Original subtitles

So it's gonna be…

maybe like an hour and a half, two hour drive?

- Yeah. - And you have his name and everything?

Yeah.

Have you seen this person, ma'am?

- Does he look familiar to you? - No.

Does he look familiar to you?

No.

Excuse me, sir.

Do you have his address?

Mangga?

Mangga, Block B2, Number 10.

Excuse me, ma'am, I wanna ask…

do you know where Mangga Street, Block B2, Number 10 is?

Here is B2, Number 10.

Do you know how we should contact him?

Mr. Gandhi. He likes to visit him.

- Can you take us there? - Sure.

Okay, so we'll follow you.

Yeah.

We're journalists…

and we wanted to speak with you.

How did you find me?

It's a story that sounds like a Hollywood movie.

Creative professionals in the entertainment industry.

They had been lured to Indonesia

on the promise of work from major Hollywood figures.

Once there, they are tricked out of thousands of dollars.

The promised work never materializes.

At the center of this deception is a mysterious figure

known as "the Con Queen of Hollywood."

Scott Johnson of The Hollywood Reporter first reported on the scheme.

This is somebody who is exceptionally skilled at voice work.

There was this desire to enter into relationships with the victims.

And sometimes it got sexual.

So, what would drive somebody

to create these really elaborate fantasies

for other people to fall into?

Because it wasn't really about the money.

It was about something else.

People said they were convinced that it was two people

or this woman

and that the Con Queen

had a long criminal record as an impersonator.

I later started to realize just how big this actually was.

There were hundreds of victims from all around the world,

which meant there was a clear financial toll.

But I think the more lasting damage was psychological and emotional.

My beat at The Hollywood Reporter was to cover crime

and the seedy underbelly of Hollywood.

We got a tip that a grift was underway.

All these working professionals,

many of whom had ties to the entertainment industry,

had been contacted by these prominent Hollywood executives

for work on these high profile projects.

But the projects didn't exist,

and the executives' identities had been stolen.

The whole thing was a lie.

These women are incredibly powerful and influential,

so placing them at the center of the scam gave it credibility and legitimacy.

And there was a huge range of victims.

There were actors, photographers, filmmakers,

screenwriters, make-up artists,

lliterally hundreds and hundreds of victims.

It was a truly global crime spree.

And the victims were vulnerable because they were freelancers.

People who went from job to job, looking for new opportunities.

You know, they're gonna put a photo on Instagram.

They're gonna put their work on their website, or IMDb.

All of this information is there for anybody.

So the scammer used that to great effect.

But I think the more impressive feat was the impersonator's ability

to craft these manipulative and deceitful fantasies,

whose sole purpose was psychological devastation.

And it's what got me really interested in the story

because I realized that the story was not what I thought it was.

The money wasn't the primary motivation.

The primary motivation is this desire

to get inside the minds and the dreams of people,

and to pervert them.

To twist them, and to destroy them.

Doug Liman reached out to me on August 30th, 2020.

When I saw the email, I don't think I had heard of Doug Liman before

but I Googled him and realized Doug was a huge director

who had done some of my favorite movies.

Swingers and American Made.

And he said he had a movie coming up

that was gonna be filmed in outer space with Tom Cruise.

And one of the producers that I'd worked with

had recommended me and said I was a good actor.

Because they were looking for sort of an undiscovered talent for a role.

Doug said, "I'd love to get you on the phone

with the chairman of Universal, Donna Langley."

When Donna called me, she said, "This is gonna involve a table read

and I'm gonna be there, and Tom Cruise himself is gonna be there as well.

You're kind of a nobody but I think you can get there,

and this is gonna be your big shot."

And I thought the whole thing was surreal and exciting and weird.

Henry and I got an email from Wendi Murdoch to work on a project.

And I was familiar with the name, Wendi Murdoch.

That she was an ex-wife to Rupert Murdoch.

She was involved in the art world.

She had spoken to

the head person of Condé Nast, and they had recommended us.

And we had just finished working with them on a project.

This is how the industry works.

Like, people give you recommendations and sometimes that's how you get your break.

So we scheduled a call with the assistant,

we get in touch with him first, then Wendi picks up, she said

the work would end up being displayed during the Winter Olympics.

