‘We’re a family, we’re a family,’ then you find out ‘It’s about the money, it’s about the money, it’s about the money.’ ” Pearlman and the band eventually reached a series of settlements, details of which were never disclosed. In general, the band got cash and its freedom; Pearlman retained a portion of its future revenues.

In the wake of the Backstreet lawsuit, Pearlman’s bands began to realize how much of their income was flowing to Big Poppa. One by one they sued or disbanded. Despite success in Europe and Asia, Take 5 broke up in 2001; LFO, after two top-10 singles, did the same. The biggest loss by far was ’NSync, whose members sued, settled, and broke all ties with Pearlman in 1999, a struggle memorialized by the title of their platinum-selling 2000 album, No Strings Attached. None of ’NSync’s members would comment for this article, but in a 2006 interview, Justin Timberlake said the band felt it “was being financially r.aped by a Svengali.”

Edited July 16, 2022 by Ghoulia

[Steel Magnolia]

28 minutes ago, Ghoulia said:

This article is pretty good: https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2007/11/mad-about-the-boys

"By his own estimate, Pearlman sank $3 million into the Backstreet Boys before he saw a penny of profit. Still, the music business thrilled him. Even before the band hit it big, he began planning more groups. The first was ’NSync—composed of Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, and three other singers—which Pearlman formed and dispatched to tour in Europe in 1995. Other groups were soon in the works, including a five-teen band named Take 5, a three-teen group called LFO, and an all-girl group named Innosense. With money pouring in from investors, Pearlman began work on a state-of-the-art recording studio. When it was finished, artists as varied as Kenny Rogers and the Bee Gees would record there."

...

“He totally deceived me,” Kevin Richardson told Rolling Stone in 2000. “It’s ‘We’re a family, we’re a family,’ then you find out ‘It’s about the money, it’s about the money, it’s about the money.’ ” Pearlman and the band eventually reached a series of settlements, details of which were never disclosed. In general, the band got cash and its freedom; Pearlman retained a portion of its future revenues.

In the wake of the Backstreet lawsuit, Pearlman’s bands began to realize how much of their income was flowing to Big Poppa. One by one they sued or disbanded. Despite success in Europe and Asia, Take 5 broke up in 2001; LFO, after two top-10 singles, did the same. The biggest loss by far was ’NSync, whose members sued, settled, and broke all ties with Pearlman in 1999, a struggle memorialized by the title of their platinum-selling 2000 album, No Strings Attached. None of ’NSync’s members would comment for this article, but in a 2006 interview, Justin Timberlake said the band felt it “was being financially r.aped by a Svengali.”

This one is good, too.

"Before long, he had the makings of Backstreet Boys. Nick Carter, AJ McLean and Howie Dorough auditioned. Kevin Richardson was discovered at Disney World where he was playing Aladdin. He recommended his cousin Brian Littrell in Kentucky.

“I put the money out to help them,” Pearlman said. “We'd give them choreographers. We'd give them vocal lessons. We’d give them tutors. … I think I'm a great cultivator.”

..."Still, Pearlman wasn’t finished. He started LFO, whose 1999 single “Summer Girls” peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard charts. He also created C-Note and Take Five. He wanted to get involved in girl groups as well, and created Innosense, a group that Britney Spears briefly joined before going solo. Additionally, Pearlman managed Aaron Carter, Nick Carter’s younger brother."

https://abcnews.go.com/US/lou-pearlman-backstreet-boys-nsync-lure-people-massive/story?id=67630954

[Steel Magnolia]

Oh, interesting!

"In 1971, South African businessmen Clive Calder and Ralph Simon began a publishing and management company. It was named Zomba Records and relocated to London, England, four years later; their first client was a young Robert "Mutt" Lange. Zomba originally wanted to avoid record labels to instead focus on their songwriters and producers while allowing other established labels to release the material. Later that decade, the company opened offices in the US, where Calder began a business relationship with Clive Davis, whose Arista Records began releasing material by Zomba artists.

In 1981, Zomba formed Jive Records, whose operations began with the release of British dance and pop music from groups such as Q-Feel, A Flock of Seagulls, and Tight Fit. Its name was inspired by township Jive, a type of music that originated in South Africa. Clive Davis had hoped that Zomba's connection with Mutt Lange would help alleviate the difficulties Arista was having with launching rock acts to success." (Wiki)

Mutt Lange...Shania Twain...Stacy Smith...

Larry Rudolph?

[Ghoulia]

23 minutes ago, Steel Magnolia said:

Oh, interesting!

"In 1971, South African businessmen Clive Calder and Ralph Simon began a publishing and management company. It was named Zomba Records and relocated to London, England, four years later; their first client was a young Robert "Mutt" Lange. Zomba originally wanted to avoid record labels to instead focus on their songwriters and producers while allowing other established labels to release the material. Later that decade, the company opened offices in the US, where Calder began a business relationship with Clive Davis, whose Arista Records began releasing material by Zomba artists.

