Here is a report that a promoter/creator of bands such as The Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync, Mr. Lou Pearlman, may have defrauded a dozen banks out of over 500 million dollars. Evidently, according to reports, he was arrested while traveling under the assumed name of A. Incognito Johnson.

Quote:
Two weeks ago, the man who created the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync was indicted by a federal grand jury in Orlando, Florida, on three counts of bank fraud, and one count each of mail and wire fraud. Boy-band magnate Lou Pearlman was completing a trip around the world at the time, escorted on his homecoming by U.S. marshals. FBI agents had tracked him to a Westin Resort hotel in Bali, and took him to Guam, where he convinced a judge that he couldn't afford a lawyer.
Back in Orlando, Pearlman's various businesses—including the charter Trans Continental Airlines, a talent agency, a travel service, and record companies—had been seized, their remaining assets liquidated in bankruptcy proceedings. Hundreds of bidders had descended on an auction in his downtown headquarters, scooping up Pearlman items such as a key to the city, a boat, and collectible music memorabilia. (Best end-of-an-era curio: a clock made out of the CD single for LFO's "Summer Girls.") Though it raised an estimated $225,000 for his estate, the sale provided little more than comic relief from what one local lawsuit calls "one of the largest financial frauds in history."
...

Sometime before February, Pearlman fled to Europe. He was last seen free on February 1, at a theater in Berlin, where he watched his latest boy band, the German group US5, receive a Goldene Kamera Pop International Band award. Soon after, the FBI, IRS, FDIC, and local agencies stormed his Orlando offices. Pearlman was traveling under the name A. Incognito Johnson when a German tourist in Indonesia tipped off the FBI.

Here is a link to the entire article which appears in the online newspaper, City Pages:

http://citypages.com/databank/28/1388/article15636.asp

Mike