It started like a dream: a phone call from a top American film producer inviting you to audition for a big-budget film. But soon, things got weird. You are asked to moan like you’re in an elevator s*x scene. You pay for your flight to Jakarta. You wire cash for ‘permits.’ And you never meet the producer — because she does not exist.
Between 2013 and 2020, a mysterious scammer posed as powerful female executives — Amy Pascal, Kathleen Kennedy, and even Wendi Deng — to lure unsuspecting actors, trainers, and photographers into sexually explicit “auditions” and costly travel scams across Indonesia. The fraudster’s weapon of choice? A sultry female voice over the phone and film industry’s obsession with fame.
According to FBI charges and Vanity Fair investigations, the scammer was Hargobind Tahilramani, a British-Indonesian man who impersonated women over the phone, manipulating mostly men into humiliating “auditions” involving fake s*x scenes, followed by demands for money. Victims were promised jobs on projects like Wonder Woman or Crazy Rich Asians, but the productions were all fake.
The scam unravelled in 2020 when the FBI arrested Tahilramani in Manchester. Known as the ‘Con Queen of Hollywood’, he faced extradition to the US on charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. According to ‘Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen’, a hit investigative podcast, victims described the voice as “seductive, assertive, and terrifyingly convincing.”
What makes this con legendary isn’t just the psychological manipulation — it’s the script flip. In an industry where women are often the victims of power abuse, here was someone exploiting men by pretending to be a woman with power.
PNN
