Hollywood Con Queen | 9. Inside the Walls
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Campsite Media. Hello? What is this? What do you want me to say? Oh, it's just a chameleon. Chameleon. Okay. You're listening to Chameleon, a production of Campsite Media. After last week, we had the palpable sense that momentum was finally on our side. And oddly, the break hadn't even come from any of our stringers. It came through Greg Mandurano, the aspiring screenwriter from Long Island.

Either way, we had names and photographs and even this fake passport. Not exactly a roadmap, but at long last, an excellent place to start. Vanessa here. So talking with Greg also helped us understand that the thing we should focus on next was getting into the con queen's inner circle. After all, that's how the con queen worked himself, right?

He would always get one of his marks to turn over another mark's information, like how that huge trainer Mark Twight led to Eddie and how Eddie got his friend to jump on a plane for Jakarta to take over for him.

These kind of connections are meaningful when you're investigating, and they're also signs of the nastiness of this con. Remember how Greg said he lost $80,000 to $100,000 to a non-SIPI and that fake Chinese film producer, Jing-Wei Lang? A lot of that had to do with Greg's family. My dad had recently sold his medical practice, or it might have been just before he sold the practice and he sold half of it because there was a building next door.

And that was just storage. And he sold that building first. So there was money available. And so my parents were fronting the bill. So he knew that in order to...

keep it going, he had to ingratiate himself into my family. Well, that makes a lot more sense. When Greg says he's out six figures, it's actually his family that's out six figures. It was his dad's money. My parents kept shelling out more and more money and they were never being reimbursed.

Whenever we were in Indonesia, she would stay on the phone with my mom for hours. And it got to the point over the course of months where my mom was fed up with dealing with her all the time. She was relentless and was very, very, very talkative.

So my sister, Mickey, at the time she was a vice president at Goldman Sachs. So she had experience dealing with companies, especially international companies, a strong sense of business acumen. She took over the interactions. The con queen playing the bad cop Huy Lang character had Greg's family running scared.

At times, she'd say she couldn't get in touch with Greg. She'd call Greg's family and say he had to call her right away or she'd fire Greg and his writing partner right there in Indonesia when they were supposedly scouting locations for his movie that she said she was going to make.

This one time we're slated with going to a volcano. At our hotel, we go to sleep at like 11:00 PM and then we're up at 3:00 AM getting into the car, driving five hours to the campsite. From there, we leave our regular car and get into the Jeep with the local tour guides. And it's a whole thing.

Six, seven, eight hours later when we get back and I turn my phone on, I have all these missed texts from my family yelling at us that we're screwing it up. Wee Lang was exerting control by giving the impression that the project could be dropped at any time to my family so that my family would keep us under their thumbs since they were paying for it.

So she was indirectly applying control to us through lying to them. It was manipulative. We didn't think that it was a con. We thought it was a manipulative business tactic that they were using to keep the talent in check.

Of course, we're not going to have the ability to communicate with her when we're in a desert driving around in a Jeep going to a volcano where there's no cell phone service. But not only that, it was on our itinerary that she knew what we were doing at all times. This is Chameleon, the story of the Hollywood Concrete. I'm John Dean. Chapter 9, Inside the Walls.

After yet another disturbing twist in the Con Queen's psychological warfare campaign, this time straining Greg's relationship with his family, we're going to flip the script a little and peel back some of the Con Queen's defenses by busting into his network of family and friends. The photos and fake names we got from Greg were exactly the break we'd been hoping to stumble into. The first thing we did was send everything to Ben Decker, our digital investigator. And it wasn't long after that, like maybe a day, that I heard back from him.

And the first thing he found? Another picture. One that might reveal the true identity of the driver. Ben sent over an email with two photos. One I knew very well. It was a close-up of the driver's face. The guy who picked up and chauffeured every victim in Jakarta. The other was some Indonesian guy named Rudy Satopo, who looked a lot like the driver.

The reason Ben was interested in this guy Rudy was because Rudy has a pretty checkered past, and he'd stumbled onto Rudy's name when he went looking into the name on that fake passport. Goban Lal Tahil. Ben found a story from 2011 saying a man named Goban Lal had worked at a production company with another guy, and his name? Rudy Satopo.

