Original subtitles

[ Projector whirring ]

♪♪

Mandarano: The way to influence society,

to influence culture, is to tell a story.

It's always been like that.

It's part of the human condition.

The most popular, iconic films of all time,

they generally have the best villains.

Like, look at "Star Wars."

People might remember it or not,

but they remember Darth Vader.

[ Hissing ]

The best thing about villainry is the complexity behind it.

You know, you could have a villain that's compelling

where they're nice to everyone,

but inside or what they're doing outside of that

is a different story.

♪♪

The world has sociopaths,

people who are incapable of feeling empathy,

people who don't think about others as their peers

but like as prey.

♪♪

Is the Con Queen of Hollywood a sociopath?

That's sort of the question that

I've been asking myself for a long time.

Con Queen: [ On phone ] I want to say sincerely,

I think you're smart, you have a bright future,

but you've not been in the industry

long enough to know how it's done.

So you would need a guiding force.

Someone who's done business before.

♪♪

♪♪

[ Keyboard clacking ]

Mandarano: I guess I've always been a storyteller at heart.

Roleplaying games, they're like my jam.

In a game like that,

you have the game master, the storyteller,

the person who controls everything about the world.

That always appealed to me,

to be able to tell a story like that.

I'd like to say I'm a screenwriter,

which I'm not really because I'm unproduced.

About five years ago,

I had been dabbling in the screenwriting world,

and I found an article

that talked about, you know what would be great?

A movie about Chinese and American submarines

have a little spat together.

And I latched onto that idea.

So I recruited my buddy Dave.

And I said, "You know what,

it would be fun for us to write this together."

I was pitching it around to the standard routes,

and I came across the ChinaFilmGroup.com.

So I sent the pitch, and a week later,

I got my first response from Huilang Jing,

the Vice President of Development.

She expressed interest in the project,

said that they may be interested in having a face-to-face,

and it would either be in Beijing,

or, alternatively, it was posed Jakarta, Indonesia,

where they had producers on set doing film work.

Oh, it was cloud nine.

I went in my parents' bedroom, and I woke them up.

"They want me to go to China or Indonesia!

This is crazy!"

"Shut up, go to sleep."

I contacted Dave the next day,

and he was absolutely shocked.

The more rejections you have,

the more you're able to appreciate any, you know,

real interest in anything that you've created.

♪♪

Martin: Lucky breaks come to you all the time.

It's how you navigate them when they're in your lap.

And sometimes, they'll pass you by

because you weren't ready. [ Camera shutter clicking ]

When it came to photography, I was a bit naive.

I didn't realize how difficult it would be

to get started, to network.

[ Camera shutter clicking ] I just thought

I could take nice photos

and that would be it.

So it was a big learning curve.

In the fall of 2018,

things were really starting to click.

I actually ended up doing a little social takeover

for Condé Nast and their Instagram feed,

which was, at the time, you know, a pretty big thing.

Around that time, I got this e-mail in my inbox

from someone I've never talked to before.

His name's Aaron Gersh.

He's interested in licensing some photos,

or something like this, and I was like,

"Maybe there's something there," but I had other things going on,

so it went on the backburner.

And about a week later,

I'm out playing basketball by myself,

and I get this phone call. [ Cellphone vibrates ]

And it's Aaron Gersh.

He says, "Is it okay for me to patch you through

to a call from Wendi Murdoch?"

And I'm thinking, "Who is Wendi Murdoch?"

Rupert: She came out to work

for Star Television in Hong Kong,

where I met her.

And, you know, who wouldn't fall in love

with a beautiful woman like that?

♪♪

And I get patched through to Wendi Murdoch.

And this lady's on the phone with a very heavy accent

and is just basically flattering me.

"I love your work,

I love what you did with Condé Nast,

and I have this project that I'd like you to photograph."

And then at the end of the phone call,

she's like, "Okay, well,

if you are interested in doing this,

I would love to fly you out to either Indonesia or Malaysia

to shoot the assignment next week."

I hang up the phone, and I'm like, "What just happened?

I'm going to Asia next week? Who's Wendi Murdoch?"

And I get on my phone, I start Googling things.

I'm like, "Oh, that's who Wendi Murdoch is.

Okay, this could be big."

♪♪

Rider: Any art is tough,

you know, and I love a challenge.

You know, when people are like,

"There's such a small percentage of people

who actually make it as actors,

you've picked one of the toughest industries to go into,"

I'm like, "Well, sounds perfect for me."