She needed some photographers to help her document

the spread of Chinese communities outside of China,

specifically, in Southeast Asia.

And as photographers, we travel all over the world.

So the puzzle pieces kind of fit together.

In 2017, I got an email from Amy Pascal.

And I remember thinking to myself, "That name sounds familiar."

"Hello Will, I have your details from Joe Kudla at Vuori Clothing

and was intrigued by some of your work that he showed me a while back."

And at that point, I did look up the name,

saw who it was, and I'm here wondering

why I'm getting an email from this Hollywood producer.

Amy, one more time!

But I've worked as a freelance photographer and filmmaker

for the majority of my professional career.

Sometimes I would have a job come out of nowhere.

And then I get a phone call from her,

and she starts explaining the concept

for this TV show that she wants to pitch to Netflix,

based off a children's storybook called Sidewalk Flowers.

It's basically this little girl in this mundane, black and white city,

and she finds these little flowers in the cracks of the sidewalk,

and that brings color to the world.

She wants to create a show about traveling through the world,

finding these little instances,

kind of in the cracks of culture that are meaningful

and have this beautiful weight to them.

She said she wanted to send me on a week-long trial trip

to Indonesia to find these storylines that will accumulate

into me presenting essentially a storyboard

for the pilot of this TV show.

I remember after that phone call, I definitely had thoughts of, "Why me?"

But also, "You have to take risks."

And this was such an incredible opportunity

for where I was at that point in my life.

I spoke to a couple of the producers in Hollywood

who were sort of baffled about why their names

were being used in connection with these fictitious projects.

And we found out that one of the producers who'd been impersonated,

Amy Pascal, had hired a detective agency called K-2 Intelligence.

As private investigators, we do investigations

tailored to high-net-worth individuals.

And I got a call from a lawyer who said,

"One of our clients is being impersonated.

Someone's calling around town

and having really strange conversations with people.

Not really sure what it's about. Can you look into it?"

And it became this thing where people in Hollywood

would talk to each other.

We learned about other people that were being impersonated.

And within Hollywood, it probably was 50 different individuals

who found themselves impersonated along the way.

My first impression was that this was potentially a prank.

There wasn't an obvious financial component initially,

so it was really hard to understand what we were dealing with

and what the motivations were.

I think that's, in a way, what makes it such a good scam.

Is that the scamminess of it isn't immediately evident,

because you just don't think anybody

who would go to this much effort

could possibly be scamming you.

And I think that the key is that once the impersonator

succeeded in selling the story,

it was almost like the hooks were in,

and the victim became, like a toy, a plaything for the scammer.

I was by far the least well-known person in contention,

which is why Doug needed to spend so much time grooming me.

And that's when he started laying out in more detail what the plan was.

He sent me a schedule, and then he said,

"You'll be doing physical therapy on these days, and martial arts,

and we're gonna take care of all that except for the martial arts.

And I've got these experts in the Philippines.

They're gonna make some videos for you and I want you to pay them.

These guys are the number one guys in the world for this."

I hadn't heard of this type of martial arts.

So I researched it.

That first payment was only 800 dollars or so,

which didn't seem like a huge deal.

I'd been paying money for acting classes on my own,

and paying a few thousand dollars to get martial arts training

seemed like something I was happy to do, even if I didn't get the role.

Doug sent me an invoice that looked legitimate.

I went over to Western Union, went ahead and sent money.

And then they had some celebrity trainer in New York,

and I got an email from them.

Had a questionnaire with, like, 50 questions on it.

Kind of related to, like, physical fitness.

And then a lot of questions that were just really bizarre.

But the bizarreness of the questions almost made it more realistic.

"Oh, this is what celebrities do."

Like, a new age workout program.

Also, it was a weird time in the world,

because 2020 was in the middle of Covid.

I was bored and this was such a weird, exciting thing

that was going on in my life.

This just served as a really welcome distraction.

So after that very first email from Amy,

six days later, I'm on a flight to Jakarta.

She sent me the day rate that she was gonna pay me,

which at that time, was much more than I was making on other jobs.

And then Amy told me that I would have to pay for the transportation,

for travel cost, for interpreters,

and had to get receipts so I could get reimbursed.

I do projects all the time that I'm reimbursed for travel expenses.

It happens on every other production.

