The hundreds of victims
It would make for quite the script. A global grifter lures hopeful actors, photographers, filmmakers, screenwriters and makeup artists around the world by impersonating the Hollywood elite. Posing as former Sony executive Amy Pascal or producer Wendi Murdoch, director Doug Liman, or former Paramount Pictures CEO Sherry Lansing, the hustler penetrated the pocketbooks of hundreds of victims and inflicted psychological anguish.
The nearly decadelong deceits of Hargobind Tahilramani and his downfall following his 2020 arrest are chronicled in “Hollywood Con Queen,” a three-part docuseries now streaming on Apple TV+.
Tahilramani posed as powerful Hollywood executives (most often women) and enticed his victims with job offers, asking some to travel abroad at their own expense. But none of these promised gigs materialized.
Filmmaker Will Strathmann received an email, purportedly from Pascal, in 2017, asking him to fly to Jakarta, Indonesia, to capture footage that would be pitched to Netflix for a series. He paid for a trip from his home in Denver, expecting to be reimbursed, and was pressured to return there twice more for additional footage. Total cost: $54,452.
Tahilramani was the subject of a 2018 Hollywood Reporter exposé by journalist Scott Johnson who appears in the docuseries and later wrote a book about Tahilramani. The two chatted every day for weeks, Johnson says, but he was unsure if Tahilramani was truthful or if he too was being conned.
“At every turn, it was like being in a labyrinth,” Johnson tells USA TODAY, in an interview that also included director Chris Smith and private investigator Nicole Kotsianas, who’s featured in the docuseries.
“At every juncture, you would get led into a different alley, a different corner of this pretty tortured but very interesting mind. And it’s sort of like a hall of mirrors.”
The complexity, Johnson says, “kept drawing me back.”
What motivated Tahilramani, the Hollywood Con Queen?
It’s hard to know what fueled Tahilramani’s scams, Johnson says, but he believes Tahilramani might’ve initially longed to be a part of show business.
When he didn’t succeed, his “frustration turned into something malignant: a desire for revenge, or a desire to inflict some sort of pain on other people who were pursuing similar dreams,” Johnson says. This con, even if not lucrative, allowed Tahilramani to showcase his ability to impersonate, persuade and act.
“I think those were all things that the impersonator wanted to find ways to exploit, and this scam offered that opportunity,” Johnson says. “And then finally, and this is perhaps the murkiest area, we are probably talking about somebody with some sort of a personality disorder. This is something that people who have done analysis of this person have concluded independently in a legal setting.”
The Con Queen deluded at least 500 victims out of approximately $2 million, according to the docuseries.
“For some, it was just a very bizarre experience that they went through and for other people, it felt quite traumatic in their experience, depending on how much you invested,” Smith says in an interview. “Not financially, but just in terms of your time and your emotional energy.”
One actor believed he was communicating with Liman about a potential role. He was asked to attend a video meeting, then to remove his pants and touch himself. He refused.
“I felt really embarrassed about losing $5,000,” the actor said in the docuseries. “But had they not tried the sexual stuff and taking me down that route at the end, they probably could’ve gotten more money from me.”
The money swindled is not to be overlooked, Kotsianas says. For some “It was everything they had, just given where they were,” she says.
“It was relayed to me for some people this was their wedding funds, for some people this was down payments, for some people this was money that they borrowed from their family.”