insiderblmAn Indonesian man suspected of being the “Con Queen of Hollywood”, a figure who allegedly impersonated executives to defraud aspiring stars, has been arrested in the UK, the FBI has said.
Hargobind Tahilramani, 41, is alleged to have swindled hundreds of thousands of dollars out of hopeful actors.
The identity of the “Con Queen” has been a mystery for several years.
“The defendant has been arrested in the United Kingdom,” an FBI spokesman in California told the AFP press agency.
He added that the arrest was “based on a request for his provisional arrest submitted by the United States with a view towards his extradition”.
The Hollywood Reporter said Mr Tahilramani was arrested by police in Manchester last week with the assistance of private investigators from a company called K2 Integrity.
He was identified in unsealed official court documents.
Mr Tahilramani allegedly impersonated Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy, former Sony movie chief Amy Pascal and ex-Paramount boss Sherry Lansing.
He also allegedly pretended to be Wendi Murdoch, the entrepreneur, film producer and ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch, along with several male movie executives.
AFP said the court documents, filed in California, showed film industry workers were “approached with offers of lucrative showbiz jobs and instructed to travel to Indonesia for tasks including location scouting, research and drafting screenplays”.
Mr Tahilramani would “use fake accents and alter his voice to sound like a woman”, according to the documents.
‘Training videos’
When victims arrived in Indonesia, they were allegedly cheated out of US currency for upfront payments to Mr Tahilramani and his colleagues, who offered movie projects that never materialised.
If the victims “complained or expressed doubt, Tahilramani would sometimes threaten to ‘dismember’ them”, it was claimed.
The FBI has said the scam began in 2013, moving to “non-existent training videos” when the travel bans took effect due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Jules Kroll, co-founder of K2 Integrity, said: “This started as an investigation into a single impersonation case, but it snowballed from there into an investigation into a series of impersonations.”