I don't know really why I recorded these phone calls with Amy,

but I remember starting to feel a little bit overwhelmed.

It felt like she was giving me so much information

and I need to start documenting this.

So I get to Jakarta, I walked outside

and there was my driver holding a sign saying, "Mister Strathmann."

And so I get to this hotel and I give the driver the first fee.

The day we were supposed to leave,

Aaron reached out and he just threw this, kind of, last minute thing

that we will have to pay a fee upon arrival

to the local logistics company.

"It's gonna be about 1,200 dollars, is that okay?"

He was like, "Don't worry, we're gonna reimburse you."

So, we're like, "Okay, that sounds fair."

We got into this rhythm where Doug was asking me the same stuff over and over.

"Do you really feel like you're ready for the role?

I'm personally invested in you. Do you have what it takes?"

"Yes, Doug, I want this role. And I'll do whatever you want."

There were times when I was talking to Doug five times a day.

It was like, every few hours.

Then he would give me these assignments.

He said, "I'm gonna send you tons of movies,

and I want you to send me a character analysis essay after each movie."

And I was watching, like

three or four or five movies a day, which I've never done before.

Like, waking up at 7:00 a.m. and watching movies all day.

He'd call me and say, "Well, are you done yet or what?"

And I'm like, "Doug, it's been three hours.

You want me to fast forward the movie or what?"

But at the same time, it felt like I was already getting a lot of value,

because Doug himself was getting me ready for this huge opportunity.

Each day I would wake up at five or six in the morning.

Going down, meeting my driver.

And Jakarta has some of the worst traffic in the entire world.

I was sitting in a car in traffic for literally four to eight hours a day.

Going to these locations, shooting these photos for this storyboard.

Driving back, trying to catch dinner,

and then having these phone calls with Amy till two in the morning.

I kind of had to be at the whim of her schedule.

She would just keep calling until I picked up.

It really felt like she was pushing me to do my best work.

And it was exhausting.

We flew over to Jakarta, and the driver,

he handed us the invoice, and we gave him the money.

He drove straight to a gas station. He talked to a guy.

And it seemed like he handed him the envelope where we put the money.

I just thought, "This is strange."

We arrived at the hotel.

And there was a reservation, it was paid for.

And we took a picture of the license plate.

And then, Henry said, "I'm gonna take a picture of the driver."

The driver, like, "Yeah, of course."

And on the schedule, it was a really intense three back-to-back days.

So, we went straight to bed.

The next morning, we got a call from Aaron, the assistant, and Wendi.

They said that there was a big problem.

The driver had complained we were taking pictures of him

and that was somehow racist.

We said, "This is obviously a miscommunication."

So she said, "Just apologize to him and be really nice to him.

Oh, by the way, the second payment, you're gonna have to pay that today."

When he came to pick us up he didn't seem upset at all.

But we apologized, gave him another, like, thousand dollars.

Then he dropped us off in Chinatown.

We thought if they're asking for fees,

there will be someone walking around with us, talking to locals,

making sure that we have permission.

But he drove off.

And we were like, "Okay, this is just weird, you know?"

Like, it just all didn't make any sense.

At that point, we had the suspicion

that there is more to this whole situation.

I kept asking Henry, "What do you think this could be?"

And then we just couldn't really come up with a plausible answer.

Doug was saying stuff like, "Oh, I'm just fighting for you.

I believe in you, but you're making it pretty tough with Donna.

She's just really thinking that another actor is gonna be better than you.

But I'm doing everything I can to keep you in her mind."

And maybe once every few days, Donna would call me directly.

She definitely commented on my willingness to train.

Like, "Based on your pictures, you seem skinny."

And she noticed my posture was bad,

so I needed to send more money to add posture exercises to the video.

So I get back to Denver, I sent in my invoices.

She sent me bank letterhead

that are signed off and stamped by her banks,

with the amounts for my invoices.

The money's out there, it's in the works.

So then two days after I've gotten back, I'm just getting over the jet lag,

and I get an email from Amy saying that she needs me

to go back to Jakarta immediately, potentially, the next day.

I kind of almost convinced myself, like,

"Of course, it makes sense. How could it not? That's just what it is."

And so I go back.

So, on this trip, she upped my day rate

'cause now like double what I was supposed to get for the first time.

In my head, I'm making good money.

