♪ this is "nightline." p>> tonight, caught in the web f lies. the aspiring action star. >> she goes, i have a role, and we think you would be perfec for it. >> the makeup artist. >> there is no film. it's a scam. >> the screenwriter. >> he needs to answer for his crimes. >> all looking to make it big, all lured by an imposter pretending to be hollywood power players. now pulling back the curtain on the con. >> there's no question that it was seven years and hundreds of victims. >> how police say tpescmeicms w ovain ght, aotarst. owo

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♪ good evening. thank you for joining us. tonight, imagine believing a big break has landed your lap, only to realize that everything was a con. now the hollywood hopefuls recounting the devastating moment they got swept up in a

sophisticated scam. at times taking them halfway around the world. hollywood, the town where dreams are plentiful but rarely come true. ♪ ♪ welcome to hollywood ♪ >> reporter: when you think the one lucky break has finally come your way, you have to take it, right? ♪ hollywood ♪ >> so i was in crete on holiday when i received the first email about this project. it was called "the master." they were looking for someone who was looking to step up into a design role. >> reporter: makeup artist heather had worked in film and television before. but this was her chance of a lifetime. the film was being produced by a woman named leslie chow and a big chinese production company

with a $70 million budget. >> she said, i'm impressed with the work you've done, i'd love for you to come here. >> one person with power, one person with money, can turn your world around. >> every time i went back to them with a question, they came back to me with absolute, definitive reasons why they wanted me for the role. they even quoted people i'd worked with in the past. >> this person was doing their research and reaching out to people with just enough familiarity to make them think it was a legitimate opportunity. >> reporter: heather would be getting a huge paycheck and other amazing perks, like a research trip to jakarta, indonesia. she had to arrive as soon as possible. >> we needed to cover flights, because as far as they were concerned, the chinese film companies work that way. >> reporter: $5,000 spent on a ticket to jakarta. leslie, the producer, had arranged for a driver to pick her up. >> i was asked to bring some money with me, in u.s. dollars, to give to the driver.

you know, $1,000. and i was told by the production company that ts the loceath in mmediately contacted all of her friends and all of the people that she had previously worked with, old colleagues, to see what was up. >> reporter: the next morning, the same driver picks her up for a meeting with the director. >> i know that i fell asleep at one point. with my pillow, in the back seat. when i was sort of raised up again, i was way out of jakarta. >> reporter: five hours later, they'd arrived to the first location, and heather felt something was off. >> the driver in his broken english said to me, take photo, take photo. and so i kind of realized at that point that my job wasn't to meet the producer or the director at that stage, but that i had to go and take lots of photos as research. so obviously i start to think it's a bit odd.

and eventually i got a call from leslie saying, hey, how are you, what's going liwe, i haven't heard from i arrived in jakarta, what's going on, where are the people i'm supposed to be meeting? it was at that point that she started to sort of try and manipulate me into thinking that i had somehow caused the missing of the meeting. and i was like, right, take me back to my hotel right now. >> reporter: when she finally gets back to her hotel, she receives an alarming email from the friend. >> there was the message saying, there is no film, it's a scam. and she was like, get out of there. and i was -- oh my god -- i was like, how could i let this happ? i went straight downstairs to talk to the manager, the hotel manager. and i said, i've been a victim of something, i don't know what, i feel like my life might be in danger, please help me. >> reporter: the hotel manager got her a car, and she went straight to the airport. when she arrived back home, her

agent called leslie the producer to ask about payment, thinking it might all be a scam. they recorded the conversation. >> i'll give you my word, it will be solved by wednesday next week. >> sheet promised the money, and that never turned up, obviously. such a weird crime. because it's a story of someone who just picks on your hopes and dreams and then leaves them for dust. >> and that's part of the con. the idea that, you don't know how it really works. >> reporter: or who else is a target. >> i was living in hawaii. >> reporter: conlin castle dreamed of being an action star, but so far had only gotten small roles. >> my first movie was "jurassic world." after that, i booked speaking on "hawaii 5-0."

