The proposal seemed suspicious, but Elaine Samperi and her 92-year-old father, Howard Arcon, signed the paper anyway.

After working for 40 years at American Airlines, including a stint at La Guardia Airport, Mr. Arcon had saved about $340,000, and their attorney was recommending what was described to them as a safe “shelter” for the money. Last December, the money disappeared, Mrs. Samperi said.

The company that held Mr. Arcon’s assets, Golden Securities, is tied to Trans Continental Airlines and its subsidiaries, which Florida officials recently identified as a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors and banks of hundreds of millions of dollars.

“I am not a risk-taker,” Mrs. Samperi, 65, said. “I am very, very careful. For my father and I to have fallen into a situation like this. … He comes from the old country. He comes from that era that a penny saved was a penny saved. To see this gone breaks my heart.”

At the center of the case is a son of Queens, Louis Pearlman, 52, who rose from working a paper route in Flushing to managing such bands as the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync. He is the founder of Trans Continental.

More New York investors have made claims in the case than from any other state, according to the court-appointed receiver who seized Mr. Pearlman’s 20,000-square-foot office in Florida, Gerard McHale Jr.

Of the $317 million allegedly defrauded from investors in two schemes, $56 million was taken from more than 100 New York investors, he said. Many of these investors live in Queens, he said.

Trans Continental and its subsidiary companies owe another $150 million to banks, making the total amount missing in claims and defaulted loans $467 million, Mr. McHale said.

A preliminary survey of the companies’ accounts shows there is no money left, and Mr. Pearlman is nowhere to be found.

Advisers on Trans Continental’s payroll convinced investors to deposit their money into “employee investment savings accounts” with an 8% return and other attractive investment opportunities, according to a verified complaint filed by Florida’s Office of Financial Regulation. Mr. Pearlman and his associates instead transferred the money to their own accounts or other companies, the complaint says. They used new investments to pay off interest on older investments in a classic Ponzi set-up, the complaint says.

The chief of the bureau of financial investigations at Florida’s Office of Financial Regulation, Robert Rosenal, said the case is under investigation. He said investigators were recently receiving 100 phone calls a day from investors claiming they had been defrauded.

A lawyer on Long Island, Alan Soberman, said six investors had approached him to look at ways to get their money back. Those six lost more than $2 million between them, he said.

“Most of them are very sophisticated businessmen, which is what blew me away,” he said.

One woman, whom Mr. Soberman would not identify, was responsible for convincing all his clients to invest in the phony savings plan.

An author and fraud expert, Les Henderson, said this case marks yet another unraveling of one of Mr. Pearlman’s schemes. Mr. Henderson published a book last fall, “Under Investigation,” which details another fraud case involving Mr. Pearlman and a modeling company in Florida called Wilhelmina Scouting Network.

“The guy managed to screw people across the United States, predominantly New York and Florida. Close friends and family members,” Mr. Henderson said.

Mr. Pearlman last surfaced by way a letter to the Orlando Sentinel, in which he refused to answer specific allegations.

“I’m an optimist,” he wrote on February 4. “I’ve spent my life discovering people with underdeveloped talent and turning them into international superstars. Rebuilding and making things better is what I do, and rest assured, better days lie ahead.”

Mr. Pearlman grew up the son of the owner of a dry-cleaning business in the Flushing section of Queens, where he worked as a paperboy, according to a biography on his Web site. After studying business at Queens College in the 1970s, he started an airplane, helicopter, and blimp chartering service, which is where he made millions and first became interested in the music business. Together with advice from his first cousin, the singer Art Garfunkel, he began representing and promoting boy bands, the Web site says. Mr. Pearlman wrote a book about his life and businesses, “Bands, Brands, and Billions: My Top Ten Rules for Success in Any Business.”

Calls to Mr. Pearlman and his associates weren’t returned yesterday. “This is one of my frustrations,” the receiver, Mr. McHale, said. “There is nobody here. They are all gone.”