And so, the point of that trip was to go to this region called Yogyakarta.

And she's also telling me that we may have this opportunity

to go to these two locations in Bali

that one of the other producers thinks is really important for this storyboard.

But there's a volcano in Bali.

Now to that volcano eruption in Bali.

One hundred thousand people there have been told to leave.

And so, don't get to go to Bali.

But I fly to LA, where I'm gonna meet with Amy.

And we're gonna work on the storyboard together,

and then go to Netflix and present it to them directly.

Because we were already pretty suspicious that something is off,

and we said, "Oh, maybe we should, like,

do a recording just to have this person's voice."

He called us back.

He started shouting and just going ballistic.

And he accused us of recording him.

Which really blew our mind,

because there was only a couple options here.

Hidden camera in the room, or some kind of like recording device.

And so we were like, "Okay, this is a scam."

I started feeling like a knot in my stomach.

When we're out shooting, they have access to our room,

maybe they're putting drugs in our suitcases.

So we left for the airport.

And we thought, "Everyone here is in on it."

We didn't know who to trust.

And the whole way there I was just paranoid.

We were relieved when we passed the customs.

But only around 2,200 dollars went to the scammer.

Everything else went to the airline companies.

And that's exactly why throughout the whole scam,

we were just wondering what's the endgame,

because 2,200 dollars did not seem…

you know, didn't match the effort.

Why go after us, you know? What's the real reward here?

Doug called me and Doug was like,

"I tapped my network. I found a great gym for you.

This gym is on the property of Barbara Ellison,

who used to be married to Larry Ellison."

And of course I Googled that and that checked out.

Doug's like, "She has property with an amazing gym. You're gonna love it.

I just need to make sure that you're gonna follow the protocols.

Chris Pratt actually works out at the gym.

I need you to not interact with Chris Pratt.

I need you to go in, work out, and get out."

And he said, "Barbara Ellison is gonna call you later tonight,

because as far as she's concerned, you're a total stranger."

At midnight, she called and she started off sounding like

a nice grandmother type of person, and kind of saying,

"I would be excited to offer you my gym if you're a nice person.

Are you a nice person?" "Yes, yes, Barbara, I'm a nice person."

Then she's like, "Could you…

Could you give a little kiss or something?"

And I was like, "Yeah, you know. It's great to meet you."

And she's like, "No, no, no. I need a real kiss."

"Okay."

I was almost playing along ironically, like, I wasn't getting into it.

I was just in literally, the most matter of fact way possible,

sort of humoring her, and she's like,

"Oh, come on. You can do better than that.

Can you lick me?"

And she treated the whole thing like phone sex

and basically had an orgasm on the phone,

which I had the unfortunate experience of having to listen to.

The whole call was probably 40 seconds,

but was probably the most disturbing phone call

I've ever gotten in my life.

And you hear about all the bad things

that have gone on with powerful people in Hollywood, you know,

sexual attacks and obviously, it's not okay, but you think,

"Some of these people, I guess, in this industry are like that."

And then Doug called me in the morning and said,

"Unfortunately, the gym isn't gonna work.

Chris Pratt, he's been extra sensitive with all the people

being in his workout space, recently, and he's not okay with this arrangement."

After that second trip to Indonesia,

I got into LA to meet up with Amy Pascal in person.

I'm staying in my hotel there, and I get this call from Amy.

She tells me that we can't meet up.

And at this point, it was a couple weeks

after the first stories of Harvey Weinstein broke.

She says that she had just spoken with her lawyer

and the optics of this senior level producer

meeting with this young photographer, one on one,

at a hotel in LA doesn't quite feel right.

And it doesn't. Like, that's true.

Then she relayed in that conversation

how good of a job I've done up to that point.

But the producers and Netflix still want these two locations in Bali

to kinda capstone the storyboard in this project.

And I'm, like, "What are you talking about?

There's a volcano erupting."

And she's like, "No, it's out of my control.

You need to do this or this opportunity is gonna go away."

And so, I'm on another flight back to Jakarta for the third time.

The whole time I was just waiting for my phone to ring

to do whatever I needed.

And then, Doug said, "Donna's gonna call you later tonight, you know,

she just wants to make sure that you can act out a scene."

She obviously is a huge player in Hollywood.

So I was a little bit nervous.

