Milli Vanilli Music Group

Radio stations declared themselves "Milli Vanilli Free" and former fans signed petitions denouncing the pop duo Friday after it was learned they didn't really sing on their hit 1988 debut album. "People are mad," said disc jockey Paul J. Roberts of WQQK-FM in Nashville, Tenn. "After we made the announcement we took 120 calls in about an hour and 40 minutes."

"And now the Moment of Truth!" says Frank Farian, creator of Milli Vanilli, inventor of Rob and Fab, the pretty faces who--can you believe it!--people actually thought were singing. Farian, the German producer who blew the whistle last month on his own fraud, swivels around from his 84-track mixing console, the Pontiac-size machine on which Milli Vanilli was really made, and furnishes the promised honest-to-God truth. It's a record album.

Since that November day last year when Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan sadly admitted that they'd never sung a note as Milli Vanilli, the pair has been the butt of jokes around the world. The very name Milli Vanilli has become generic for fake . Now Pilatus and Morvan are ready to talk about their first public step toward what they hope will be a renewed show-biz life.

Rob Pilatus, a former model whose career with the pop music duo Milli Vanilli crashed in disgrace and drug addiction after it was revealed that the group lip-synched its songs, has died, Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported Sunday. He was 32. Pilatus was alone when he died in a Frankfurt hotel room late Thursday after consuming alcohol and pills, the newspaper reported.

Robert Pilatus, onetime member of the disgraced, dreadlocked music duo Milli Vanilli, was arrested Sunday morning in Hollywood on suspicion of attempted auto burglary and threatening harm to the car's owner and his family. Los Angeles police said Pilatus, 31, was taken into custody after being struck in the head with a baseball bat by the owner of a car Pilatus allegedly attempted to burglarize.

A member of the pop music duo Milli Vanilli--which was forced to return their 1989 Best New Artist Grammy award because they lip-synched performances--was sentenced Monday to 90 days in jail and 180 days in a drug rehabilitation center after pleading no contest to three assaults.

Robert Pilatus, half of the disgraced duo Milli Vanilli, continued to fall from his brief celebrity on Friday, with authorities announcing that he had abandoned a North Hollywood rehabilitation facility and is being sought on a $60,000 arrest warrant. Hollywood Municipal Judge Michael Mink issued the warrant late Thursday after the facility's managers notified him that Pilatus, 31, walked out the back door of the 120-client site two days before and had not returned.

A Hollywood Municipal Court judge on Monday recalled an arrest warrant for Robert Pilatus, former member of the disgraced pop duo Milli Vanilli, after Pilatus' attorney said his client had left a North Hollywood rehabilitation center only to check into another, authorities said. On Wednesday, Pilatus, 31, walked out the back door of Cri-Help, where he had been staying after pleading no contest to charges stemming from three assaults last winter, authorities said.

Robert Pilatus remembers the morning six weeks ago when he climbed onto the railing of his ninth-floor balcony at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood and tried to muster the courage to jump.

The legal fallout from the Milli Vanilli fiasco continues, with no end in sight. A U.S. Circuit Court judge in Chicago is expected Jan. 29 to grant final approval to an unprecedented settlement to resolve a class-action fraud lawsuit filed in November, 1990, against Milli Vanilli front men Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, Germany-based producer Frank Farian and their record company.

Rob Pilatus, a former model whose career with the pop music duo Milli Vanilli crashed in disgrace and drug addiction after it was revealed that the group lip-synched its songs, has died, Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported Sunday. He was 32. Pilatus was alone when he died in a Frankfurt hotel room late Thursday after consuming alcohol and pills, the newspaper reported.

A Hollywood Municipal Court judge on Monday recalled an arrest warrant for Robert Pilatus, former member of the disgraced pop duo Milli Vanilli, after Pilatus' attorney said his client had left a North Hollywood rehabilitation center only to check into another, authorities said. On Wednesday, Pilatus, 31, walked out the back door of Cri-Help, where he had been staying after pleading no contest to charges stemming from three assaults last winter, authorities said.

Robert Pilatus, half of the disgraced duo Milli Vanilli, continued to fall from his brief celebrity on Friday, with authorities announcing that he had abandoned a North Hollywood rehabilitation facility and is being sought on a $60,000 arrest warrant. Hollywood Municipal Judge Michael Mink issued the warrant late Thursday after the facility's managers notified him that Pilatus, 31, walked out the back door of the 120-client site two days before and had not returned.

A member of the pop music duo Milli Vanilli--which was forced to return their 1989 Best New Artist Grammy award because they lip-synched performances--was sentenced Monday to 90 days in jail and 180 days in a drug rehabilitation center after pleading no contest to three assaults.

Robert Pilatus, onetime member of the disgraced, dreadlocked music duo Milli Vanilli, was arrested Sunday morning in Hollywood on suspicion of attempted auto burglary and threatening harm to the car's owner and his family. Los Angeles police said Pilatus, 31, was taken into custody after being struck in the head with a baseball bat by the owner of a car Pilatus allegedly attempted to burglarize.

In a move likely to fuel debate over lip-sync fakery in the music industry, a Chicago judge granted final approval on Tuesday to a cash rebate to resolve a class-action fraud lawsuit against Milli Vanilli's record company. Under the terms of the agreement, Arista Records and parent Bertelsmann Music Group will offer $1 refunds on Milli Vanilli singles, $2 on cassettes and vinyl albums and $3 on compact discs to fans who submit a bar-code identification tag from merchandise purchased before Nov.

Robert Pilatus remembers the morning six weeks ago when he climbed onto the railing of his ninth-floor balcony at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood and tried to muster the courage to jump.

The legal fallout from the Milli Vanilli fiasco continues, with no end in sight. A U.S. Circuit Court judge in Chicago is expected Jan. 29 to grant final approval to an unprecedented settlement to resolve a class-action fraud lawsuit filed in November, 1990, against Milli Vanilli front men Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, Germany-based producer Frank Farian and their record company.

A member of the disgraced pop music duo Milli Vanilli slashed his wrist, gulped prescription pills and then dangled from a ninth-floor hotel balcony Saturday before a Times switchboard operator and sheriff's deputies teamed up to save his life, authorities said. Lip-sync artist Robert Pilatus complained of continuing humiliation stemming from the well-publicized musical hoax before climbing over a balcony railing outside his $225-per-night suite at the Mondrian Hotel on the Sunset Strip.

A circuit court judge in Chicago granted preliminary approval Wednesday to an unprecedented settlement that may resolve 20 class-action fraud lawsuits filed against Milli Vanilli's record company. The settlement was approved by Cook County Circuit Judge Thomas O'Brien, who rejected an Aug. 12 proposal by Arista Records and its parent company, Bertelsmann Music Group, because it required consumers to buy more products to get a refund.