Yeah, so when I did a search for Rudy Satopo, a photo of a guy that looks like it could be the driver shows up. So I'm pretty sure the confirmation bias is playing into this a bit, but do you think this could be him? My heart jumped a little. The men in these photos looked very similar. Was the driver actually this guy, Rudy Satopo? And if so, was he a lot more than a driver? I immediately sent the new photo of this guy, Rudy, to some victims who'd spent days with the driver, like Heather.

And Tony. And Omri Rose, the actor. He replied by email and said, that's the driver by my memory. His hair is longer, but he looks the part.

If he was this guy, Rudy Satopo, that would change our entire understanding of the con. Because Rudy Satopo isn't some nobody. He has a rich history, which we'll get to in a few minutes. And Ben now knew that Rudy and Goban Lal, the name on that fake passport we got from Greg, had been partners back in 2011. He'd found it in some niche online trade magazine called Television Asia+.

Okay, so this article says that Rudy and Gobind have acquired rights to what they call the first ever miniseries to reach Indonesian TV. Of course, the two of them are scripting it.

It's called "The Black Widow," and it's going to chronicle the life of this dangerous woman in different guises. We have heard that before. So it's put this way in the article: It will be pictured through an imaginational lens of visual and makeup artists from Indonesia and Hollywood. In other words, the Black Widow is going to be a chameleon herself.

I mean, holy shit. It basically sounds like our scammer with some partner is announcing the premise of the Hollywood con queen scam in a trade magazine in 2011. Later that day, I called our investigator Ben to discuss his findings about Rudy Satopo and this 2011 Black Widow project.

That, as far as historical records of the internet are concerned, is actually the only time the alleged name of the scammer and the driver by a different name are actually linked together to an entertainment project where they are both described as illustrators and storytellers, which very much...

matches up to the modus operandi of the countless scams and fake films that have been used to target victims all over the world. I should state for the record that Ben is describing this guy Rudy and the driver as one and the same here. That's not fact. It's just a hypothesis that he had at the time. There is a relatively significant comparison between facial characteristics as well as height and age. And

And granted, the most recent photos available of the suspect name that we figured out over the weekend date back at least five years, whereas the photos of the driver are obviously a lot more current. Whether or not the driver was actually Rudy Satopo or just looked like him was something we decided to backburner.

When you think about it, it was almost secondary. What did it really matter if he drove people around or not? Especially because Ben had far more interesting things to report about this guy Rudy.

Rudy Satopo actually has a history of criminality and fraud in Indonesia dating back to 2004, being accused of running a series of pyramid schemes as well as false bank loans for non-existent oil projects. Oh, this is a twist. So it sounds like...

you're starting to think that he may actually be a big part of it. And if he was involved in fraud going back that far, that maybe he's like a co-architect? Well, so this is where the plot actually really thickens, involving stories around soap opera actress Miss Teen Indonesia 2011 and Enrique Iglesias. That's not a sentence I anticipated you saying. Okay, go on.

In articles, Rudy is described as a car enthusiast who had formerly worked in the oil industry. And over the next several years, there were a lot of court hearings about claims of ownership of luxury vehicles that he didn't actually own.

Now, what connects this Rudy Satopu to the potential scammer and the Black Widow project is that the project was being produced by a local Indonesian production company called Wayang Cinema.

Now, Wayang Cinema used to be owned and run legally by Rudy Satopo. And in 2011, PT Wayang Cinema, the company, hosted Miss Teen Indonesia. And for that competition, they actually invited Enrique Iglesias, who came to do a performance as part of the promotion of the show.

That's not quite true. Enrique Iglesias, the hugely popular Spanish singer who's done a lot of really steamy videos, thought he'd been hired to play the show. He even flew to Jakarta only to realize upon arrival that it was a scam. There was no Miss Teen Indonesia pageant.

Which is amazing when you think about it. Someone as big as Enrique Iglesias doesn't get on a plane until the money's in the bank for most deals. But somehow, it seems this guy, Goban Lal, who we suspect is our con queen, and his pal Rudy, had convinced a music superstar to make this leap. So at one point, if there is the link, which I believe there is, Rudy Satopo essentially had access to

event planning, logistics, some degree of cultural and government access, as well as to the entertainment industry. Several years later, Rudy had a very public divorce from an actress.

In some of the divorce court hearings, the actress claims that his entire life was a complete fabrication and lie. The Black Widow project connects them to the Anand Sippy character, who we know is one of the aliases used by the scammer, right? So is that where this starts?