And this call was different. It was a Skype call

and she did not have her camera on,

but wanted me to have my camera on.

And she was like, "I want you to pretend like

you see a beautiful girl at a ball and tell her that she's beautiful

and then, you kiss her."

And something like that is incredibly awkward to act out alone,

but I did my best and I have my camera going

and walked up to it and pretend to whisper,

"You're beautiful and I'd love to go upstairs with you,"

and pretend to kiss the camera, kind of thing.

She was kinda saying, "This is so awkward.

I don't think you believe it," or whatever.

And she was right, I mean, it was incredibly awkward,

and I didn't believe it, and it was uncomfortable,

and I didn't wanna do it.

And she wanted me to do the same scene,

but mentioned I should take my shirt off

to get more comfortable and not be so uptight.

Whatever, I took my shirt off and reenacted the scene.

And she's like, "Ah, this is so crazy," and, "You're so awkward."

And I was like, "Yeah, I mean, this is really awkward."

She was like, "I think you should go meditate for an hour

and then we're gonna try again."

And so I did that. Then she asked me to take my pants off.

And I think I did it because I was like,

"Well, first of all, I'm wearing underwear.

And second of all, the thing's kinda cropped.

You can't really see, like, below my waist anyway,

so what difference does it make?"

And then she was like, "Touch yourself."

And then I snapped.

I was like, "No. This is ridiculous. This is not okay, what you're doing."

That's probably the strongest combination

of anger and feeling upset that I've ever felt,

and to the point where I was literally shaking.

All of a sudden, it felt more like I was really being used

and kinda taken for granted and just completely disrespected.

She was backpedaling and telling me to put my clothes on,

and to calm down, and I think I was kinda yelling,

"No, I'm not gonna calm down. This is not acceptable.

I don't know what you're doing to me, but it's not okay

and it's completely manipulative."

And then Doug called saying, like,

"This is horrible, like, this should never have happened.

You're a good guy. You're like a son to me."

And he's like, "Going forward, you never have to talk to Donna again."

He seemed very genuine.

And Doug hadn't done any of the sexual stuff, right?

So he had sort of maintained being the nice person,

at least between him and Donna and Barbara.

And so, I sort of, accepted his apology.

And then he gave me a movie to watch. I was like, "That's fine."

And then he called me at the end of the movie, and he was like,

"I just need one thing.

I need you to run to Western Union real quick.

We need 700 bucks for the martial arts guys."

And just the fact that he had asked that, after what I'd been through,

that was the end.

At that point, I think I was 80 percent sure that it was a scam,

but I wasn't sure if, like, the Barbara part was a scam

or Donna was a scam, or Doug.

It took a while to totally figure out

that the whole thing was a fabrication across three characters.

I just thought this is a really horrible person

who uses people for sport.

And I felt really embarrassed about losing 5,000 dollars.

But had they not tried the sexual stuff

and taken me down that route at the end,

they probably could have gotten more money from me.

When I started talking to the victims,

the story just took on a different shape.

There was some kind of more sadistic design in mind.

You know, obviously, consenting adults do all kinds of things,

for money or not for money.

The difference here is that these people

believed that this was part of the professional arrangement.

There was a power imbalance.

The Con Queen began impersonating

all these powerful female Hollywood executives

right around the same time that the Harvey Weinstein scandal

was erupting in the press.

Now to the latest on Harvey Weinstein.

Allegations by numerous women who say the Hollywood mogul…

And I started to wonder whether there was some sort of connection,

because they were sort of mirror images of each other.

The Con Queen's scam was impersonated powerful women,

abusing and manipulating unsuspecting young men.

It seemed like the scammer was kind of recreating it

as a new version of a story of abuse.

I think in the psychology of this person,

is this desire

to enter into relationships of a sort,

with other people,

and then to proceed on a path of destruction sort of from the inside.

So, the money is like an added benefit.

Because the satisfaction was had, I think, in their suffering.

This is now technically six times going back and forth

between a 12-hour time difference in two and half weeks.

Like, I am tiptoeing around everything.

I'm trying to do my best job not to fuck up,

because this is still a job interview for me.

I was so exhausted and so… just driven to finish this.

And at that point, it's also the money's becoming an issue.

There's been issues with the bank transfers.

