The Hollywood Con Queen

In summer 2015, aspiring screenwriter Greg Mandarano received the email he’d been dreaming of. He had been sending query emails to every production company he could find online, and Jing Huilang, a film executive from The China Film Group, had replied to say she was interested in his script. Thrilled, Mandarano eagerly provided everything she asked for: responses to essay questions, a synopsis, a copy of the full script, a 40-page mood board and a pitch. Within just a few weeks, Greg and his writing partner Dave were on their way to Indonesia to meet with producers.

When Greg and Dave arrived at the airport, a chauffeur was waiting to collect them. He transported them to a smart hotel in downtown Jakarta and said he would return in the morning to drive them to their meeting. Nervous and excited, they spent the night practising their pitch and logging their expenses for the airfare, hotel and costly driving fees, which were to be paid upfront and reimbursed later by the finance department of The China Film Group.

The next day, Dave and Greg were surprised to find just one man waiting for them instead of the panel of producers they had been told to expect. Undeterred, they completed the pitch, and the exec’s positive reaction led them to believe that it had gone well.However, he then told them that although their script was fantastic, the political content of the film meant that it would not be approved by China’s film censorship board. The project was over before it had even begun.

Instead of wondering why they hadn’t been told this over the phone – after all, they had already sent over full details – Greg, desperate not to lose this opportunity, used his creative skills to adapt the pitch. They could keep the plot, keep the characters, keep the bones of the story, but base it in the politics of a fictional outer space society instead of the real world. Wouldn’t that be enough to get round the censorship?

And so began several months of trips backwards and forwards to Indonesia, organised by the original producer who had reached out, Jing Huilang. The China Film Group had decided, Huilang explained, that the movie would be filmed in Indonesia and the fictional space world would have strong Indonesian influences, so Greg and Dave spent weeks travelling around, learning everything there was to know about the country.

Huilang had the pair on a gruelling, exhausting schedule, and would call several times a day from China, giving them their busy itinerary in the morning, and then their debrief and instructions for script rewrites in the evening.

All the while, the pair were paying upfront for the entirety of their costs (with loans from Greg’s family) and had yet to be reimbursed a single cent. They broached the subject several times with Huilang, who kept telling them they had to deal with the finance department.

Huilang was also in daily contact with several members of Greg’s family, reassuring them that it would be taken care of, but also warning them not to cause trouble, in case the company decided to drop the screenwriters for being difficult to work with. Greg, Dave, and Greg’s family spoke with several staff members in the finance department, but their expenses were never paid back.

After a few months of this, Greg and Dave were called into a meeting with the lone producer they’d met on the original pitch. He told them the deal was cancelled, and the driver had collected their luggage and would take them straight to the airport. As they sat in the departure lounge wondering what on earth had gone wrong, it dawned on them that the whole thing had been a con.

Over the next few years, hundreds of Hollywood hopefuls would be conned by the mysterious woman on the phone. No one ever knew her real name, no one ever saw her in person. She preyed on gig workers, people who were freelance and in unstable employment, not yet established, looking for that opportunity that would help them crack the industry once and for all.

Make-up artists, hair stylists, personal trainers, costume designers, stuntmen, they all received their dream job offer of working on a big Hollywood blockbuster being filmed in Indonesia. They flew out, booking their flights and paying the driver, using up their savings with the promise of being swiftly reimbursed, all in the hope that this would be their big break. Sadly, they would all return home with their money gone and their hopes crushed.

As time went on, the Hollywood Con Queen, as she came to be known, began impersonating prominent female executives in the American movie industry, such as renowned producer Deborah Snyder and the chair of Sony Pictures Amy Pascal. With her industry-famous new names, she started targeting ambitious bit-part actors, men who had played small roles with a few lines and were aiming for more. She began asking them to audition over the phone, and she would always choose romantic or sexual scenes. It seemed the con was no longer just about the money.

Hollywood is, after all, a small place, and eventually rumours started to fly. News got back to the women being impersonated, and they were horrified at what had been occurring using their names, particularly in the wake of 2017’s Me Too reckoning. Several of these important female executives hired a private investigation company named K2 to discover who was behind it.