Just to refresh your memory, Anand Sippy was what the scammer called himself in those meetings with Greg. It's the first alias we'd heard he'd been using, before Gobind Lal. So is that where this starts? So it actually started with the other alias of the scammer, Gobind Lal Tahil. Ben had run a variety of searches on the internet for any version of this name, Gobind Lal Tahil.

One of those brought up a hit that led him to the 2011 TV trade story that linked Gobind and Rudy, which showed that they had possibly been linked in some capacity for at least nine years. And is that the only, that's the only press report that directly connects them together? Correct. That is the only press release that connects them together. And the original full-length press release in Spanish was actually taken down from the web and is only accessible now through the Internet Archive.

So I don't know, based on our understanding of the scammers operational security, whether or not that is something that he had removed or found a way to remove. Some of the scams could have actually dated as far back as 2011.

Because this pattern of fraudulency is something we have confirmation from Indonesian court hearings and media reports that Rudy has been involved in these types of schemes for at least 15 years. So it's possible if Satopo is a fraudster of a different kind, if he's been involved in various cons and frauds,

that he may be a mentor of sorts. That would make sense. Stick with me, because we're about to learn a lot more about Rudy and Goban. That's after the break.

Hey, Chameleon listeners. It's Josh Dean here, your host of season one, Hollywood Con Queen. And I'm here today to talk to you about food, a thing I love. I also love to cook, but I rarely have time, which is why I love Factors. No prep, no mess meals. These fresh, never frozen meals are dietitian approved and ready to eat in just two minutes, which is about as long as it takes me to do this ad twice.

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Hi, I'm Dan Jones, and This Is History: A Dynasty to Die For is back for a brand new season. This time, we meet Edward II, a larger-than-life character who starts out as the party boy prince and ends up... well, I don't want to give too much away. He's got one thing on his mind: not war, not ambition, but love. And it's a love that will get him in burning hot trouble with his barons, his family, and his queen.

The king's affection for his favourite knight kicks off a wild rollercoaster reign full of love and hate, war and grief, famine and just about all the horsemen of the apocalypse. Along the way we'll meet tiger mums, Scottish legends, murderous cousins, a herd of camels and one extremely hot iron poker. Listen to and follow This Is History A Dynasty To Die For, available wherever you get your podcasts.

You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. Why did Ben find so much about Rudy Sotopo, but so little about his former partner in this fraudulent project, Black Widow? Goban Lal Tahil, or Anand Sippy, or whatever, he seems to be the scammer. At least that's what all the clues pointed to so far. But we had only a few photos of his face, plus some aliases.

Ben did find one more interesting reference to a variation of that name. A man calling himself Gobin Tahil was registered as an attendee of the 2017 Lululemon Sweat Life Festival. In

In England. We are in London. We're attending a sweat fest hosted by Lululemon. It's a fitness festival, basically, and there's all sorts going on. On the attendee profile, which matches up to the other photos that we have of the scammer, Gobind Tahil claimed to be a writer, producer, and financier for Netflix and based in LA, which, again, would confirm the same MO of alleging to be

part of the film industry and luring potential victims in through the prospect of projects. Ben had two more things to share. One was that he had found an old, now defunct Facebook page that appeared to be from the big Chinese production company known as the China Film Group, the company that Anand Sippy claimed to work for when he scammed Greg. And this Facebook page had real photos of CFC executives posing with real Hollywood stars like Bruce Willis and Keanu Reeves. It too was a fake.

The other clue related to one of Greg's photos. In two of the shots, Goben Tahil/Anon Sippy looks more fresh-faced and cheerful with spiky bleached hair, more like the guy Greg described to us. Those are clearly older shots. In the other two, he looks like he's aged a bit with flatter hair and a beard. He's less smiley. And in one of those two shots, he's clearly in a European city. Ben had identified it: Edinburgh, Scotland, in the UK.

That photo is taken outside one of the more popular tourist attractions in Edinburgh, almost a block or two from the National Gallery. So from all this, Ben started kicking around a theory that sometime after Greg met Anand Sippy/Gobind, that mysterious person left Indonesia and landed in the UK.

He could be doing the victim recruitment part of the scam. And maybe Rudy, if he truly is the driver, is the partner on the ground in Jakarta doing the logistics. Josh also brought up something with Ben that he'd heard from Heather. The recording she made in the cab of the driver talking on his cell phone. She had actually seen the number on that phone.

Josh also told Ben what Greg had told us about the con queen.

