Who Was The Hollywood Con Queen? Scott Johnson on the most unbelievable true story ever told

The Unspeakable Podcast

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.8 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Between 2013 and 2020, hundreds of people who worked in the entertainment industry—from actors and writers to photographers, makeup artists, and security personnel—were targeted by brilliant and bizarre scammer who came to be known as the Con Queen of Hollywood. The Con Queen impersonated famous female studio executives and convinced many of her marks to spend huge sums of money—often on trips to Indonesia—under the pretext of doing research for film projects that would be their big break.

Journalist Scott Johnson covered the case for The Hollywood Reporter, eventually reporting that the Con Queen was actually a man named Hargobind “Harvey” Tahilramani, a genius impersonator who was also trying to make it as an Instagram food influencer. Scott’s book about the case, The Con Queen of Hollywood: The Hunt for an Evil Genius, was published last year and a three-part documentary series based on his book premiered on Apple TV this past May. Scott joined me for a conversation about his years reporting the case and how he finally tracked Hargobind down in England in the early months of the Covid pandemic. He also talks about how reporting from wars and being the son of a CIA officer informed his reporting.

GUEST BIO

Scott C. Johnson is the author of two highly acclaimed books. The Wolf and the Watchman (W.W. Norton, 2013) was long-listed for the National Book Award, the PEN USA award and was named a Washington Post Notable Book. His second book, The Hollywood Con Queen (Harper, 2023) was given a starred review by Publisher’s Weekly and selected as an Amazon editor’s pick. Scott was a consulting producer of Hollywood Con Queen, a 3-part documentary series to air on Apple TV+ in the spring of 2024. He now lives in France with his wife and two children.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	There was another guy, a screenwriter, who I think took six trips back and forth over a few months,
0:13.8	and then an additional 26 or 30 or so trips within Indonesia on different internal flights
0:23.9	and things like that.
0:24.7	And then he also wound up going to Hong Kong
0:28.2	and his sister went to Hong Kong.
0:29.5	His whole family got dragged in.
0:32.3	There was another woman who similarly took multiple trips,
0:37.0	lost upwards of $100,000.
0:42.0	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dowell. Before I introduce my guest,
0:47.6	Scott Johnson, whose voice you just heard, I have two announcements. The first is that the
0:52.3	unspeakese school of thought, that's the official educational wing of the unspeakeasy School of Thought, that's the official
0:55.1	educational wing of the unspeakasy, a co-ed institution, is offering three writing courses this
1:01.2	fall. They are a memoir workshop taught by legendary author Sherman Alexi, a fiction workshop
1:08.3	taught by acclaimed novelist Chaley Wolfson-Widger, and a comedy writing
1:12.6	course. And by that we mean comedy writing, humor, satire, everything like that, taught by best-selling
1:19.1	author Neil Pollack. Neil is also known as the greatest living American writer. That's his own
1:26.3	designation, but it's true. This is kind of faculty we
1:29.4	got here, folks. Anyway, these are amazing authors and teachers. These courses will run on Zoom for
1:35.7	eight weeks. They start the week of September 16th, and you can find out how to apply by going
1:41.8	to the unspeak easy.com and pulling down the school of thought
1:45.5	menu and going to courses. We are working on a new website, but in the meantime, that's what you're
1:50.7	going to do. This is really an awesome opportunity, and I encourage you to take advantage of it.
	...

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