[ Grunts ]

I'm an endurance athlete plus a humanitarian,

so I kind of travel around the world,

and I do extreme events

to be able to raise a message against child abuse.

January 3, 2015,

I paddled 500 miles in the open ocean

for 17 days by myself.

I filmed with GoPro along the way,

and the final film that we made is called "Heart of the Sea."

I was on the cover of Men's Health magazine,

and that was about being a role model

rather than a model, so that was cool.

I had a wellness retreat in Australia,

and, you know, it was going pretty well,

but there was a bit of a lull,

and I was pretty complacent with what I was doing.

And this e-mail comes through from Wendi Murdoch,

saying that they'd found my photo

from a Men's Health magazine

and they'd like to talk to me about doing a TV series.

[ Cellphone rings ] About three days later,

6:00 a.m., I'm laying in bed, wake up to a phone call.

And it's Aaron Gersh, the assistant of Wendi Murdoch,

and would I be all right to talk to her?

So then this lady gets on the phone,

and she was just saying they've checked out everything of me,

they'd watched "Heart of the Sea" film,

and they'd like to potentially use me for a TV series

that they were doing about pushing the boundaries.

And I said, "Well, that seems pretty fitting for me,

seeing as that's how I live my life anyway."

They send me through this pile of script,

and it was called "Boundaries."

What they'd like to do

is tie it in with Emerson Collective,

which is a charity that Laurene Jobs owns.

To leave a mark in a way

that you think is important and lasting,

that's a life well-lived.

Rider: It was sort of fitting,

it goes along with everything

that I pretty much project in life,

so I was like, "Yeah, sweet. Let's talk more."

♪♪

Brinkman Evans: When you're a young photographer

or, you know, really, any artist,

you kind of just have to take a complete leap of faith.

I wanted to not be afraid and to go out and tell stories.

I do a lot of landscape and travel work,

and then film still work,

where I take photos of whatever it is

that the actors are doing in their world.

I'd been living in Newfoundland for just less than a year,

and then I got this fated e-mail from Wendi Murdoch.

She got my name from this list at Condé Nast Traveler,

and she is putting together an exhibition

for the Beijing Winter Olympics,

and she would like to have a chat with me to see

if I would be interested in being, you know, involved.

Ironically enough,

my dad worked with Rupert Murdoch

for some time,

and he's known Rupert 50-odd years.

I didn't tell Wendi that David Evans was my father

because I wanted to make sure

that I retained this job on my own.

[ Cellphone vibrates ] She told me

that she was sending a bunch of photographers

and she wanted us to go to Indonesia for a couple of days

and focus on things that were Chinese-influenced or heritage.

She had a brief,

and it was Wendi's interpretation

of what the color red meant to her.

And it's a test shoot.

And she said, "Is there any way

that you can fly to Jakarta in a couple of days?"

And I said yes.

♪♪

Mandarano: Dave and I didn't have the money

for the trip ourselves,

so my parents, believing in me,

and my father being the saint that he was,

agreed to fund our expedition.

But it was explained to us

that we would have to book the tickets ourselves.

We would have to have receipts for everything

because there would be a reimbursement document.

It was between $1,500 and $2,000 to fly across the ocean,

but it was because it was an investment

into what I was gonna receive.

I was gonna make 15 grand shooting it,

and then the potential to be sent on another assignment.

Within a few weeks, I could be making

half a year, a year's worth of money.

Brinkman Evans: It's a staggering amount of money

for two days of work.

And I freelance, right,

so some months, maybe I'll make that,

but then you can rest assured, for the next two months,

I'm probably making like 50 bucks.

Rider: My film "Heart of the Sea,"

it got picked up globally, but not in the U.S.

So once I come on board,

they're gonna put "Heart of the Sea"

across the U.S.,

plus they weren't asking me for any money.

They were just telling me the money they're gonna give me.

And I'm like, "Alright, ch-ching. We're on."

♪♪

Mandarano: Beyond having to purchase the tickets,

we had to bring with us U.S. currency

because we would be using a driving service

that was expressly used by the China Film Group Corporation

for security purposes.

Martin: Because I didn't have a work visa,

I was gonna need all these permits to be photographing.

He said, "Every day, they're gonna come

and ask for money for a permit, and you can cover those things.

Please keep all of the receipts so that we can reimburse you."