And Amy kept telling me like, "Oh, they're coming.

It's the transfer that takes several business days.

And sometimes it gets hung up."

Me being on a 12-hour time difference

and also just being so busy during these days,

I couldn't get in touch with my bank to figure out what was going on.

And throughout the project, the money, it really ran away from me.

Because, early on, what I was paying on the ground

seemed pretty reasonable, but as the time went on,

those fees got raised.

I had exhausted all of my savings.

My bank account was literally dry.

I got a call from Amy.

I pick up the phone and she's yelling,

saying all these things, like, "What are you doing?

You need to get the money and get on a flight tomorrow to Bali.

You fucking this up is ruining the entire project.

It's making me look bad."

And I thought that's so extreme,

but she has all of the control, all the power.

I can't call the shots here.

And I was borrowing money from my parents.

I'd have a phone call with my dad and be like,

"Hey, can you put 2,000 dollars in my bank account?"

I finally get a flight to go to Bali.

And at that point, I was just so frustrated,

because the money situation.

I was spent.

And then around two in the morning, I wake up to my phone buzzing.

I don't even look at it.

I just hit it, turn it off, go back to sleep.

Five minutes later, it starts buzzing again.

I hit it again, turn it off. Like, even if it's Amy,

I'm like, "Whatever."

Third time it keeps buzzing, I'm like, "Something's up.

I gotta answer it. It's gonna be Amy."

I answer the phone and it's my dad.

"Will, are you okay? Where are you?"

In this tone that is just…

I've never heard him say it in a tone like that before.

I'm, like, "I'm in… I'm in my hotel room."

Like, "Yeah, I'm safe." Like, "What's wrong?"

And he basically tells me, he's like,

"The woman you've been talking to isn't Amy Pascal.

There's this crazy scam going on.

Somebody's catfished her, you're not talking to Amy."

And my mind immediately goes to…

"No, what are you talking about? That can't be true."

Like, I didn't believe my own dad in that moment.

And I thought that he was lying to me. I was like, "What's wrong?

Why are you trying to get me to come home?"

And I almost started getting defensive, 'cause I was like,

"You're trying to take this… I'm so close.

Like, it is Amy.

Like, just tell me what the actual reason why

you're trying to get me out of there."

And he just keeps saying it, and keeps saying it,

and then, something in me switches,

and like, all of these things start coming together.

"This didn't make that much sense." "Oh, that's why the money…"

"Oh, this is why this, this, and this."

That's literally my reality being torn apart.

Amy! Amy, one more time!

It was terrifying.

And also, the…

Just hearing the sense of fright and terror in my dad's voice

at the same time was scary.

And I was like, "All right, well then, like, who do I…

How do I get out of here? Who do I trust?"

About three weeks into the investigation,

I got a call from a man who had found his way to us

through our client's law firm, and said, "I think my son's being scammed.

He's currently in Indonesia.

He thinks he's working on this project.

And something doesn't seem right."

So I had to tell them that,

"Yes, in fact, they were talking to an impersonator."

But for me, it was the first big break in the case.

And suddenly, we're in Indonesia.

We don't know what this is about, or why they had been lured there.

Is this a trafficking situation?

If it is, this is way bigger than what we thought.

And so, I called the victim, and I said,

"Right now, law enforcement probably wouldn't do anything.

So you need to get yourself on a plane and get out of there as soon as possible."

After that phone call with Nicole,

I got the first flight out of Jakarta back to the States.

I'm not gonna tell the hotel. I'm not gonna call anybody,

because my driver's supposed to show up in three hours.

How do I know that they're not in on it?

If somebody's so crazy to come up with this entire scheme,

like, who's to say they're not just gonna kidnap me

and make me disappear?

And eventually we settle on, I'm gonna pack up and I'm gonna get an Uber.

It's a third party, and she said,

"If you don't like the looks of the Uber, just cancel, get another one."

So I get in this Uber, I get another call from Nicole,

and I'm telling her I'm on the way to the airport,

but my flight doesn't leave for two to three hours.

And then I'm like, "How do I know that Nicole isn't in on this?"

I'm now telling, potentially, these same people my entire plan.

And I remember, like, asking Nicole, I was like,

"Like, can you give me a reassurance or like, who are you?"

And she did. She, like, sent me her website.

