Lou Pearlman, manager of boy bands Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync and cheerful defrauder of numerous investors and banks through a complex decades-long scheme, has been ordered to make amends and pay back his victims $300 million.

U.S. District Judge G. Kendall Sharpe ruled on Wednesday that Lou Pearlman, the 53-year-old mastermind behind 1990s household names the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync who inventively swindled some $300 million from banks and investors over a period of more than two decades, repay the complete sum.

The first to receive money from Pearlman will be the unincorporated individuals that were tricked into doing business with him, consequently losing their lives’ savings. The ten banks he defrauded will be the last to receive any restitution, according to the ruling.

Lou Pearlman, a Florida resident, is already serving a 25-year prison service. He has been until now at the Orange County jail but Sharpe remanded him to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which will transfer him to an undetermined facility, reports the Associated Press.

It was determined by attorneys from both sides, the FBI and FDIC that the boy band manager took $195 million from more than 1,000 people in what he promised to be a savings program that ensured 6 percent to 10 percent returns.

He took another $126.7 million in pretend loans from federally insured banks.

Another category of Pearlman’s victims invested some $70 million in what they thought were shares in his companies Transcontinental Airlines Travel Services Inc and Transcontinental Airlines Inc., which only existed on paper.

The prosecutors requested that Pearlman also return interest payments to his victims but the judge replied that any part of the $300 million would be nice to be recovered first.

Lou Pearlman, born Louis Jay Pearlman in 1954 in Queens, NY, was sentenced the maximum in late March, after pleading guilty to two counts of conspiracy and single counts of money laundering and making a false claim in bankruptcy court.

Bringing Pearlman before a judge was no easy task as he fled the country last year and was eventually found in Bali, Indonesia. He was living there under the name A. Incognito Johnson.
In court, he said he was “truly sorry” for the trouble he had caused his victims, explaining that the past nine months had helped him understand “the harm that has been done.” Sharpe was not impressed at the time and replied that the “sympathy factor” was parsimonious.