Rider: We walk through the car park,

and we get to this car that's sort of a bit of a banger.

And I sized up the guy, and I was like,

"Well, he's a lot smaller than me,

so, alright, I'm getting in the car,

'cause what's the worst that's gonna happen

right here between you and I?"

Martin: He asked me, "Do you need to exchange any currency?"

I said, "Yeah, I definitely do."

And we stopped at this money exchange.

It was super sketchy.

I'm walking around with a bunch of cash

and a bunch of photo equipment with this guy I don't know.

And he's just pointing, "Go in there."

So I walk past two guys who are holding big guns.

[ Guns cock ]

There's this young kid, probably like 14 or 15,

behind the desk.

He takes the money, brings out Indonesian currency,

which I've never seen before, fat stack,

and just starts counting this stuff so quickly.

Brinkman Evans: I got my money all converted.

Aaron was in constant communication with me,

like annoyingly so.

You know, he really wanted to make sure I was okay.

Gersh: [ On phone ] Let me talk to the vendor's manager

because they're the ones who would take care of that.

Don't worry about that.

And I'll give you buzz in the next hour and a half.

He said, "I am your Jewish grandmother."

He said, "I have these tendencies

of needing to take care of everyone,

and if you have a problem with that,

I don't know what to tell you."

♪♪

Mandarano: And then we were taken to the hotel.

The hotel was nice.

For being in a foreign country on the other side of the world,

I guess you could say it was a little ritzy.

Beautiful room, great view, free breakfast, free lunch.

Didn't even have to put a card down for incidentals.

Just, welcome.

Mandarano: We got into our car. We were taken to the office.

We were expecting a panel of three people,

and down comes one of the people who was on that list --

Anand Sippy, another vice president at the company.

He came off as someone who just stepped off the bus from L.A.,

and he had a big smile on his face.

Because we had the PowerPoint presentation,

he invited us into the media room.

He grabs a controller and points it at the machine,

and the TV turns on.

And the TV shows

a livestream video recording of us in the room.

Dave and I look to each other like,

"Oh. We're being recorded."

Like, we weren't told we were being recorded,

and there's no visible camera.

Interesting.

And then Anand goes to the whiteboard,

and he starts explaining to us that, unfortunately,

China doesn't allow films that portray the military.

We had written a politically oriented action movie

that had direct conflict

between the Chinese and American military.

So the premise of our film itself

couldn't get past the Chinese censorship board.

It was absurd.

I would start every morning by handing over permit money,

anywhere from $900 a day to $1,600 a day.

Martin: I give him this big wad of cash

for this permit that looks like

it was printed off on, like, an Epson in your mom's basement.

He takes me in the car. We drive to this gas station.

Then this guy on a scooter comes by,

and he hands him the envelope.

The guy on the scooter takes off.

I'm like, "What is happening?"

I just paid for a permit,

and we're going to Jakarta -- or to Bandung?

Bandung? Bandung, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Bandung.

Cool.

The driver hand me a receipt slip

and said, "Yeah, you've got to give me $3,000."

And I'm like, "There's no way. There's been no talk of this.

I'm not handing you $3,000 at all."

So I'm out of the van.

[ Van door slides ]

And then Aaron calls me.

I was like, "Where's this $3,000 come from?"

And he's like, "Yeah, it's for the ground crew there.

We're reimbursing it into your account."

I was like, "What actually are we doing today?"

He's like, "You're going with this driver,

and you're going to this location."

He sent the location through. I had a look on Google Maps.

It was 5 1/2 hours' drive away,

and there was absolutely nothing around.

I said, "Mate, there's no way I'm going 5 1/2 hours

out in the middle of nowhere."

I said, "Anything could happen to me out there.

It's just me and this dude.

Oh, I know what I'll do --

Since you paid for the hotel and everything as well,

I'll give you $1,000."

So the driver took off.

I went inside.

Buffet meals. I'm having lobster tails.

I'm, like, just ripping into everything

because I'm thinking,

"I'm getting my $1,000 worth of food."

And I can eat!

[ Dishes clinking ]

Mandarano: When Anand had explained

what made our project unable to get past the censorship board,

I was taken aback.

But my mind worked at a thousand miles an hour, and I pivoted.

I interrupted him as he was writing something on the board.

I said, "Look, if the problem

with getting past the Chinese censorship board

is real-world politics,

then what if the story didn't take place in the real world?"

And I said, "Look, I know sci-fi and I know fantasy.