Because at that point, I'm still like questioning everything.

I get to the airport, so on edge

that every single movement or somebody behind me, you know,

I was waiting for somebody to grab me.

And it's 6:30 in the morning, my phone started buzzing.

And it was Amy.

And then I get an email from her.

"I've called you six times."

And I'm like, panicking, because she has to, like,

be able to figure out there's only so many flights that go out that morning.

I was in shock.

Like, fight or flight just to get the fuck out of Jakarta.

And I didn't feel physically safe

until I was literally sitting on the plane

and had taken off and was in the air.

I get to Denver.

And it took me four days after those three weeks

to finally sleep for, like, six hours again.

I could fall asleep for 20 minutes or 30 minutes and wake up.

I was so on edge.

Once I got home, I remember asking Nicole,

I was, like, "How evil is this person?

How do I know that I'm safe?"

And I remember Nicole very calmly just telling me that like,

"I can't guarantee anything, but I think you're okay.

And the reason why is because whoever this is

has already moved on."

So it wasn't 24 hours after I had left,

and they were already on to the next person.

Could you talk a little bit, just briefly

about how much of the money went to costs like airlines?

38,039 dollars was for the vendor fees that I paid in cash,

and then 16,413 dollars was for flights and reimbursements.

Our work for the first client was done within a couple of months.

We helped shut down the impersonation of her,

but I knew it wasn't gonna be over, because I kept hearing from victims.

You hear those stories and we said, "Well, we have to help these people."

For the majority of the case, we didn't have a paying client here.

The firm made the decision that we can spend time on this,

and we can put resources to this.

You know, it's the right thing to do.

For months, we called everyone in law enforcement

that we had a contact with.

I had people at the FBI telling me,

"It's not clear whose jurisdiction this is and it's not big enough.

I'm just managing your expectation.

This will never end up with the FBI, they will never make an arrest.

This is not what we do."

So, that's why we made a decision

that we were gonna figure out who was doing this,

but also, talk to as many victims as possible all over the world,

so that it was something that law enforcement couldn't brush off.

The scam was affecting the entertainment industry from the top down,

so it was a perfect story for The Hollywood Reporter.

We were approached by The Hollywood Reporter

because they already had been hearing about this

through their channels as well.

And so the decision was made to help get the story out there further,

so that it was immediately apparent to anyone who would read it,

that was going through this, that they're dealing with the same thing.

And we decided that we were gonna put it on the cover.

And the headline was, "Hunting the Con Queen of Hollywood."

When that article hit online, you know, it went a little bit viral.

It was being shared all over Twitter.

And we managed to obtain recordings.

We put them both in the story.

I initially thought it might be a criminal enterprise,

just because it was so much work,

in the form of drafting NDAs and contracts

and then sending multiple people into Indonesia at the same time,

all while trying to set up new victims.

I mean, all of that required a real logistical mastery.

And then, after the article was published,

people immediately starting getting in touch with all kinds of theories,

and you know, purported evidence of that they knew who the scammer was.

And in some cases, people would realize that they themselves had been scammed.

And then turned to Nicole,

because I quoted Nicole as the chief investigator.

So they knew that she had an open investigation.

The flood gates opened and there were a hundred people

who had been to Indonesia in the past five years, who found that article.

Immediately, we went from very little

to a whole lot of information to sift through.

I welcomed the calls, and for a lot of people who had called law enforcement

or had called the US embassy when they were in Indonesia,

and just been… rebuffed,

you know, I was the only person who was taking their calls.

And from an evidence perspective, it also was helpful.

Somebody stayed at this hotel. Somebody had this driver.

And they would say, "This was the email I was interacting with."

There would be a new domain that would pop up every couple of weeks.

And so, what we were doing

was a little bit like a game of Whac-A-Mole.

We would get one shut down…

…and then the next week, there'd be another one.

And they would just tweak it a little bit.

They would change "pictures" to "films."

So, they were acutely aware

that somebody was behind the scenes doing all of that.

But we did know very quickly that the person was in the UK.

And we knew that from IP addresses,

and the US cellphone numbers that people were corresponding with,

were routing to a UK number.

But we didn't know who actually was behind

these domains and phone numbers that were being used.

And so it was obvious that if we were

going to actually get any information here,

it would probably make sense to file a civil lawsuit

to be able to see behind the scenes.

