We sent photos and a copy of the passport to Ben Decker, a digital investigator who specializes in ferreting out misinformation. Mandarano also had a copy of the falsified passport with a different name-Gobind Lal Tahil. In them, Tahilramani, who is wearing casual clothes, smiles the same exact broad smile, almost like one of those comic Greek masks rendered in stone. Mandarano had snapshots of the man he’d met too. Mandarano had personal details about the man he knew as the determined, intelligent film producer Anand Sippy (another fake name), who was supposedly employed by the China Film Group. Greg Mandarano, a screenwriter from Long Island who says he fell victim to the Con Queen, told us he’d actually met the catfisher in person six times in Jakarta. Our break, in the end, was a falsified passport. While a diverting quarantine pastime, it bore no fruit.
We heard the Con Queen had a second life as an Indonesian influencer, so we scoured the accounts of various micro-celebrities in the beauty, pet, and travel spheres.
For months, we’d been following up on random leads and getting nowhere. The name Gobind Lal Tahil has a lot to do with how we found the Con Queen. “If you believe in yourself, and you believe that the universe conspires in your favor, you’re gonna get by easily.” He agreed with the host that self-care is paramount. His captions carry the superficial, insipid tone of many influencers, whether he’s talking about vegetarian roti or eating a meal he describes as a “satisfying journey with a coruscating kaleidoscope of colours.” In a revealing September Instagram video chat with another “gastro connoisseur,” he portrayed himself as just a regular single guy living in London (though he seems to have actually lived in Manchester), loving his workouts, CrossFit, and cold showers. In social media videos, Tahilramani, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment, has a round face and a welcoming smile. In the U.K., Tahilramani, 41, is known as a “foodfluencer,” Instagramming under the handles Pure Bytes and ISpintheTales. Tahilramani, often known as Gobind, was born in Jakarta to a privileged background. One dimension of the Con Queen’s scam seems to have expressly been crushing dreams and making people feel inadequate.įor a while we thought a criminal cabal was behind these impersonations, but through our investigation we zeroed in on a lone Indonesian man living in the U.K. She’d tell them they were just a minute away from meeting the director and producer on set, but every day she’d come up with excuses of why the shoot had been delayed. Using their own money, the victims flew across the world while the catfisher kept in constant contact with her prey, sending them elaborate sides of dialogue, asking them to make inspirational mood boards for shoots at Hindu temples, and, sometimes, even asking them to “audition” on the phone with dirty sex scenes. She allegedly offered Hollywood gig workers (makeup artists, photographers, trainers, actors, stuntmen) a job in Indonesia to shoot blockbuster movies with fake names like The Master and Gotham City Sirens. Who is that, you ask? The Hollywood Con Queen, as the trades called her, was known for allegedly rolling calls all day in the guise of prominent women in the industry and elsewhere-Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, former Sony Pictures chair Amy Pascal, Sister cofounder and CEO Stacey Snider, Universal chair Donna Langley, Plan B producer Dede Gardner, producer Deborah Snyder, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife Wendi Deng, producer Gigi Pritzker-and then pulling a bizarre scam. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
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