It's my wheelhouse."

I said, "We could take this project

and very easily convert the entire thing

so the key elements that are holding us back are removed."

The look that he gave me in that moment was downright diabolical.

He says, "Go on."

So I pulled the story out of thin air.

And he loved it.

We get a call back from Huilang a couple hours later.

Our new pitch was very interesting to them,

but they wanted to film it in Indonesia

and they wanted local mythology and history.

We were going to be touring the country,

scouting locations that could potentially be used

as locations for the film

while also learning about Indonesian culture and history.

Jing: [ On phone ] I want you to go in and see

what this history's about,

try to apply it, including how to improve

what's the connection there.

Okay?

Mandarano: Okay.

And then we got a storm.

It was a torrential downpour for multiple days.

And I'm out trying to shoot street photography

with my little camera.

After a couple days of that exposure to water,

it stopped working completely.

I didn't know what to do. I felt absolutely trapped.

I had seen a Nikon camera store a couple days before that.

I'm like, "Am I gonna have to go and buy a new camera now?

'Cause I definitely can't afford that.

If I can't take photos of the rest of this assignment,

I might get just dropped."

It was overwhelming to just be in that hotel room,

just by myself.

I took my camera to the bathroom,

and I'm pointing the hair dryer at it.

Eventually, I, like, had the brilliant idea

to duct tape the hair dryer to the ground

and just set my camera in front of it.

I just, like, let it run all night.

[ Hair dryer whooshes ]

If there's something wrong, they can't know.

If I have to shoot it on my phone,

I'll shoot it on my phone,

but I'm finishing this thing.

The next morning, I test my camera, and it's working,

and I'm just like, "Thank God."

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

Brinkman Evans: I was photographing constantly.

You know, all the locations I went to were amazing.

I mean, they were so cool. They were very well-researched.

[ Camera shutter clicking ]

I went to e-mail Aaron and just let him know

that the day was going well.

And the e-mail bounced back.

And I lost my mind.

I was like, "This is it. They've canceled my job."

So I got back in the car, fully prepared to come home.

And I got a call from Aaron. [ Cellphone vibrates ]

And I have never been spoken to like that in my life.

I said I had tried to reach him earlier in the day via e-mail,

and that it bounced back.

And I said, "Yeah, it was just such

a weird thing to have happen."

Like, it was a weird tech issue.

And he said, "How dare you?

What do you mean, weird?"

He was like, "Actually, no, you're weird."

He was like, "I've never been called weird in my entire life."

He was like, "That's such an offensive thing

to say to another person -- 'You're weird.'"

And he's screaming so loudly the driver can hear,

and he's kind of looking back at me to make sure I'm okay.

And at this point, I've just got the phone over here.

It's deeply overwhelming and scary

when someone is being so aggressive with you.

And then he said, "You know I have the power

to make this all go away.

All I have to do is tell Wendi

that you're being really difficult,

and this all goes away and you go home."

I got home that night to my hotel

and, admittedly, bawled.

I spoke to Wendi the next morning,

and she was very apologetic for Aaron's behavior.

She said, "There's no reason

why Aaron ever should have spoken to you that way."

Aaron calls again, and he's like,

"Okay, well, Wendi wants to get on the phone here."

So Wendi Murdoch gets on the phone.

She was just like, "You know, we really want to work with you,

and we want to help your cause a lot."

And then she asked if I wouldn't mind speaking to Laurene Jobs.

And I'm like, "Sure.

Put her on," you know?

And she gets on the phone.

She said, "I was actually the one

who chose you from the Men's Health magazine cover

and suggested to Wendi to use you."

And she's like, "I really like your look.

I think you're really sexy, and I love your voice."

I said, "Oh, thanks."

She's like, "So, would you say my name?"

And I said, "Laurene."

She goes, "Can you say it again?"

I said, "Laurene."

She goes, "Can you keep on saying it for me?

I find it very sexy."

So I'm like, "Laurene, Laurene, Laurene."

And the whole time,

I'm looking around this hotel room,

going, "What is going on here?"

And just when I thought it couldn't get any weirder,

out comes a [moans]

on the phone,

and I'm like, "Where is someone now?"

Like, "When does this happen?

Laurene Jobs is on the phone

getting off to me saying her name in an Aussie accent."

I lay down on the bed, thinking,

"What the fuck has just happened, then?"

♪♪

Mandarano: Nothing was certain,

and the uncertainty was always held over our heads.