And so we did that.

And then, we got back the name of the person

who had registered one of the domains

and set up one of the phone numbers with a real name,

with a real address and real phone number.

And so now we had real leads, and we had people to start talking to.

"Dear Mister Yim."

"My firm serves an outside counsel for Amy Pascal.

We recently learned that you have been involved

in a campaign to impersonate Ms. Pascal.

Your conduct undoubtedly violates federal and state law."

I was quite concerned when I first received the email.

I just gave them all the information.

I said, "I have nothing to hide. I can tell you everything you want."

They said, "My friend Gavin had asked me to do this."

And that was the first time I heard the name Gavin.

Gavin seemed to panic when I first mentioned it.

Like he was, like, "What? Why they doing this?"

And then said, "Oh, no worries, it's just a miscommunication,"

and he'll handle it.

And I was just like, "This is nothing to do with me, so go sort it out."

What happened was he asked me to renew a domain for him.

And he just needed a card to make the payments,

cause he said he doesn't usually like to use credit cards,

because for him it'd be easier to just deposit cash into a cash machine,

and then put my account number, which was super easy to do,

and much more convenient, so I was happy to do it for him.

And at no point I thought there was something shady going on at all.

I just thought I was helping him, but I guess I was also very naive,

and quite young at that time, where I couldn't put the puzzle pieces together.

We had found more than one individual

who had been directed to sign up for the domains.

I saw connections in their Instagrams,

talking to each other and tagging each other,

related to this guy Gavin's Instagram account,

which was called "purebytes."

It was a public Instagram that was posting every single day.

And he had 52,000 followers.

I couldn't believe that the person who's potentially running this scam

is also trying to make it as an influencer.

Morning, Instagram folks.

Bright and early, because when you don't procrastinate,

when you don't make excuses, you go ahead and you power up.

Level up! Don't ever give in.

Your body should be your temple.

The current snapshots that we were seeing were of his life in London.

And it was very polished and it had beautiful photography.

It looked like he had a very cosmopolitan, great, life.

He volunteered a lot of information.

He put out a lot of information about himself,

and he eventually revealed, you know, he's from Indonesia.

And the more plausible the theory became that he was involved.

Some of the creative ideas that he was presenting in his real life

were merging with the scam.

So, at that point, I was convinced that it was him.

But all I had was the name Gavin, which is really common,

and you know, Googling, "Gavin in London but from Indonesia"

isn't gonna get you very far.

Eventually, by scrubbing his Instagram

and really going through every single comment…

…other names emerged. So somebody had written, "Gavin Lal."

Somebody else called him Hargo.

Someone else referred to him as Gobind Tahil.

And then, I came to understand that he grew up

in the Indian community in Jakarta.

And many of their last names ended in "ramani" or "ani."

So I had all these roots and suffixes.

I was trying them all in different combinations.

And then one day,

I hit "Hargobind Tahilramani."

And it was about six months between Gavin turning into Hargobind Tahilramani.

After I published the article, I got an email from someone in Indonesia

who said, "I know who the scammer is, let's talk."

The seeds of the Hollywood scam…

…were planted in Indonesia.

In 2010, there had been a weird thing going on.

Someone is messing around with the film industry in Indonesia.

I was fairly sure it was the same person.

After I connected with Scott Johnson,

I told him everything about… what I knew about Hargobind Punjabi Tahilramani.

He sent me a picture that was taken from a newspaper article

that had appeared in Indonesia.

And he says, "That man right there is the scammer."

And I cross-referenced the image with this Instagram account.

It was the same person.

Nicole and I were talking to different people

and putting different pieces of the puzzle together,

but in the end, we wound up coming to the same conclusion

within a few weeks of each other.

And so the article was about Hargobind

and how he served time in Jakarta for embezzlement.

And then while he was in prison,

he made some bomb threats against the US Embassy.

For that, he was sentenced to more time in prison

on terrorism-related charges.

It mentioned accents and impersonations.

I learned that he was also arrested for theft.

And he had a warrant in the United States for another bomb threat.

He'd been on the FBI's radar for ten years, and yet, they'd never…

they'd never found him. I mean, they'd never arrested him,

and this is just prepost… I thought it was preposterous.

How is this possible?