Nicoletta Kotsianas took the case and began the difficult process of unravelling the Con Queen’s vast web of lies. She located victims, she gathered their stories, she pieced them together, she analysed emails, she listened to recordings, she tracked IP addresses, she traced domain registrations. As she dug deeper and deeper, Nicoletta realised that the entire scheme was the work of just one person. All the receptionists, personal assistants, colleagues and finance department staff that victims had talked to over the years were just one person; a person with an incredible talent for creating personalities and voices.

By 2020, Nicoletta had collected enough evidence to be sure of the Con Queen’s identity and passed her information to the FBI. On November 26th, officials swooped in and arrested the suspect. In a twist that could have been written by a Hollywood scriptwriter, it turned out that the Con Queen was actually a 41-year-old Indonesian man working as a “foodfluencer” and living in Manchester in the UK.

Remember that lone executive from The China Film Group that Greg Mandarano met in Jakarta back in 2015? That was the Hollywood Con Queen, before she’d perfected her scam. Mandarano was the only victim to ever meet her in person, and he didn’t even know it.

Hargobind Tahilramani, the man who became the Hollywood Con Queen, grew up in a wealthy suburb of Jakarta in Indonesia with a successful film producer for a father. However, his childhood was not a happy one. He was bullied at school, an outcast for being fat and “different” from the other kids, who would mock him and call him cruel and homophobic names. Tahilramani’s parents died when he was in his late teens, and he ended up estranged from his siblings after fighting about the inheritance.

Tahilramani was clearly a very intelligent young man, but couldn’t keep out of trouble. At 18 he moved to the United States and attended college in California for two years. While there, he participated in competitive speech and debate (an early indication of his communication and persuasive skills) before being disqualified for plagiarism (an early indication of his deceptive and manipulative skills). While at college he was also named in a lawsuit, accused of misappropriating school funds. The Hollywood Reporter states he also faced charges in Las Vegas of falsifying cheques in 2001.

What happens in the next period of his life is still unclear, but by 2006 he was back in Indonesia and in prison for embezzlement. Bizarrely, whilst in prison he used a contraband mobile phone to call in a bomb threat at the US Embassy in Jakarta, impersonating Russians and Iranians to do so. A sentence of several months was extended to several years after this stunt.

The next time we hear of Tahilramani, it is 2015 and he has created a fake Chinese film company. Mandarano estimates he lost around $70,000 to the scriptwriting scam, on top of the money he paid out in flights. It appears that Tahilramani used that money to move to the UK and reinvent himself as an Instagram influencer. He created an account called “Purebytes” which focused on food and the London restaurant scene, and had over 50,000 followers by January 2019. It was through this Instagram account that the authorities managed to finally track him down.

At the time of writing, Hargobind Tahilramani, the Hollywood Con Queen, remains in custody in the UK after a hearing in December 2020 deemed him a flight risk and denied bail. On June 1st, 2021, it was reported that he is awaiting a trial in London this November which will decide whether he is to be extradited to the US, where most of the victims are located, and where he is wanted for aggravated identity theft, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

So far, the motives for his crimes are unknown. He has not spoken publicly or given any explanation, and it is unlikely we would believe him if he did. Some have speculated that he is taking revenge or lashing out after his own failed attempt to make it big in the movie business (in a previous life he had created a film production company and bought the rights to a miniseries called The Black Widow).

Others think he just enjoyed pretending to be a hotshot producer, relishing the power he held over others, controlling their lives, if just for a short trip around Indonesia. You may believe he is just a cruel person who got his kicks by dashing people’s hopes and dreams.

Perhaps he had no real motivation other than money, and used the Con Queen scam to fund his Instagram lifestyle. Or perhaps he was just using his talents in the only way he knew how, using the money to create an Instagram empire and prove to his family, the school bullies, his college enemies, the world itself that he could be successful, popular, wealthy, out and proud, and famous, showing his real face, even if he never once used his real name.

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For more information on the story of the Hollywood Con Queen, you may enjoy the following links:

Greg Mandarano's account of his encounter with the Con Queen, written on a popular website for scriptwriters.

The Hollywood Reporter article which broke the story of Tahilramani's arrest and identity

An extended piece in Vanity Fair with the makers of the brilliant podcast 'Chameleon: The Hollywood Con Queen' who also tracked down Tahilramani before his arrest.

The podcast is a brilliant 12-part series which goes into much more detail about the depth and breadth of the con, and tells the stories of many of the victims. It starts off with Eddie, an aspiring fitness trainer to the stars.

(Their second season has just started, following a different case, and promises to be just as fascinating as the first.)