First up, the denoument from The Hollywood Reporter, December 2:
"Con Queen of Hollywood" Arrested (Exclusive)
Police in Manchester, England, have arrested 41-year-old Hargobind Tahilramani, allegedly responsible for a long-running scam in which he impersonated Hollywood notables including Kathleen Kennedy and Wendi Murdoch and bilked would-be creatives out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Early in the morning on Nov. 26, police in the northern English city of Manchester arrested a man U.S. officials believe to be the so-called Con Queen of Hollywood. Hargobind Tahilramani, a 41-year-old Indonesian man and convicted felon, was arrested near downtown Manchester, ending a years-long investigation by agents from the FBI and private investigators from K2 Integrity (formerly K2 Intelligence), a New York-based corporate security firm.
Sources with knowledge of the investigation confirmed the arrest but declined to discuss the matter publicly.
Law enforcement officials believe Tahilramani, who was going by the name of Gobind Tahil at the time of the arrest, impersonated powerful female figures, including several Hollywood notables like Amy Pascal and Kathleen Kennedy, and then used these personas to convince people building their careers in the creative arts to travel to Indonesia on the promise of work. Once there, the marks paid cash for logistical services such as driving and fixing, with the promise of reimbursement on the backend. The projects never materialized and the money vanished.
Police seized Tahilramani during an early-morning raid. The arrest was the culmination of an extended, multi-jurisdictional investigation lasting more than a year. Tahilramani appeared before a magistrate in Manchester late last week accompanied by a defense attorney provided by the government. He is being held pending a decision on extradition to the United States. U.S. officials hope to charge him for crimes related to the scam....
....MUCH MORE
And rewinding to February 2020 a deep dive from Marie Claire:The Hollywood Con Queen
She tormented studio executives, actors, makeup artists, security guys, photographers, screenwriters, athletes, even bobsledders and scuba divers for years—until corporate investigator Nicoletta Kotsianas was put on the case.
It was a warm, overcast afternoon in August 2019, and Joe Scarnici was pumped. A talented photographer who has gone on tour with Madonna, covered the red carpet at the Academy Awards, and worked on campaigns for Pepsi, Scarnici had just wrapped up a call with a new potential client about a big photo shoot. He grabbed some lunch and headed into his office/garage in San Juan Capistrano, California, to sketch out lighting ideas. Suddenly, the phone rang again, this time from a U.K. number. The caller, who had a British accent, introduced himself as Albert, an assistant to Christina Ong, a Singaporean entrepreneur nicknamed the “Queen of Bond Street,” after London’s toniest shopping district, where Ong owns a number of designer stores.
Ong was looking to hire a photographer to shoot a handful of Indonesian athletes she was sponsoring to participate in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Albert explained. If Scarnici was interested, she would call him directly to tell him more. Sure, he said, and 15 minutes later—just enough time for him to run a quick Google search on the reclusive billionaire—Scarnici’s cell phone lit up again. “My first impression was ‘Wow, why is this person reaching out to me?’ ” he recalls. “Because the richest woman in Singapore calling me in my garage just seemed a little fantastic.” Ong, who said she’d been passed Scarnici’s details by Martha Stewart’s assistant (Scarnici shot Stewart for a cookbook launch in 2016), was quick to put the photographer at ease, telling him he’d been highly recommended, before steering the conversation onto yoga, revealing she had a private studio in her house. Did Scarnici ever practice yoga? When he said he’d just done a session that morning, Ong seemed pleased. “Oh, we’re going to get along great,” she purred.
After the call, Albert swiftly sent over a nondisclosure agreement and then a detailed schedule for Scarnici’s six-day trip to Southeast Asia, along with a contract worth $36,000 (his fee plus expenses) and athlete bios. Within 48 hours, Scarnici was hugging his wife and children—one of whom was just two weeks old—goodbye and boarding a plane to Hong Kong, where he would catch a flight to Indonesia.
But the trip turned out to be a bust. None of the promised subjects turned up—and neither did Ong; instead, at the entrepreneur’s request, Scarnici spent most of the time being chauffeured around Jakarta scouting gyms to use as backdrops while hoping that an athlete might finally make an appearance. The no-show was unusual, Scarnici reasoned, but not unheard of; he’d once spent a week in Europe waiting for a legendary soccer player to make himself available for a shoot. At Ong’s urging, he extended the trip by two days, bailing on a couple of small jobs he had booked back home. But when the talent still failed to materialize, he got on a flight home before the weekend; he was due in New York City on Monday to work with a major sports brand, and there was no way he could cancel. Sympathetic, Ong told him to invoice for his fee and the expenses he’d incurred, which included his flight to Jakarta and various things he’d been asked to pay cash for up front, including his driver, hotel, and food, all the while expressing her wish that once she pinned down the athletes, Scarnici would return to Indonesia and finish the job.
On Monday evening in New York City, Scarnici, his assistant, and another photographer headed for dinner in Midtown. As Scarnici was recounting his Indonesian adventure, Albert rang, saying Ong wanted to speak to him. He and Ong had been calling incessantly since Scarnici left Jakarta to discuss his return. As he paced up and down the sidewalk outside the restaurant, he explained with a touch of embarrassment that he just didn’t have the funds to fly back before he was reimbursed for the first trip.
Ong changed her tactic. She asked whether Scarnici would be willing to meet her privately instead to initiate a “discreet relationship” and needled him to blow her a kiss over the telephone. “In my head, I’m picturing a 72-year-old uber-rich woman in Singapore blowing me kisses, telling me she wants to fly me to Japan,” Scarnici recalls....
