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A 41-year-old Indonesian who pretended to be high-profile Hollywood executives to deceive would-be movie stars was arrested in Britain after an extradition request from the United States, the FBI said Thursday.
Known as the “Queen Queen of Hollywood” (With Queen of Hollywood), the suspect, who mimicked the rumors, led investigators on a worldwide manhunt for years, so unlikely the story was even choice for a book.
The defendant, who appears identified in the trial as Hargobind Tahilramani, “was arrested in the UK on the basis of a request for custody, filed by the United States of America for the purpose of extradition,” a spokesman for AFP told AFP. ‘FBI in San Francisco Diego, California. Face charges of electronic fraud, identity theft and conspiracy.
Among the Hollywood moguls Tahilramani allegedly impersonated were Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, former Sony director Amy Pascal and former Paramount executive director Sherry Lansing. Wendi Deng, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife, will also have been imitated by the master of the voice, as well as by several male film executives.
Victims were approached with lucrative show business offers and instructed to travel to Indonesia for tasks that included finding, researching and writing scripts, according to California-based trial documents.
Tahilramani “used false accents and changed her voice to sound like a woman,” the documents say.
Once they arrived in Indonesia, the victims were tricked into changing the US currency at every opportunity by Tahilramani and his chain, plus the promised film projects were completely fictional and the victims’ expenses were never reimbursed. If they complained or expressed doubts, they were sometimes threatened with dismemberment by the accused.
The program began in 2013 and continued in the field until August this year, when victims were asked to pay for non-existent training videos.
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 K2 has helped US, British and Indonesian officials “bring the individual known as the Hollywood Swindler Queen to justice.”
Tahilramani – also known as Gobind Lal Tahil – was already “exposed” last month as a fraud suspect from the investigative podcast “Chameleon: Hollywood With Queen”. Last year, K2 revealed that “Queen Con” was a man.
HarperCollins secured the rights to the book. The story will be written by former Hollywood Reporter Scott Johnson.
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