Hollywood Con Queen: the true story behind one of Hollywood’s biggest scams
Psychological traps, celebrity impersonations, hundreds of victims, thousands of miles travelled, and millions of dollars lost along the way – this is the story of one of the world’s biggest cons, all led by the mysterious Con Queen.
Each would start with a professional creative – a photographer, a filmmaker, an actor, a stuntman or a hairstylist, for instance – being contacted by an apparent high-profile female executive. They would be complimented on their work, and invited to travel to Southeast Asia to come onboard a major new project.
If alarm bells are already going off in your head, remember that the scammer was a master at their craft, and incredibly convincing.
Masquerading as some of Hollywood’s top executives, the Con Queen would pose as an employee of recognisable businesses in the film industry, with realistic email addresses to match.
The ‘female executive’ would then send over what looked like air-tight contracts, engage in back-and-forth conversations (including, in some cases, liaising via agents and assistants) and sounded commanding and knowledgeable on the phone – even referencing personality quirks of other industry professionals that would only be known to insiders.
The Con Queen, as the scammer became known, was also a master at picking her victims. She chose individuals who were at the turning points in their career; people with some experience (so it was not wholly unlikely they’d be headhunted, or singled out), but people who were still junior enough to take a bit of a leap of faith.
The Con Queen’s offers had the potential to be life-changing, and the people chosen, often men, were often willing to take a risk.
The scams went beyond the game of the dupe itself, though. Victims wasted both time and money booking hotel rooms and taking flights around the world to meet the so-called executives, who promised them that they’d be reimbursed later (a usual freelance practice).
Read More
When the hopeful individuals arrived – they were nearly always invited to Indonesia – they would be asked to hand over $3000 in cash (approximately £2400), which would be used to cover their expenses during the trip, and would also be reimbursed later.
On their own, these sums seem relatively insignificant – though of course not for the person who lost them. But with dozens, then hundreds (some reports say there were as many as 500 victims), of people falling into the scammer’s trap, the Con Queen managed to make a serious amount of money – estimates are around $1.5-2 million.
“There were actors, photographers, make-up artists, literally hundreds and hundreds of victims from all around the world,” says Scott Johnson, the investigative journalist who helped to uncover the labyrinthine scam, in the trailer for the new series.
“But it wasn’t really about the money. It was about something else. She wanted to get inside the mind and the dreams of people and twist them and destroy them.”
Johnson started to investigate the case years before it became his viral July 2018 Hollywood Reporter article that shocked the world. He was led to the case by a tip off, and began to piece together the fact that the scams were all so similar; almost certainly perpetrated by the same person or group. In the 2018 article he described the scammer as a “cunning criminal organisation whose contours are only beginning to be understood”.
The story later became a global phenomenon, the subject of podcast Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen, dozens of articles, and now a new docuseries.
As he was investigating, Johnson discovered that people like Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy, former Sony Pictures Entertainment chair Amy Pascal, former Paramount head Sherry Lansing 20th Century Fox CEO Stacey Snider and high profile director and producer Lesli Linka Glatter had been impersonated.
He found that people who had been ensnared by the Con Queen – who earned this nickname because an intelligent, well-informed woman always spoke to the victims – included ex-military personnel and private security contractors.
And Johnson also learned that some of the victims had been horrendously humiliated over the course of the scam. Some were asked to remove their tops on camera (while the Con Queen kept her own camera turned off, citing security risks) or act out scenes. One was even accused by the Con Queen of making sexual propositions, when in fact it was allegedly the impersonator who made sexually suggestive comments to him. In another report, phone sex had been involved.
Described as a "crazy evil genius”, the con woman – or perhaps con people, if this was indeed a group of scammers – caused havoc for years.
One ex-marine’s trip in Bangkok was deeply troubling: believing he was there on the behest of Christine Hearst Schwarzman (the high profile lawyer married to billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman) he was repeatedly asked for money from various people, and became suspicious when the driver didn’t go to the planned locations. He managed to escape the situation by threatening to beat up the driver if he didn’t let the ex-marine out of the car.
Another victim, a photographer, was hounded by the Con Queen during his extended trip to Indonesia. She would call him every day, sometimes at odd hours, and became angry when he said he was tired. She said she could possibly become his “mother in L.A” and made excuses about promised money that would never arrive. Even after he explained he had spent all his life savings on the scam, she continued to contact him – seeming to get enjoyment from the game of taunting the penniless creative.
So how did Johnson unveil the elaborate scheme, track down the real person responsible and publish a 2023 book on the investigation, in five short years?
It helped that as more high profile people became involved, and the number of victims started to rack up, the scammer started to draw more attention.
For example, in one case, a Hollywood producer filed an anonymous lawsuit against against the anonymous perpetrator. While it was obviously impossible to unveil the con woman’s true identity through a lawsuit, according to Johnson’s article, there were a few clues due to victims’ subpoena power – an American summons order which can be used to compel individuals to attend court. Questions could be asked of internet providers and phone companies.
K2 Intelligence, a New York City headquartered advisory service firm were also brought onboard the investigation, hired by some of the impersonated individuals.
New Jersey private investigator, Nicole Kotsianas, was also integral to the discovery of the Con Queen’s identity. Initially hired by Amy Pascal’s team, she spent years gathering evidence about the culprit and following up every possible lead, from the names of the people purportedly working for the Con Queen, to deep diving on Instagram accounts, and tracking email domains.
In the end, all leads led to Hargobind Tahilramani. And so came another twist: the Con Queen was actually a man.
Hargobind Tahilramani, an Indonesian man, spent time in the UK and ran a foodie Instagram Purebytes – which had, at one point, as many as 50,000 followers. He was reasonably well-known in some UK restaurants, first for being a regular, and later for causing upset when he didn’t feel he was being looked after well enough.
“He was a regular at Trishna,” Karam Sethi, co-founder of the JKS Restaurants group, told The Guardian. “One day emails started arriving because a staff member didn’t give him the attention he desired. He threatened to call Michelin, and threatened us with attorneys. I called him and said if there was an issue he should come to me. He then completely flipped and became a superfan of our group, and the threats stopped. That was it.”
He had a history of disobedience and provocative actions: according the The Guardian, he was banned from all of Yotam Ottolenghi’s restaurants and had once called a bomb threat to the US Embassy in Indonesia – a move that landed him in prison for a stint. When Johnson managed to track down his sister, she called her estranged brother a “monster” and warned Johnson about him.
But despite investigators believing they had found the man at the centre of the Con Queen case, they couldn’t seem to pinpoint Tahilramani himself, who had by then dismantled his Instagram account.
Then, one day in 2020, out of the blue, he showed up on an Instagram live interview, pretending to be in London. He made a fateful mistake however, showing audiences the skyline behind him. Johnson, who had previously tried to contact the food blogger via Whatsapp, telephone and email, now had a chance to get his man.
Johnson sent a photo of the buildings in view to a friend who had worked in Manchester’s Northern Quarter for several years. And, unbelievably, the friend knew exactly which building Tahilramani had been recording from. Johnson went to the building, and eventually managed to speak to the alleged swindler, appealing to his ego and offering him the opportunity to tell his story.
It was exhausting: “Imagine a room in which a television broadcasts a Miramax movie, conservative AM talk radio blares, a YouTube influencer scrolls through TikTok videos, and an actor performs a never-ending series of monologues at the same time,” said Johnson in his book. They spoke regularly, and snippets of these recorded conversations appear in the new docuseries.
Then, in December 2020, Tahilramani was arrested, and is said to be still fighting extradition to the US where he faces a number of charges.
Hollywood Con Queen is available to watch now on Apple TV+