In 1981, Zomba formed Jive Records, whose operations began with the release of British dance and pop music from groups such as Q-Feel, A Flock of Seagulls, and Tight Fit. Its name was inspired by township Jive, a type of music that originated in South Africa. Clive Davis had hoped that Zomba's connection with Mutt Lange would help alleviate the difficulties Arista was having with launching rock acts to success." (Wiki)

Mutt Lange...Shania Twain...Stacy Smith...

Larry Rudolph?

Now the snake is really eating its own tail. Shania didn’t include the part about Zomba in her book 😂

[Ghoulia]

“We never ever flew on a TransContinental airplane,” Lance Bass of *NSYNC told “20/20.” “We would fly to different places over in Europe, and we’d always be on these Delta flights, you know, in coach. And I always thought it was weird that someone that was in the airline industry couldn’t help us out a little bit getting to places.”

 
 

“Pearlman turned to what he knew best and started a Christmas choir inside prison – he even held auditions.

Emily Dorsett, a talent developer, wanted to help his venture behind bars and flew from California to Florida to meet him.”

 

[TimeLoveJoySpaceKnee]

6 hours ago, Ghoulia said:

Probably unrelated to the con accountings, but in my search to track down Larry's Orlando connection, I found this trademark he registered in 1997.

 

This is actually for Chris Webber's label. I found the document below and didn't think much of it til after I watched @Mx_Defying video on the connection between Lou Taylor, the Maloofs and vegas. Chris Webber was on the Kings at the time and Larry submitted his trademark paperwork.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H5Ox8i4rg3S8L2OfxiW0bV1bEBIo5wT3/view?usp=drivesdk

Edit: https://youtu.be/NUsdLIDoDXY

Hope she doesn't mind that I share but such a good video!

 

[Ghoulia]

40 minutes ago, TimeLoveJoySpaceKnee said:

This is actually for Chris Webber's label. I found the document below and didn't think much of it til after I watched @Mx_Defying video on the connection between Lou Taylor, the Maloofs and vegas. Chris Webber was on the Kings at the time and Larry submitted his trademark paperwork.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H5Ox8i4rg3S8L2OfxiW0bV1bEBIo5wT3/view?usp=drivesdk

Edit: https://youtu.be/NUsdLIDoDXY

Hope she doesn't mind that I share but such a good video!

 

Ohh lol I figured it probably was a trademark registered for a client. Thanks for the link!

[Steel Magnolia]

Updated in the Chronological Timeline:

...

June 19, 1954 - Lou Pearlman is born in Flushing, a suburb of Queens, New York.

Aug. 9, 1960 - Johnny Wright is born in Hyannis, Massachusetts, and grows up in Cape Cod.

July 24, 1963 - Larry Rudolph is born in The Bronx, across the river from Queens, New York.

1971 - During this year, South African businessmen Clive Calder and Ralph Simon launch a publishing and management company named Zomba Records. Four years later, they relocate to London, England, and sign their first client, a young South African named Robert "Mutt" Lange.

1978 - During this year, Zomba Group offices are established in New York City.

1981 - During this year, Clive Calder launches the American independent record label Jive Records as a subsidiary to the Zomba Group. Calder forms a business relationship with Clive Davis, whose Arista Records begins distributing material by Zomba artists.

1992 - Johnny Wright relocates to Orlando, Florida and begins managing the Backstreet Boys. With funding provided by Lou Pearlman, Wright moves the group to Europe to begin honing their act.

May 8, 1993 - Billboard reports that entertainment attorney Larry Rudolph has formed a partnership with Steven Beer in New York City. The new firm is to be known as Rudolph & Beer, LLP.

Oct. 1994 - Production ends on Season 7 of the “All-New Mickey Mouse Club” on the Disney Channel. Filmed in Orlando, Florida, seasons 6 and 7 feature 13-year old Britney Spears and 14-year old Justin Timberlake. "When I went home I was really antsy," Britney recalls of her return to her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana. "That's when my dad called Larry."

Dec. 28, 1994 - Lou Pearlman and manager Johnny Wright register Transcontinental Entertainment, Inc. in the state of Florida, along with Robert Fishetti and Wright’s wife Donna Wright. The 1996 annual report is signed by president Louis J. Pearlman. The principal place of business and mailing address are listed as 7380 Sand Lake Road Ste. 350, Orlando, FA 32919. (Company No: P94000094179)

Late 1995 - Britney Spears meets entertainment attorneys Larry Rudolph and Steven Beer, of the New York law firm Rudolph & Beer, LLP. “We met her when she was 14,” recalls Beer. “She had come to New York to get some training and to do some auditions. Someone who wanted to work with her attended a recording agreements class I was teaching and introduced her to my ex-partner and me.” Says Rudolph, “...I have known her since she was 13 years old, and she’d been off ‘The Mickey Mouse Club’ for about a year, which I had not seen. But she brought in a VHS tape and played me some stuff of her, and it was just amazing.”

May 6, 1996 - The Backstreet Boys release their debut album, “Backstreet Boys” in Germany through Jive Records. The credits thank Larry Rudolph and Steven Beer as part of the “Jive Clan.”