We had to be fighting an uphill battle

to give them what they want,

but also we were given a lot of work to do.

[ Keyboard clacking ] We'd have to write updates --

the things that we were coming up with,

how we were going to approach the story that we were telling,

which had begun to morph

from being a sci-fi to being a fantasy.

And every location we went to,

we had to pay more money for the driving expenses.

The reimbursement memos were signed,

and they were turned over to their accounting department.

Huilang knew where the money was coming from,

and therefore my parents were put in the position

where they were communicating with Huilang,

having multiple hour-long conversations on a daily basis.

Jing: [ On phone ] I'm following up with your mother every day.

Even for accounting -- Today I called the bank

to check on the reimbursements with your mother

to see that everything is fine.

My accounting did that, and your mom can vouch for that.

Mandarano: Okay.

And there was always large delays.

So things got deferred.

Martin: I started wondering,

"When is this deposit gonna show up?"

And I voiced my concerns to Aaron,

but there was always kind of an excuse.

And it got to the point where I was taking out

these large sums of cash so frequently

that my bank shut down my card.

I called my bank and was like,

"What's going on with this transfer?

Can you just check and see if it's being processed?"

"No, we can't."

So, at this point, I'm starting to kind of become suspicious

of Wendi and Aaron.

Brinkman Evans: So, I went home

to have Christmas at home with my family,

and I got a call from Wendi. [ Cellphone vibrates ]

She said, "I know your family is really important to you,

but can you go back to Indonesia?"

She said, "We will pay you $10,000 U.S. for one day."

And I said no.

I said, "You have enough of my work to figure out

whether or not you want to work with me or not."

And then I got a phone call from Aaron.

[ Cellphone vibrates ] He said, "Technically,

you broke the confines of your contract

because you didn't go to one of the locations

that was stipulated.

And if you don't go, we will sue you."

And he said, "We know that

your boyfriend is a writer in Newfoundland,

and we'll, like, drag his name through the mud.

We know that you work in Newfoundland.

We'll make sure you never work on a film set again."

I mean, I thought I was gonna throw up.

My legs were shaking.

I just said yes. I just said sure.

♪♪

Mandarano: My mother got tired of dealing with Huilang

and passed off communications with her

to my younger sister Michelina.

Huilang liked her so much that she attached my sister

as the manager to the project,

and would thus be entitled to a percentage of everything.

This planted a seed with Dave,

where he started to feel like my family

were trying to cut our way deeper into the project

and get more money out of it.

The deal memo was the penultimate end of the process.

When the treatment was finished,

it would be brought to the censorship bureau,

and Anand would petition to have it put through.

And it was approved.

We were ecstatic.

This was our career taking off.

I would be able to live my dream

and tell stories that appeared on the screen.

We were scheduled to go in,

and we would have this final meeting to finish the deal memo.

But instead of meeting us together,

they've decided that they'd like to meet with Dave first.

I had to wait in the lobby, not knowing what was going on.

[ Elevator bell dings ] Dave gets let out of the door.

He's smiling bright.

He looks at me, gives me the thumbs up.

I'm like, "Green light, baby."

♪♪

Anand brings me in, sits me down.

And he was somber.

And I'm immediately put off.

And he says, "I'm sorry to say the deal memo is off the table."

There was literally a deal memo on the table,

and he pulls it away from us.

And I'm thinking, "What?

Where is this coming from? What just happened?"

And I'm like, "Well, wait, isn't there any way

that we could save the proj--" I'm trying to pivot again.

I'm like, "Tell us what the problem is."

And he says, "I'm sorry, I can't tell you.

Dave will tell you in the car. Good bye."

We go downstairs... [ Elevator bell dings ]

...the driver eventually shows up, we go in.

I'm like, "What the fuck happened in there?"

He explained that even though Huilang had initially

attached my sister as a manager onto the project,

the higher ups didn't like the fact

that our professional manager was the sister to the writer,

and we had to negotiate my sister out of the project

in order for the deal memo to become valid.

And, like, he's happy because

that percentage is no longer involved.

But I was like, "Okay, everything's still on,

but I have to tell my sister that she's out.

Ugh."

So I call her.

And she says,

"Greg, you're not gonna believe what happened."

And she tells me that, for hours, for hours,

she had been on and off the phone with Anand.

According to my sister, Anand said, "The deal is over

unless Dave gets detached from the project."