He said to me, like, if that guy was a real producer, he'd actually be a good one. You know, that he actually was improving my work product, which made me think, you know, either the guy has worked in the business or is, you know, obsessed with it and has studied it a lot. I mean, clearly a highly educated person. The thing I keep puzzling over is, like, where does this skill set get created? You're talking about someone who's, like...

incredibly savvy digitally in terms of operational security and ability to use widely available tools to disguise your identity and set up fake accounts, but then also

The ability to impersonate men and women using a variety of accents and to write screenplays and treatments. I mean, it's such a unique skill set that I just like, where did this person come from? That's what I can't figure out. Like, what is the, obviously that's the answer we're looking for. Like, what's the backstory of this human? Yeah, it's hard. And I think there's a lot more to be understood.

Was this something that he might have been barred from or could not enter or access or did not have significant luck in and decided to move on? Was he approached by Rudy Stopo, who has a history of building pretty ornate and expensive, you know, frauds and scams? Or could it be something else?

There were limits to what Ben could learn from afar. Clearly, it was time for us to get closer by using sources on the ground in Jakarta. So we got in touch with the writer for Vice magazine we mentioned hiring last week. His name's Bintang Lestada. He's 26, and he knows a ton about Indonesian youth culture. Bintang helped us understand the film community in Jakarta better. And importantly, he also helped us get in touch with Rudy's ex-wife, that actress. We're calling her Saifah because she asked us to use a pseudonym.

Bintang arranged a Zoom meeting so that Vanessa and I could talk to Saifa. Can you hear us? Yes, yes, I can hear you guys. Hi, good morning, or I guess it's evening there, right? Evening. Morning here in New York. I'm here with my son.

He'll sit beside me. He'll become my translator. Saifah is quite well known in Indonesia. Of course, that didn't mean she'd be easy to reach. But Bintang had sent her a message on WhatsApp explaining that we were working on a story about her ex-husband and wanted to ask some questions. Are you worried about Rudy at all? No, not at all. It turned out that while we had wanted to talk to Saifah about Rudy, she wanted to talk to us about Gobind.

When we asked her about this Gobind Lal from PT Wayang Cinema, she recalled him well. "Gobind is my friend," she said. "He works for HBO in London now." She saw Gobind as a great storyteller and a loyal person. To hear her describe him, he sounded like a puppy dog who was always turning to her for affection and affirmation. He's a very good guy. He's a very sensitive guy. I mean, I don't have any problems with him.

We then quickly outlined the scams we think he's involved in, and she was honestly shocked to hear even the short version of Gobind's story from Bintang, that he was, we thought, the architect of this incredible scam. Oh my God, how he do that? I mean, that confused me. I mean, he just went there back in 2013? ♪♪

I asked her how she met Rudy and Gobind. Her son stepped in to answer for her. First, her ex-husband, Rudy, met Gobind in a prison in Indonesia, in Jakarta specifically, in Kepenang. They were both there for fraud. Once my mother married Rudy, that's when she first came in contact with Gobind.

— Can you tell us a little bit about Rudy's frauds? What was he in for? — Bank frauds, most of the time. Fake bank accounts, fake bank letters and everything like that. — Fake bank accounts and fake bank letters. These are the tricks the con queen has played over and over. — How much money did he make off of that? — 1.33 billion.

Okay, so that's rupias, not dollars. But still, that's over 17 billion U.S. dollars, which is probably not the case. She more likely meant billions of rupias, which is around 17 million U.S. dollars. Still a lot of money. And do you know how long of a prison sentence he was serving? And also how long Govind was serving? 15 years.

Wow, that's Rudy. Yes. Rudy was convicted 15 years, but only worked for five years. He only was in prison for five years. And Gobind for his convicted crime, he stayed in prison for a year.

Saifa met Rudy in Chippenang prison. She went there for a birthday party for another inmate. And they hit it off. And then a month after that, he has a probation. And then six months after, we get married. So it's an unusual... I thought he changed. I thought he was a completely different person. But after that, he became a very good friend with Gobind.

they collaborate with other criminal record in after. That was a little hard to make out, but what she said is that Gobind and Rudy began to collaborate on crimes after they were both out of prison. I met Gobind right after they went out. They have probation. So I don't see him much at the prison. So what about Rudy? Rudy is a, he know how to influence people. He, he, he's smart.