1997 - During this year, Britney joins the Lou Pearlman-funded girl group Innosense. The group is managed by Lou Pearlman and Lynn Harless (mother of Justin Timberlake).

July 1997 - Lou Pearlman’s attorney Larry Rudolph arranges auditions for Britney with a number of record labels in New York, accompanied by promo pictures featuring her lounging around her back garden in denim hot pants. Mercury and Epic, unimpressed with her demeanour and vocal range, turn her down. 

Oct. 10, 1997 - Britney signs a contract with Jive Records. The contract comes with a "get-out" clause, meaning the record label can drop her within 90 days. She is immediately relocated to New York City, housed in a Jive penthouse, and groomed to become the American version of Robyn. In order to give Britney some direction, Jive’s A&R executive Steve Lunt shows her Robyn's music videos, to which Britney responds, "The record is really good, but the video is all wrong. It's in boring black-and-white and no one is dancing. If it were me I'd be wearing a miniskirt and I'd be dancing.”

[RebellionSparkles]

On 7/16/2022 at 11:48 AM, Ghoulia said:

 January 20, 2011 https://cyinterview.com/johnny-wright-whats-right-for-music-his-talent-search-and-britney-spears/

Johnny Wright: “I started with Britney when she was 15, just as she recorded Hit Me Baby. I put her as the opening act on the NSYNC tour. That’s really how our relationship started. She came through me with a good friend of mine Larry Rudolph. Then once she got on the NSYNC Tour, he was like, look, I need you to partner up with me on this and let’s do this."

--> Wikipedia says BOMT was recorded in May of 1998, so that makes Britney 16 at the time, but okay. Johnny Wright did tour internationally with BSB and Nsync, so that checks out.

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-great-and-terrible-lou-pearlman-boy-band-architect-and-ponzi-schemer-c453bd342d26/

"So is Lou the person who brought Britney to Jive? Because he wanted her for his girl group, the atrociously-named Innosense, and she decided to go solo instead?

It was Britney Spears’ agent, Larry Rudolph*, who is now one of the biggest agents in the music business, who, I think, advised her not to sign with Lou Pearlman. He’d represented Lou on some other deals, so he knew Lou, and for whatever reason, Larry advised her not to sign with Lou and he was the one who set up the meeting at Jive."

---> I cannot find these "other deals", which is super frustrating. One of the problems that I'm running into is that Pearlman lied about everything. For example, I tried for a while to connect Larry Rudolph & his CD copyright history (see boring article under spoiler, Larry reference on second page).

  Reveal hidden contents

In 1997, Lou Pearlman had a trademark applied for a patent on cds in fun shapes (name of the company was Shape, CD).  I SO thought I could find a connection to Larry. 

So I found the paperwork for the patent and looked through all of the things Lou wanted to trademark/patent. That was fun, especially when I found the Humility Records logo. But I hit a wall when I realized that Lou Pearlman made up an entire law firm.

  Reveal hidden contents

See the name Alan Siegel? That's NOT A REAL PERSON. 

See article here: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2007-03-12-cohensiegel12-story.html

"There is no Alan Siegel licensed as an accountant in Florida. There was an Alan Siegel who was once a vice president of Trans Continental Records. And court records from a 2005 lawsuit filed in Chicago, by the estate of one of Pearlman's investors, show that in 1995 that Alan Siegel helped arrange for a Coral Gables answering service to answer Cohen & Siegel's phone calls. Yet the former Trans Continental Records executive has long denied that he is the Alan Siegel of the accounting firm. "It's definitely not me," he said in a deposition in that 2005 lawsuit. Nancy Morgan, owner of Coral Gables Secretarial Services Inc., testified in that 2005 case that her company sent mail and faxes for Cohen & Siegel to Pearlman. And when the secretarial service would forward phone messages to the accounting firm, a machine would often answer with the message, "It's Lou Pearlman." Trans Continental was not only taking the messages for its independent auditor, it was footing the bills."

I did find reference to Rudolph & Beer making a special appearance at the October 10-14, 1996 Peter Thomas Entertainment Group's 'How Can I Be Down?' summit held in South Beach in Miami. https://957thebeat.iheart.com/content/2017-05-21-check-out-dj-khaled-in-1996/

Entire article here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MbayWgCcdq6YpWhN9PC_1w9JHU7j4SbP/view?usp=sharing

 

 

And lastly, the other connection I found, which is FAR from a smoking gun, is this guy, Kendall Minter who says he worked with Rudolph & Beer at some point between 1987-1995. https://mediaassetvault.com/about.html

"Over Kendall's 35+ year career he has represented political leaders such as Desmond Tutu, governmental agencies such as the Jamaican Cultural Development Commission, a variety of music artists ranging from Lena Horne, Third World, Shabba Ranks, Roy Ayers, Najee, Cassandra Wilson, Kirk Franklin, Dr. Creflo Dollar Music Ministry, Ashanti, The Backstreet Boys, Jermaine Dupri, Teddy Riley & Evander Holyfield."

 

 

What a pic! B must have been 11 or 12 years old