then stand-in for ben affleck on "triple frontier." >> reporter: it was on that set he met producer andy horowitz. >> some of the movies i've produced and worked on, "american hustle," "suicide squad." >> reporter: three months after working together, conlin got a call from a man pretending to be andy. the man said he had a big producer named deborah snyder on the other line and wanted to connect them. >> i'm deborah snyder, i'm a producer on "300," chn," "zach sner's justice league." >> for conlin, this is a huge break, this could lead to something really important. >> she goes, i have a role we think you would be perfect for. i'm like, i'm a no-namer, so i'm skeptical. but i go along with it. >> reporter: the deborah snyder impersonator on the other line says she wants conlin to audition over the phone. >> i've never heard of anybody doing a phone audition.

she kind of lays out the scene. and i'm supposed to flirt with this woman at a hotel bar. and she made like a weird kissing noise. she said, kiss me back. so i did this whole, mwah, whatever, light peck, nothing like too much. then she wanted more. and i said, you know, this is sexual harassment. she goes, a real actor would do this. she said, our time is done. and i'm like, okay, i just blew this amazing, huge opportunity. >> if you're auditioning for a movie, the producer isn't calling you and running lines with you over the phone. >> i think two days later i got another call. >> reporter: it was the same woman wanting to run more lines. >> a lot of moaning. i'm not moaning back. i'm just like doing these kissing noises. i'm like, this is so nasty. >> that's how it goes for the next three weeks. there was no financial payoff for the con artist. it was just the sick kicks of hearing it over the phone.

>> to have my name used for phone sex is disgusting. especially when i'm perceived to be the person wielding the power over another person, who's trying to get this job. >> reporter: then the woman wants conlin to fly out to los angeles. >> it was, if you want to get what you want, you have to sleep with me. i would watch these "me too" movements and the harvey weinstein interviews and stuff like that. i was like, i would never do that, i would never sleep with somebody for a role. my opinion changed when i got put in that situation. i didn't know what to do. i was torn. and the whole time she's like, you need to walk off that job and come here and sleep with me, and i'll give you a better opportunity. >> reporter: but conlin never received any flight info, so he texted one of andy's friends, hoping he would know something. >> he said, hi, i just got a

message from conlin, and he's expecting his travel information? do you have any idea what he's talking about? >> reporter: andy thought he might. he had been hearing rumblings of a mysterious woman dubbed "the hollywood con queen." >> i said, listen, conlip, there's a scam that's been going on in hollywood. and unfortunately, you have been a part of that now. so at that point, i had reached out to a private investigator. >> reporter: the info she had for andy was jaw-dropping. >> it's not a woman, it's a man. >> i could hear how humble and excited you were to get calls from us. >> reporter: the hollywood queen turned out to be no queen at all. >> the overall idea seems to have been humiliation. and to revel in their desperation, in their ambition, and eventually in their crushed dreams. >> i realized we had to do something. we couldn't allow this to continue any longer.

>> reporter: in true hollywood form, andy takes a meeting with investigative journalist josh dean and vanessa gregory ottis about working on a podcast together. >> all right. they played some of the hollywood con queen scamming different people. we thought it was a really cool story. we knew it was going to make a good podcast. >> reporter: they named the podcast "chameleon" and hired a digital investigator to find the scammer. >> the scammer did an impressive job covering their tracks with rathers to burning anonymous email accounts, shutting down websites. >> reporter: eventually, hundreds of potential victims started to come forward. the story behind the tinseltown con gets even more bizarre. >> there's no question it was seven years and hundreds of victims. coming up -- >> he got his passport. he pretended he was filming a netflix show. it was bananas. >> every aspect of the con was sophisticated.

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♪ a call from a big-time producer with that one big lucky break. >> there's going to be a lot of different scenarios happening with our production company. >> reporter: it was a voice that had strung along so many dreams. >> and i'm also looking for someone who can work with me. >> reporter: a voice impersonating female power players in hollywood. but investigators said it actually belonged to a man. >> i was obviously completely gobsmacked. >> reporter: just the first of many surprises.

