theftlossdeduction.com

December 31, 2008

Gov. Charlie Crist and Florida financial regulators are being sued in Hillsborough County by investors claiming they should've been protected from boy-band mogul Lou Pearlman's multimillion-dollar scam.

The suit claims Crist, who was attorney general from 2002 to 2006, was slow to investigate Pearlman's investment schemes because the governor received $12,000 in campaign contributions from Pearlman.

The state sued Pearlman, 54, in December 2006, but the lawsuit claims Crist and regulators knew of his dealings as early as 2002.

Pearlman was sentenced in June to a 25-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to running a $300 million investment scam in connection with the sale of worthless stock and retirement-account investments in Pearlman's Trans Continental Airlines and Transcontinental Airlines Travel Services.

His empire, which peaked in the late 1990s, helped make Orlando synonymous with the boy-band phenomenon and won him influence with local leaders.

In March, Pearlman pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges, money laundering and making a false statement in a bankruptcy proceeding. He agreed to assist prosecutors and FBI and IRS agents in the continuing probe.

"I'm accepting full responsibility," Pearlman told the judge at the time.

Pearlman acknowledged three distinct frauds: a Ponzi scheme involving phony stock and the sale of "employee investment savings accounts," a bank-fraud scam involving phony financial statements and a plot to siphon frozen assets from a bankruptcy case.

The governor's office had no immediate response to the lawsuit Tuesday.

PDF documents of the filings are available at http://www.investorattorneys.com/index.html