Lou Pearlman, the music executive who built a pop empire on boy bands like the Backstreet Boys and ’NSync before going to prison for running a Ponzi scheme that stole hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, died on Friday in the Miami area, where he was in federal prison. He was 62.

Justin Long, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said Mr. Pearlman died of cardiac arrest at a hospital. At his death he was an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Miami.

Mr. Pearlman began his career in blimp rentals before turning to the music business. All his interests, from aviation to boy bands and to the Ponzi scheme that lead to his conviction in 2008, were housed under the Trans Continental companies, whose financial centerpiece was an airline that existed only on paper.

Before his scheme ran aground, however, Mr. Pearlman built some of the most successful music groups of the 1990s, one of which started the career of Justin Timberlake, managed from Mr. Pearlman’s lavish home in Orlando, Fla.