Inside the Brazen Scam that Lured Hollywood Hopefuls to Indonesia with the Promise of Fame

The Apple TV+ docuseries ‘Hollywood Con Queen’ premieres on May 8 and explores the story of a con artist impersonating the industry’s most powerful women

A new docuseries explores the long-running scam perpetrated by a mysterious figure who impersonated female entertainment executives and lured industry hopefuls to Indonesia with promises of work and reimbursements that never materialized.

The three-part docuseries, Hollywood Con Queen, which premieres on Apple TV+ on May 8, follows veteran journalist Scott Johnson, who originally broke the story in 2018 for The Hollywood Reporter and subsequently wrote a book on the matter, and private investigator Nicole Kotsianas, who set out to find the culprit of the scam, according to an Apple TV+ press release.

(A trailer is shown below.)

The scam, which reportedly began around 2015, revolved around a person who regularly posed as high-ranking studio executives like Amy Pascal, former co-chair of Sony Pictures, or Donna Langley, chairperson of Universal Pictures, and called or emailed actors, photographers, filmmakers, and makeup artists. Then, the scammer offered them opportunities for work.

But these opportunities came with expenses — and that's where the scammer cashed in.The victims were then encouraged to fly themselves to Jakarta, Indonesia. Once there, they would pay miscellaneous project fees and a driver believed to be connected to the scammer who would take them around on what were purported to be location scouts. The victims were promised reimbursement for these expenses, but those never materialized. After a few days in the country, with no meetings having taken place, most victims eventually realized there was no real project and left, having parted with thousands of dollars.

Some victims also alleged in the docuseries that they were coerced into phone sex or other sexually suggestive situations and that the con artist was easily angered when their instructions were resisted or calls went unanswered. According to the docuseries, the “Con Queen” scam claimed at least 500 victims who lost an estimated $2 million.

The identity of the “Con Queen” remained unknown to the public until late 2020 when Hargobind Tahilramani, a 41-year-old Indonesian man with a criminal history, was arrested in England, according to The Hollywood Reporter. At the time, Tahilramani had been going by the name Gobind Tahil and was crafting an online presence as an Instagram food influencer in London.

According to Variety, a U.K. judge ruled in June 2023 that Tahilramani would be extradited to the U.S. to face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. It’s unclear if he has entered a plea or retained an attorney to speak on his behalf.

In the docuseries, Tahilramani doesn’t admit to being the culprit of the scam, but calls himself “the nicest criminal you'd ever know" and insists that he is the real victim.

For Johnson, a crucial part of the investigation and his duties as a journalist was to get Tahilramani's side of the story.

“I really tried hard to understand what had happened to this person,” Johnson tells PEOPLE. “Why he was doing what he was [allegedly] doing, where he had come from, what circumstances had shaped him, what difficulties had he traversed, what psychological forces were at play."

Johnson added, “My curiosity about those things was genuine and real. It didn't come from any desire to exploit or contradict even. It was real. I genuinely wanted to understand, both just on a human level, but also journalistically it was important for me to try to get a sense of who he was. And I did my best.”

The project was created by Emmy-winning filmmaker Chris Smith and produced by Library Films, the team behind the pop-culture phenomenon Tiger King, on Netflix, the acclaimed surfing docuseries 100 Foot Wave on HBO, Hulu's Fyre and more.

Ahead of the release of Hollywood Con Queen, PEOPLE also spoke with Smith, who shared what he hopes viewers will take away from the docuseries.

“I think with all con and scam stories, the more that people see them, the more that there's an opportunity for people to become educated and hopefully not become a victim,” Smith says.

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“And so I think in that way there's a basic sort of value,” he adds. “But I think on a human interest level, the [alleged] ‘Con Queen’ was a fascinating individual that definitely had created something that was wholly unique.”

Hollywood Con Queen streams on Apple TV+ on May 8.

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