[ Munch ]

I'm looking at Dave and thinking,

"I trust this guy with my life.

He's not gonna lie to me about something this important."

And because the two stories were in such contradiction,

at that moment, the pieces fell together for me,

and I said to myself, "I am being conned."

I got on my computer, and I just started Googling,

like, "fraud," "Indonesia," "cons."

♪♪

It didn't take very long for me

to stumble across a really well-written blog post.

Some of the stories were crazy.

Here's this guy, he lost like $30,000,

and this person getting him to do the stuff

has got him, like, masturbating on Skype

and, like, these crazy things.

I'm like, "Well, that's not happening to me,

but, oh, my God."

The floor just came out,

and Wendi's gonna call me in an hour.

So I just went into complete, like, paranoia mode

and unplugged my phone from the wall,

and was just pacing back and forth,

like, "Am I gonna die?"

Like, "Is someone gonna beat me up and take all my gear?

How am I gonna get home? I'm in Jakarta."

I packed my bags, got on the plane one last time,

landed in Singapore for my layover,

and I got an e-mail from one of my childhood best friends.

In the body of the e-mail,

there was just a link to this girl,

Carley Rudd, her blog.

And I was completely at a loss.

And to be honest, I felt...

a little relieved.

Rider: The next day, Wendi gets on the phone,

and I said, "What is it that you want me to do today?"

She's like, "You got to go out to that location."

I said, "So you want to, again, still,

drive me 5 1/2 hours away to the middle of nowhere?

Is there a camera crew or anything there today?"

"No." And I said, "Right.

Let me tell you something.

This is a scam, and I know it's a scam,

but the reason I've come

is because you've put so much detail into this,

and what have you actually got out of this?

You got $1,000 out of this."

And then there was a pause on the phone.

She said, "We want to just continue on

with what we're doing.

The driver's on the way.

He's five minutes away.

He's gonna pick you up."

I said, "No worries.

You send the driver.

My bags are packed.

I'm going out front.

I'll wait for him."

Walk out front, grab a taxi straight to the airport,

first plane to Bali, off.

Rest of the week, surf in Bali with one of my mates.

Epic waves, absolutely pumping.

I'm like, "How good's this?"

I sent Carley Rudd an e-mail.

She put me in touch with

Nicoletta from K2 Investigations.

♪♪

Kotsianas: I think, to some extent,

Hollywood runs on dreamers.

You inherently have to have optimism about yourself

and your talents.

And so, I think that

Hollywood is uniquely set up in a way that this scam works.

♪♪

I received a call from

an attorney based out of Los Angeles,

and they said someone was impersonating their client,

who was a female producer.

"Can you take a look?"

And then, about three weeks into the investigation,

we heard from the first person who was in Indonesia

as they were realizing that they were being scammed.

Martin: I realized they were trying to take everything I had

and hopefully take everything my family had,

and I didn't know how far it could go.

Kotsianas: My head was spinning.

I didn't understand what this was about.

And once we had spoken to maybe five or six victims,

the shape of the scam was becoming clear.

The advent of the Internet has caused a proliferation

of what we call social-engineering scams,

where the scammer studies a bit of information about you

and then tailors a scam to you specifically.

Rider: At the time, I was thinking,

"Is there, like, a huge team

researching every single part of my life?"

Like, they knew things about me that I'd forgotten about.

Kotsianas: It's been a lot of people

who are at the point in their life

where they're ready for the next level,

and they think that they've been plucked

and they've been discovered.

Martin: You know, to, like, sit down

and really kind of plan what my goals were as a photographer,

I didn't have time.

I was just trying to make rent.

So in my mind, as all of this is going on,

I'm just seeing the potential of where this could put me,

so I'm just trying not to mess it up.

It was almost my mantra for the entire trip --

"Don't mess this up, don't mess this up."

Kotsianas: The scammer had set up fake websites

for film production companies,

and it's a honey trap.

You're just sitting there waiting

for who didn't do any due diligence.

Mandarano: In a con, the rope draws the mark in.

And, for me, the website was the rope,

and I got drawn right into the boat.

Kotsianas: When we initially brought this to law enforcement,

they said, "This case isn't big enough."

We knew that the more victims that we could speak to

would help us to better understand what was going on.

And also, it would make a better pitch for law enforcement

that they should take this seriously.

I started to find dozens of other people,

so I started reaching out to those people.

Rider: Nicolette contacted me by e-mail

asking if she can call me.

