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A 41-year-old Indonesian who posed as top Hollywood executives to mislead would-be movie stars has been arrested in Britain following an extradition request from the United States, the FBI said on Thursday.
Known as the “Queen Queen of Hollywood” (Con Queen of Hollywood), the suspect, who mimicked voices, led investigators on a worldwide manhunt for years, so unlikely that the story was even chosen for a book.
The defendant, identified in the proceedings as Hargobind Tahilramani, “was arrested in the United Kingdom on the basis of a request for pretrial detention submitted by the United States of America for extradition purposes,” an FBI spokesman in San Francisco. Diego, California. He faces charges of wire fraud, identity theft and conspiracy.
Among the Hollywood moguls who allegedly posed as Tahilramani were Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, former Sony film director Amy Pascal, and former Paramount CEO Sherry Lansing. Wendi Deng, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife, will also have been imitated by the master of the voice, as well as several male film executives.
Victims were approached with lucrative entertainment job offers and instructed to travel to Indonesia for duties that included locating, investigating and writing scripts, according to California-based prosecution documents.
Tahilramani “used false accents and altered her voice to sound like a woman,” the documents say.
Once they reached Indonesia, Tahilramani and his chain tricked the victims into changing the US currency at every opportunity, plus the promised film projects were completely fictitious and the victims’ expenses were never reimbursed. If they complained or expressed doubts, the accused sometimes threatened to dismember them.
The scheme began in 2013 and continued on the ground until August this year, when victims were asked to pay for training videos that did not exist.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Tahilramani was arrested by Manchester police last week, with the help of private investigators from K2 Integrity. In a statement to AFP, co-founder Jules Kroll said that K2 helped US, British and Indonesian officials “bring the person known as the Hollywood Swindler Queen to justice.”
Tahilramani – also known as Gobind Lal Tahil – had already been “unmasked” last month as a fraud suspect by the investigative podcast “Chameleon: Hollywood With Queen” (“Chameleon: Queen Swindler of Hollywood”). Last year, K2 revealed that “Queen Con” was a man.
HarperCollins has secured the rights to the book. The story will be written by former Hollywood Reporter Scott Johnson.
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