Little girls just love floating heads -- German / American / English boy band: US5

Lou Pearlman recently said from prison, "I'll know the exact moment when boy bands are over and that'll be when God stops making little girls." After being captured by the FBI in Indonesia last month, the chubby architect of 'bands' like the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync was in jail, doing push-ups and contemplating life, for his lesser known orchestration of quite possibly the largest Ponzi scheme in US history, one that managed to dupe investors out of USD 300-500 million.

The man, who makes for a fascinating wikipedia entry, is a confidence artist of the highest order. Justin Timberlake famously called Pearlman the Svengali who "monetarily raped" him in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine last year. With a trail of burned-up boy bands (O-Town, anyone?) and litigation in his wake, it does seem baffling that Pearlman would manage to form yet another group of dupes, but form it he did and singles they make. In fact, US5, a collection of human cartoon characters from the three favoured nations of anglofritz, has been charting top 10 singles in Germany for the past three years.

Pearlman's personal swag is now getting sold off in a bankruptcy auction. Who woulda guessed, as Radar Online reveals, that the man is both a Trekkie and a Jedi? And I thought you had to pick a side. Clusterflock finds Pearlman's Doppelgänger in recent White House drop-out and equally talented Svengali, Karl Rove. Personal Finance editor Helen Huntley at the St. Petersburg Times has been following the fallout of Pearlman's company Trans Continental blow-by-blow at the Money Talk blog. (The significant comment threads show just how many lives this guy adversely affected.)