“Con Queen of Hollywood” Arrested (Exclusive)

Police in Manchester, England, arrested Hargobind Tahilramani, 41, allegedly responsible for a long-running scam in which he was posing as Hollywood notables including Kathleen Kennedy and Wendi Murdoch, and swindled potential creators for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In the early morning of November 26, police in the city of Manchester, in northern England, arrested a man whom US authorities believe to be the so-called con queen of Hollywood. Hargobind Tahilramani, a 41-year-old Indonesian and convicted felon, has been arrested near Manchester city center, ending a years-long investigation by FBI agents and private investigators from K2 Integrity (formerly K2 Intelligence), a New York-based company. security company.

Sources familiar with the investigation confirmed the arrest but declined to discuss the matter publicly.

Law enforcement officials believe Tahilramani, who was called Gobind Tahil at the time of the arrest, posed as powerful female figures, including several Hollywood notables like Amy Pascal and Kathleen Kennedy, then used these characters to convince people to build their careers in the creative arts to travel to Indonesia on the promise of work. Once there, the brands paid cash for logistics services such as driving and repairs, with the backend promise of reimbursement. The projects never materialized and the money disappeared.

Police seized Tahilramani in an early morning raid. The arrest was the culmination of a long multi-jurisdictional investigation that lasted over a year. Tahilramani appeared before a Manchester magistrate late last week accompanied by a government-provided defense lawyer. He is being held pending an extradition decision to the United States. US officials hope to charge him with crimes related to the scam.

The FBI made no comment. K2 Integrity declined to comment on the arrest but provided a statement:

“K2 Integrity applauds the collaborative efforts of the US, UK and Indonesian law enforcement agencies for their work to bring to justice the individual known as ‘Con Queen of Hollywood’,” said Jules Kroll, Executive Chairman by K2. .

As early as 2015 and largely unimpeded for the next five years, Tahilramani reportedly lured dozens of victims in a series of identity theft scams. Over time, he adapted the scam to his needs by expanding and diversifying his list of potential victims.

At the most basic level, the scams were sophisticated cat fishing operations. Very skilled with accents and vocals, Tahilramani would have passed herself off as several powerful women leaders. In 2017, he was posing as former Sony president Amy Pascal, Star wars producer Kathleen Kennedy and former Paramount boss Sherry Lansing.

Besides Hollywood notables, Tahilramani has also sought out highly visible people in other fields, including media, politics and international affairs. He tricked his marks into believing he was Wendi Murdoch, the wife of Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch, and Christine Hearst Schwarzman, the intellectual property lawyer and wife of billionaire Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman (he also briefly chaired President Trump’s Policy and Policy Forum). Late last year, before the coronavirus pandemic brought global travel to a halt, he was still drawing people to Indonesia by posing as Singapore’s prominent business mogul and self-styled “boss.” of Bond Street ”, Christina Ong.

As recently as last month, Tahilramani continued to convince people to send him money.

Time and time again, however, Tahilramani has turned her attention to Hollywood, repeatedly demonstrating an in-depth knowledge of how the industry works and perhaps betraying a sense of her own stifled ambitions to be a player in the entertainment world. Over the past year, he had impersonated at least two dozen Hollywood names, male and female, who have worked as producers, directors, casting agents, and managers, including several prominent figures who have worked on from Marvel tentpole productions.

Under the guise of these well-known people, Tahilramani allegedly targeted dozens of ordinary workers, including makeup artists, photographers, actors and stuntmen. Using the good faith of the people he masqueraded as his identity, he convinced many brands to come to Indonesia on lavish promises of work and huge budgets.

Once there, they were asked to pay for expensive auto services, and many of them spent substantial sums – sometimes thousands and in some cases tens of thousands of dollars – to pay for these driving services. elite, plane tickets and other expenses, with the backend promise. But the promised reimbursements never materialized, according to victims who traveled to Indonesia for the fictitious projects.

Using a network of involuntary proxies on the ground who helped carry out his instructions, Tahilramani pocketed much, if not all, of the money, officials say. The US law enforcement agencies involved have yet to reveal the financial scope of the scam.

The child of immigrants from Pakistan and Hong Kong, Tahilramani grew up in an affluent area of ​​Jakarta. Around the age of 18, he came to the United States, where he attended college for two years. He studied briefly at a community college in California, participating in the competitive speech and debate circuit, before continuing for another year at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill.

While still a student, he also had legal problems. According to public court records, Tahilramani was named in a lawsuit in which he and several other defendants were charged with embezzlement of school funds. He was also charged with forging checks in Las Vegas in 2001.

Returning to Indonesia in 2006, police arrested Tahilramani on charges of embezzlement, and he was sentenced to several months at Cipinang Penitentiary, a notorious compound that had housed political prisoners for decades and was reprimanded by Amnesty International in the 1990s after reports surfaced. tortured detainees. While in prison, he got his hands on a cell phone and made a threatening appeal to the US Embassy in Jakarta, which earned him extra time behind bars.

After being released from prison, Tahilramani embarked on early versions of what would become the Con Queen scam. In 2015, Tahilramani had started posing as personalities in the then nascent China Film Group, a mainland Chinese company responsible for several major productions.

One victim of this period was Gregory Mandarano, an aspiring screenwriter based in Long Island, New York. Over a period of months starting in the summer of 2015, Mandarano and his then writing partner traveled to Indonesia six times to pursue a project they believed had been approved – and would soon be funded – by scholars. CFG executives they had worked with. to touch.

Mandarano is one of the only American victims to have seen Tahilramani in person. During his travels in Indonesia, Mandarano repeatedly met the man, who at the time represented himself as a producer of the China Film Group named Anand Sippy.

According to Mandarano, even as he and his writing partner traveled across Indonesia, ostensibly gathering material for the script, he was simultaneously speaking to several different executives, men and women, with whom he had been put in contact. All of these characters may, in fact, have been Tahilramani.

Mandarano and his family lost around $ 70,000 to the scam in the form of driving arrangements, translators and repairers.

In 2016, The Hollywood Reporter covered an incarnation of this early version, which focused on several makeup artists, mostly British, lured to Indonesia by a producer claiming to be associated with The master, which was filming in Hong Kong at the time. Like the victims later, the makeup artists handed over money for driving services and were never reimbursed.

In 2016, Tahilramani moved to the UK, where he was trying to reinvent himself. That year, as he continued to pose as people as part of the Indonesia Travel Program, he began a side pursuit as an Instagram influencer specializing in London’s food culture.

Tahilramani was the host of “Purebytes”, an Instagram account which had more than 50,000 subscribers in January 2019. On Purebytes, which had the slogan “Every Meal Has A Story”, Tahilramani presented himself as a writer and greedy adventurer in freedom . spent his childhood between Indonesia and the United States.

The posts, mostly pictures but also videos, were typical of the food world on Instagram – luxuriously photographed images of meals at some of the UK’s most vibrant restaurants. In his posts, he shared snippets of high-end dining, peppered with anecdotes about his love life, his relationship with his parents and his travels through the London food scene.

On Purebytes, Tahilramani never identified by name and adopted a distinct and very compelling American accent. He promoted restaurants, joked about his sexual escapades with attractive men, and opened up to fans about his alleged struggles with life-threatening illnesses, including pancreatic cancer. He also occasionally engaged in public feuds with PR companies, other influencers, and the occasional restaurant or chef.

“Two years ago, we identified our subject and began to build a meticulous case against one person. Now we have come to an incredible result: justice for the victims, ”Nicoletta Kotsianas, the K2 investigator who worked most closely on the case, wrote in the statement.