And she started explaining that hundreds of other people

are being done by this,

and the different sorts of people --

you know, like stuntmen and writers and camera guys

and models and actors and all sorts of stuff.

Kotsianas: When it became clear

that this had been going on for many years,

we made the decision to try to stop it.

We were hearing of domains and shutting them down.

Brinkman Evans: Nicoletta called me immediately,

and when I told her that I was worried

that they had kicked me out of the job

because this e-mail bounced back,

she said, "That was me!"

She said, "I shut down their e-mails,

hoping that anyone on the ground wouldn't hear from them

and then be able to go home."

Kotsianas: People describe sort of a traumatic experience,

and they're saying, "Should I go to the embassy?

Should I go to the police? What should I do?"

This is uncharted territory for me.

I'm just using my best judgment

and telling them, "You should get home."

We had indications that there were different people

performing different tasks related to the scam.

The woman on the phone appeared to be the mastermind.

Wendi: [ On phone ] The reason that I have you in those locations

is because I have four people in my panel,

and we wanted to sort of test the waters with you

in those locations.

Kotsianas: As we heard from more victims,

we started to get more recordings of conversations.

Gersh: [ On phone ] I just wanted to explain to you guys

about the airport pickup at about 8:00 a.m.

Wendi: [ On phone ] You don't have to worry about accommodations.

The flights are reimbursed immediately along with your fee.

We started to notice turns of phrase,

some accent features that were all lining up.

Wendi: [ On phone ] My question to you is --

Were you uncomfortable?

Gersh: [ On phone ] My question to you is --

Why was there no information to us

that you missed your flight?

Wendi: [ On phone ] My question to you is --

Would it be the same room? Separate rooms?

That is my question.

We were listening back to back and going back and forth,

"Listen to that one, listen to that one."

And it was becoming clear that this is the same person

playing the man and playing the woman.

In the moment, it was like the "Usual Suspects" moment.

Like [vocalizing]

Like, "That's what this is."

Rider: When Nicolette told me that it's one person,

I was blown away.

I mean, hats off to the person.

I think they're incredible, what they've done.

Mandarano: You're talking about someone

who could use different voices

and stay in character for hours on end every single day,

and that you would never think they were the same person.

Brinkman Evans: Wendi's good cop,

and Aaron is bad cop,

and they play off of each other.

And they do it seamlessly.

Martin: There were things where

Aaron would pseudo be talking about Wendi behind her back.

"Oh, Wendi would never say this,

but the place you're going to really isn't safe,

and things are done this way there,"

and, like, things like that -- just nuances.

If that's one person, they're incredibly intelligent

and talented at what they do.

I quite literally had a moment where I thought,

"If you had used your powers for good,

the things you could have achieved,"

because some of the feedback on my work was very fitting,

it was very appropriate.

Mandarano: The ideas, the creative input

that was dribbled throughout the process,

was brilliant in terms of the story's context.

Jing: [ On phone ] A series of flashbacks would work

because we wanted to build it.

You know, like a building kind of moment.

All the way to the climax for Mary.

Mandarano: Interesting. That's a good idea, yeah.

To be able to place yourself in the role of a producer

and develop something, it must have been

coming from a place of passion for this person.

Kotsianas: I've long thought that

the primary motivating factor

for this scam is not the money,

but it's about the roleplay and the world building

and the tension that's created and the manipulation.

Brinkman Evans: I couldn't stomach

knowing that there were other people who could be exposed

to that level of psychological manipulation.

And I wanted evidence of it.

I wanted records,

I wanted this person's voice recorded.

Aaron, hi.

Gersh: [ On phone ] Yeah, what's going on?

Brinkman Evans: I'm so sorry that I missed my flight.

But I just checked my bank account,

and there's still no money.

But I also noted that there are no --

Aaron: [ On phone ] Yeah, I was threatened --

I was threatened by your dad, actually.

He contacted me and said he knows who I am.

And he would kill me.

Brinkman Evans: I mean, that's so not him.

My dad would never threaten to kill anybody.

I lost everything,

so the fact that I was asking for what was rightfully mine,

and he still makes me try and feel like the bad guy,

it's manipulation like I've never seen before.

Martin: The last time I spoke to Wendi,

I was just trying to position her in a place of power

and calling on her mercy to leave me alone.

I can tell that you genuinely want to help me.

I was surprised that you would reach out to me,

even for this project.

