‘A Scheme to Make Money’ : Pop music: The lure of the dollar, say fans and foes of Milli Vanilli, powered the hoax by the lip-syncing duo. The cynics are outnumbered only slightly by the outraged.

The fans were not amused.

The “we were never fans of that techno-pop garbage” people were not surprised.

The hip were not paying attention.

But everyone had something to say. Mere mention of Milli Vanilli--the German-produced pop duo who admitted last week that they faked the vocals on their Grammy award-winning album, “Girl, You Know It’s True,” and in their concert appearances--provoked weekend diners at McDonald’s, patrons at music stores and passersby in shopping malls to stop shopping, eating and gossiping to express their views.

As it turned out, the cynics were outnumbered only slightly by the outraged.

“I think (Milli Vanilli) should be fined and prosecuted,” declared Steve Gable of Studio City, a photographer and nightclub promoter. “It was just outright fraud. It was an outright scheme to make money.”

Money, said fans and foes alike, is the key: Money drove producer Frank Farian and singers Robert (Rob) Pilatus and Fabrice (Fab) Morvan to do it, money is what didn’t go to the real singers on the album, money is what the wrong people would receive more of if fans who liked the music despite the scandal were to continue to buy recordings.

“I would not go out and buy (another album) because (Pilatus, Morvan and Farian) would be getting all the royalties,” said Jesse Ruiz, a former fan who lives in Chino. “It’s like selling something that isn’t really theirs.”

“I think they should give back all of the money,” said Rudy Rios, a student at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut. “And they should go to jail. It’s fraud.”

“The real singers should get the money,” chimed in Rafael Camarena, also 18, of Chino.

Joey Cooper, a clerk at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, said some customers had demanded their money back. “People have been calling here and asking for refunds,” Cooper said.

“I don’t see how the producers or the record company could have let them go through with (the hoax),” she added. “It shows what the music industry is about.”

“I hope they have many problems because of this,” said Lili Farrokhsiar, a German-born clerk at the Benneton store at the Beverly Center. “They are German, but they don’t act like they are proud to be German.”

For 19-year-old Jae Song, who just moved to Los Angeles from Korea, the revelations about Milli Vanilli felt like a personal betrayal.

“I didn’t know,” said Song, who was wearing a black leather jacket, a white T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. “I really like them. I love ‘Blame It on the Rain.’ I’m surprised, really surprised.’ ”

He stopped and covered his face with his hands for a moment.

“Milli Vanilli is almost the best at nightclubs,” he said. “My heart is broken. Really.”

If the innocent got something of a jolt from the idea, the cynics walked away from the Milli Vanilli debacle with their beliefs intact.

“It’s all hype,” sniffed Barry Mosley, who works at Ritz Cameras in the Glendale Galleria. “It totally speaks to what is happening in the pop music business as it becomes more visual and less musical.”

Besides, these cynics said, this wasn’t the first time a producer has put together a band of actors and told them to act like musicians: the Monkees were put together for a television show and they did not play their own instruments at first. The Archies--who actually went on tour--were studio musicians backing up a Saturday morning cartoon show. And nobody really thinks Susan Dey and Danny Bonaduce actually played instruments on the Partridge Family records.

“Who cares about Milli Vanilli?” said Annie Lightfoot, a Boston resident visiting Los Angeles. “I never liked them in the first place.”

Fans who had liked Milli Vanilli--and were more enamored with the music than the dancing, dreadlocked duo--said they still might listen to it. But they want the credit to go to the real singers.

“I think instead of taking away the Grammy, they should recognize the real singers and give them a Grammy,” said Susan Fowler, manager of Ritz Cameras. “If the voices were good enough for a Grammy, if the music was good enough, they should just give it to the people who really did it.”

But Grammys and refunds for the tens of millions of dollars spent on 7 million albums and untold $30 a seat concert tickets aside, perhaps the best barometer of fans’ response to the Milli Vanilli meltdown is hipness.

It was not, particularly among the under-21 set, exactly a matter of pride to admit that one liked or had liked Milli Vanilli.

“I did not buy their record,” announced a clerk in the Hallmark store at the Glendale Galleria, after her friends pointed her out as the only one among them who liked the group.

“I kind of figured (Milli Vanilli was faking it) because they weren’t that great a group in the first place,” said 13-year-old Jeni Romo of La Crescenta.

“A lot of my friends used to like them, but they don’t now that they know they don’t sing their own stuff,” said her friend, 13-year-old Valerie Vlahovic. “They have no talent.”

Indeed, “Girl, You Know It’s True,” has already been relegated to a partially hidden spot behind the Steve Miller Band at Sam Goody’s Musicland stores.

It’s stuck somewhere in the middle of student Damian Owens’ CD collection, where it will probably stay.

“Somebody was singing for them on their album?” the 21-year-old asked with a broad smile. Then he sang out, “Busted!”

Armando Samano chewed thoughtfully on his Big Mac and said he understood why Fab and Rob hadn’t told the truth. “Why would they stop? They were making all this money,” the teen-ager said.