>> i had heard recordings. at no point did i ever think it was a man. i really did believe it was a female. >> reporter: an elaborate, stranger than fiction scandal unraveling with more plot twists than a hitchcock thriller. >> i was barely able to keep track of it myself in a spreadsheet. >> reporter: but when a little-known screenwriter entered the picture, the dots started connecting. >> greg monterano turns out to be the key that unlocks the secret. >> he has been working for 15 years, writing scripts. greg really believed this was his big break. >> what they were having us develop was 100 plus million dollar fantasy movie. we were tasked with visiting different sites all over the country, to learn everything we could about indonesian history and develop the project. >> reporter: one trip wasn't enough. >> i traveled to jakarta six times. so it comes out to between 80

and 100 grand. >> reporter: a lot of money to pay for the dream of making it. but in a surprising twist -- >> he met with the hollywood con queen. face-to-face. >> reporter: yes. instead of just a voice, there was a real person. >> he had a l.a. style to him. he was dressed casually, khakis, button-down shirts, sweater vest. a friendly persona. i got a sense of this man. >> reporter: greg had recorded conversations that he had about the fake film's lead, a protagonist who sounded oddly familiar. >> a chameleon? >> a chameleon, like a shape shifter, a chameleon. she's actually more a chameleon of the mind. >> every aspect was sophisticated. the amount of paperwork involved. we had lawyers looking over everything. everything seemed legitimate. the only red flag was that money hadn't come back yet. >> reporter: greg spent months trying to get reimbursed.

when he never got his money and the producers stopped taking his calls -- >> that was the end of it. it sort of just fell into place that it was this elaborate con. we tried contacting the fbi. we tried contacting interpol. no one cared about it. didn't matter. >> reporter: greg decided to investigate on his own. came across a major clue. >> we got his passport. he used a passport at one of the travel agencies that were booking the travel guides in the places. and his passport was gobind l ll tahil, his birthday was halloween. it was the guy. at that point i shared the information again with the fbi, interpol. nobody cared. >> reporter: that is, until josh and vanessa found out. >> i still remember looking on my phone and seeing the picture. i think we both thought, that's

exactly the person we were picturing. >> reporter: the passport and name turned out to be fake. but led to an old indonesian prison record for fraud charges that revealed his real name. >> once they know his full name, a lot of interesting things happen. >> reporter: it turns out the suspected con artist was living a double life and flaunting it on instagram. >> how's it going? i am back at the cafe. >> as far as we know, he had a fairly high-living life in london as a food influencer, going to a lot of fancy restaurants. >> as you can see, fresh, new, hip bahrainian restaurant in london. >> reporter: he even went on instagram live to reconnect with an old friend. >> hey, how's it going? >> hey, hi there, how are you? >> fabulous, how are you? >> he went on live and showed his face.

it's unbelievable. >> i had heard from my attorney that the fbi knew who the con queen was and it was a matter of time. >> reporter: gobind hiding in plain sight, but it wasn't long before he was caught, the news making headlines. >> josh and vanessa discovered the hollywood con queen was a 41-year-old man named hargabin tahil. >> finally, november 26, 2020, gobind is arrested in manchester in the united kingdom. >> reporter: andy and the podcasters were in a meeting back in hollywood. >> i hear all the phones beeping at once. everyone's like, oh, wow. he was arrested. it's over. >> yeah. >> andy, the real andy, sent me a text just saying, "got him." and i'm like, what? and i like jump up, i'm like,

[ bleep ] yeah, got this guy. you know? >> he needs to answer for his crimes. and in that respect, it's the end of a long journey. no one believed me, no one wanted to hear about it for the longest time. >> reporter: the classic con crushing hundreds of dreams. but still, one key takeaway. >> for me, it's just as important for people to know, hey, if it's too good to be true, it might be too good to be true. that i think is just as important as having this guy behind bars. >> we'll be right back. and a whole lot more? so what are you waiting for? world's strongest man martins licis to help you break down boxes? arrrggh! what am i gonna do to you box? let me “break it down” for you... gg arrrggh! what am i gonna do to you box? you're going down! down to the recycling center! >>hey, thanks martins! yeah, you're welcome.

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♪ and finally tonight, an update on the man charged with the con. gobind is awaiting extradition to the u.s. to stand trial. he's been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud, and five counts of aggravated identity theft. through his lawyer, gobind has no comment to make at this time. that's "nightline" for this evening. watch our full episodes on hulu. we'll see you right back here

same time next week. thanks for the company, america. have a great weekend. good night.