The Con Queen’s Mean Scheme

Scott Johnson

Source: With Permission from Apple TV+

We have a bias against believing we can be duped, which plays right into a fraudster’s schemes. According to psychologist Maria Konnikova, who has studied both predators and prey, if you have goals to be “happier, healthier, richer, loved, accepted, better looking, younger, smarter, a deeper more fulfilled human being,” you can be hustled. Add the financial unknowns of a long-term lockdown and the vulnerability intensifies.

Once targets are invested, they must preserve their stake. They keep going because there’s always the promise dangled in front of them of achieving the goal. There will be a payoff. There has to be.

Hollywood Con Queen, a three-part series streaming now on Apple TV+, is about a schemer who thrived on psychological torture. The riveting tale portrays duping delight with a sadistic twist. Hundreds of people were lured, trapped, and tapped.

This story has four strands: the con artist, the victims, the journalist, and the PI. Each strand pulls you in, even as you’re thinking this can’t be true. Yet, incredibly, it is. There are plenty of series these days on elaborate cons, but this one has some truly bizarre psychological angles.

First, we hear from victims about the scam that manipulated their need for work during the pandemic, a time when so much was at a standstill. Various professionals in the Hollywood community were contacted and offered career-boosting opportunities from prominent female executives like former Sony chair Amy Pascal, Star Wars producer Kathleen Kennedy, and former Paramount Pictures CEO Sherry Lansing. They received directions to fly to Indonesia and assurances that all expenses would be reimbursed. They were met by drivers and taken to nice hotels. Day after day, all seemed in order until it came clear that they’d been fleeced. The game was truly cruel.

The scammer, it turned out, was Hargobind Tahilramani, an Indonesian man using accents and a female voice to pull off his catfishing charade. Using accomplices, he pumped his marks until he’d exhausted their funds. A few saw through the maneuver in time to get out, but many lost their life savings.

The scheme worked in part because no one expects a con artist to undertake such elaborate effort. But Tahilramani was motivated by an addiction to power over others. He couldn’t stop. Each time someone discovered the scam and threatened him, he’d erase his tracks, reinvent himself, and start a new game. Some days, he was conning several people at once.

Scott Johnson, the journalist, grew intrigued. He wrote some exposés about Tahilramani, then a book. Johnson was enticed by the game, but more so by the reason for it. He wanted to understand. That meant a face-to-face encounter with Tahilramani. Relying on tenuous leads during significant pandemic challenges, Johnson tracked him down.

Parallel to Johnson's efforts, private investigator Nicole Kotsianas was equally impressive for her dogged pursuit of leads, even when she couldn’t get law enforcement interested. She spent hours of her own time on phone calls with victims, determined to help unmask the serial imposter.

Once caught, Tahilramani was prepared. He wept and whined to Johnson in the infantile style of a remorseless narcissist. He’d enriched himself via psychological torture, then acted the victim himself, entitled to hurt others because of “terrible” things once done to him.

Johnson appears to fall for it. Despite his investigative skill in following his subject, he's less interested in consulting with psychologists who understand what drives compulsive scammers. His sympathy for Tahilramani seems naïve in view of all he’s learned. This show would have benefited from expert psychological insight. Johnson’s final thoughts fail to satisfy and the series wrap-up feels flat.

Nevertheless, Hollywood Con Queen provides a unique portrayal of a slick, malignant manipulator.