How a 'Hollywood Con Queen' Scammed the Industry's Hopes

For years, the figurehead of an international scam syndicate has crushed the career dreams of vulnerable Hollywood workers, drained their bank accounts and forced some men to perform sex acts via Skype for what they thought they were auditions.

In reality, the journalists would discover that they were communicating with a single person, who was single-handedly managing this elaborate and complex international project.

And it was actually a man.

Hollywood Con Queen: The Hunt for an Evil Genius, a fascinating and disturbing documentary series now streaming on Apple TV+, follows investigative journalist Scott Johnson in his ultimately successful attempt to track down and interview the notorious conman: Hargobind Tahilramani, a Indonesian food blogger.

Johnson told HuffPost he was stunned when he learned Tahilramani's identity after his Hollywood Reporter 2018 Cover Story on the so-called Con Queen.

His THR story included actual recordings of the scammer in conversation with his victims. At the time, Johnson did not know the scammers' names, their true gender or the fact that they were operating alone. Tahilramani, an Indonesian food blogger, was identified two years later in a podcast, Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queenand documented in a article for Vanity Fair.

Johnson discovered Tahilramani's true identity around the same time through a source.

I remember thinking it was so improbable and totally bizarre,” Johnson recalls.

During that same conversation, Johnson learned that not only was Tahilramani running the scam alone, but he had already served four years in prison. He later confirmed both facts in his own reporting.

Tahilramani had a crazy, crazy criminal record involving all kinds of other crimes, Johnson said, including embezzlement and bomb threats.

There's something much more devious and sinister going on here, beyond an identity theft scam, Johnson realized. This just opened up a whole box of weirdness.

Tahilramani scammed dozens, if not hundreds, of Hollywood hopefuls by posing as influential women in the entertainment industry, including studio heads, directors and wealthy producers. He was skilled at imitating women's distinctive accents, including rapid regional American, British, and Chinese accents. The victims too believed they had spoken with other associates about a male assistant, such as through increasingly incessant phone calls, emails and hundreds of text messages.

Actors, hairstylists, makeup artists and photographers hoping to break into show business or expand their portfolios paid tens of thousands of dollars to travel to Indonesia for what they thought would be location shoots. In addition to covering their own flights and hotels in Jakarta, they were forced to pay drivers, guides and other associates in cash. All expenses would be reimbursed, they were told, and they were promised generous salaries for their work, not to mention invaluable experience.

But the promised jobs, like the employers who offered them, were a fiction. The victims, many of whom were new to their field, were never paid or reimbursed. Some lost all their savings; almost all of them endured what Hollywood Con Queen director Chris Smith called psychological devastation.

It seemed like Tahilramani's only goal, Johnson said, was to chain you down and disrupt your life, cripple your ability to discern fact from fiction, and disturb you psychologically.

Hollywood Con Queen was filmed in tandem with Johnson's investigation for his 2023 book of the same name, a sequel to his 2018 THR original feature.

The documentary series starts to feel like a spy thriller when Johnson (whose father was actually a spy, whom he discusses in another book) runs off and eventually confronts Tahilramani on a busy Manchester street, where he was hiding from authorities.

Tahilramani appears stunned and desperate to escape, but incredibly, he suggests that Johnson interviews him later on Zoom.

Tahilramani ended up speaking to Johnson for hours, in countless video and phone calls.

Johnson waded through Tahilramani's fabulism to learn more about his past, his mindset, his motivations, and the justification for his crimes.

Basically, he viewed the victims with a lot of disdain and contempt, Johnson told HuffPost.

Tahilramani never apologized. In fact, he said he believed his brands, which he had researched extensively before contacting them, wanted and deserved to be deceived.

The scammer apparently had a desire to hurt someone else without any real explanation other than that there is some kind of sadistic pleasure in it, Johnson said.

When asked if he believed the evil genius nickname in the subtitle of the book and documentary series was accurate, Johnson said it was a certain type of evil.

Obviously we're not talking about murder or anything like that, but evil comes in all shapes and sizes, I think, he said.

According to Johnson, Tahilramani demonstrated a true recurring pattern of actual malice. His threats towards some victims were rather sadistic, to the point of being grotesque.

As for whether he's a genius, Johnson said, there's a kind of mastery at work here.

He specifically highlighted the creative, logistical and psychological tools, as well as personal skills, that were on display.

Tahilramani was arrested in Manchester in November 2020, after being indicted by a US grand jury on eight federal counts, Johnson reported, including wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. A British judge ruled last June that it could be extradited in the United States, which he said he would appeal to.

He has been held in a London prison since his arrest.