And so I was very flattered, and, um --

Wendi: [ On phone ] I just feel very special with you.

Do you know what I mean?

Martin: Yeah.

Wendi: Do you feel that way?

Martin: Yes.

As that was happening,

I was deducing why things turned sexual

for that other person in this blog post.

If you can make this person ashamed,

then they won't tell anybody.

And I was realizing that as Wendi was starting

to turn our conversation into, like, a sexual place.

Wendi: [ On phone ] Do you do personal portraits?

Martin: Um, I do, yes.

Wendi: Because later on, I'll ask you to do mine.

Martin: I'd love that. That'd be awesome.

Wendi: But I'd like something more sexy.

Can you do that?

[ Martin chuckles uncomfortably ]

Eventually, an article came out in the Hollywood Reporter

which said that it was all orchestrated by this woman

and no one ever met the man.

Kotsianas: Overwhelmingly, people were convinced

that it was a woman,

but it became clear

when we were listening to all these recordings,

in combination with other information

that we were learning,

that the con artist was not the Con Queen of Hollywood.

It was a man.

Mandarano: It was one man who was capable

of meeting with people in person,

like when he met me,

but my con made him realize

that there was more money to be made in tours.

And so everybody else became a tour con.

And beyond that, no one met him in person.

Kotsianas: The sexual dynamics became more twisted, obviously.

It became clear the psychological piece

of the manipulation that was going on

was beyond the scam.

Rider: Seeing as I only handed over $1,000,

for me, it couldn't have been about the money.

It was just about the end climax on the phone for him.

Brinkman Evans: It made a little more sense in my mind

to find out that it was a man and to find out,

through talking to Nicoletta, that Aaron was probably

a little more true to the scammer's nature.

Kotsianas: I think it's an individual

who doesn't know how to interact with people

unless they're manipulating them.

This is a common characteristic

of what a psychiatrist would classify as a sociopath.

Martin: I think they just enjoyed the con.

I think that those relationships that this person creates

using another persona

give a thrill or maybe a deeper connection.

Mandarano: It all comes back to the roleplaying games

in that respect.

You know, for him, he's not, like, a player.

He's the game master.

He's the master of his own story.

Kotsianas: We really had a lot of evidence

and a lot of money lost,

that it took it from the type of case

that the FBI does not typically wade into

to something that they decided to pursue.

And we were serving as an intermediary

and helping get information to law enforcement

that could be useful, from these victims.

Rider: Nicolette asked for all the information,

so I sent everything through to her.

Then I got another call from her saying,

"What you documented really helped track down this guy,

and we've broken the operation in Jakarta."

I think whoever was doing this

was well aware that it was us behind the scenes.

I was out to brunch with my husband.

All of a sudden, my phone started to ring

from a blocked number.

And before I could get a word in,

the person on the other end was just mile-a-minute rambling

with an American accent.

A male.

And the objective was to convince me

that they had absolutely nothing to do with the scam,

and they themselves had been taken in

by a mastermind woman,

and they were a victim themselves.

You would think, if someone was being scammed themselves,

they would ask for help, but, no,

they just wanted to make me go away.

So I walked back into the restaurant,

and I said, "I just had the most bizarre call."

And my husband said, "Maybe that's your girl."

Mandarano: When I learned that

he was a man pretending to be a woman,

it just cemented to me his audacity.

He was not just a con artist pulling little street grifts.

He was a legitimate artist that was, like, a workhorse.

He gave himself so much work

to be able to, in my case,

properly develop a treatment.

Jing: [ On phone ] We want something exciting.

You know, like this mysterious character,

but we need this mysterious character

to have some background.

Mandarano: In the story we were creating,

there's this little girl

who is from the sci-fi world,

but was orphaned on Earth,

and her father only visits her in dreams.

And the main villain of the story

is one that was developed

between us and Huilang and us and Anand.

And it was a woman

that manipulates everyone and everything,

and was the master puppeteer over the entire story.

And you learn in the story that the father figure

that would appear in dreams was her all along.

So the main villain of the story

is a woman pretending to be a man

who Huilang called a "chameleon of the mind."

Jing: [ On phone ] Yeah, a chameleon.

But she's actually more of a chameleon of the mind.

You know?

Like, she can manipulate. You know?

She has her own self-serving interest,

but she has a backstory.

Right now, we don't see that backstory.

Mandarano: Huilang helped develop this character

in her own self-image.

And in the end of the story, she wins.

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