He's charismatic. Charismatic. So he's very charming and you like talking to him? Yeah. He's smart. He can influence people. He can make people believe what he said. He's so confident the way he talks. And, well, people could believe him in one second. You know, that kind of fraud. Yeah.

She said that Rudy looked after Gobind in prison, made him feel safe in an unsafe environment. Well, Gobind used to tell me that I feel comfort with Rudy because he's like my savior. He always there when I need him. He taking care of me while in prison.

And he always taught me what to do. I think Rudy is one of my guardian, my guardian angel. I mean, I don't have a father. I always think that Rudy is like my father. I always need his advice.

You said that you're not afraid of Gobind, but he did call in a bomb threat. I mean, do you think he's dangerous at all? No, actually, because I think that's a stupid thing to do. Gobind was so jealous with his boyfriend. So yeah, if you veered off the road there, let me explain. Saifa told Bintang that while Gobind was in prison for some financial fraud, she didn't know much about that, but thought it had something to do with his family.

She did know he called in a bomb threat to the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta from prison. This was sometime around 2008. So the reasoning behind his bomb threat was he was having a dispute with his boyfriend who was working in the U.S. Embassy in

and he was trying to get in contact with his boyfriend and his boyfriend wasn't trying to phone. And thus he contacted the US embassy and threatened them with a bomb threat. Oh my god. And this was unfortunately taken very seriously because a few months prior there was already a bomb case in Australian embassy. There was a bombing.

Do you know his real name? Neither of these names, Gobind Lal or Harvey Lal, was the right one. We checked. Both are aliases.

As the conversation went on, it became clear that Gobind, as well as Saifah seemed to know him, was still a bit of a cipher, even to this woman who'd been friends with him for years. I heard that he's graduated from art school in New York. That's what I've heard. Yes. One of the best art students, theater students in U.S.,

That's what I've heard. Do you know if he studied acting or? Yeah. Well, he turned out to be a very good actor. Yes. It was clear to Vanessa and I that Saifa was struggling to reconcile her feelings about Gobind as a kind person with the stories she'd just heard of this diabolical scammer. My mother's first impression of him was a generally intelligent but also very sweet person. How has that impression changed over time?

He's already told my mother multiple times that he's changing and that he's changed. But in reality, that was not true. So in a sense, very disappointed and ashamed as well for him. Just to be sure we were talking about the same person, I uploaded the photos Greg sent us into the chat. So I just put those pictures in the chat and that's definitely him, correct?

Saifa had some advice for me. Make sure that you have a very good voice look.

photo to make him accept you. Okay? With a six pack. Okay. I don't exactly have a six pack, but I'll find a photo of someone who does. Actually, I still contact him because we're like a best friend, like brothers and sisters. And I told him that, you know, I never thought that you're my brother, but I always thought that you're my sister. Like that.

He usually contact me almost every day sometimes and talking about what he did in UK. And he's become a food creator and food critic. And he's making a vlog. He wants to make me proud.

This is the story Gobind was selling to Saifa. He worked at HBO and was also a food critic. He had, she said, a large social presence. He was an influencer. And I said, okay, you changed a lot. You know, you changed...

by the time that you're in another country and it's good for you. But then when I heard from Bintang that he's still doing the fraud things, you know, I'm so shocked. It's so disappointing. Yeah, he's been doing it now for five years. Yeah, I feel like he lied. He lied to me. So that is Gobind in our picture. But Saifah has no idea who the other guy is, the driver.

One thing's for sure, it's not Rudy. They do look similar, but she would certainly recognize her ex-husband. More after the break. You're listening to Camellia from Campside Media. Saifa says that Rudy and Goban parted ways some time ago. They were no longer working together, and were no longer close friends either. So Rudy's out. It seems likely that he's not involved in the Con Queen scam, at least as we know it. But he does still live in Indonesia. We tried repeatedly to get in touch with him, by the way, and failed.

And Gobind, he's been in England for at least a few years. Saifa knows this because he still messages her often. And when was the last time you heard from him, Gobind? Today. Today? Yeah, he always DM me on Instagram. Always say, hi, how are you doing? You know, almost like every day.

We had no idea how close we were. It was literally one degree of separation at this point. But prior to hearing from Bintang, Saifa had never heard about the Con Queen scam or Gobind's possible role in it. This allegedly close friend seemed to lie to her a lot. He even told her he'd recently spent time in the hospital, on a respirator, with COVID.

I laid out the extent of the con for her. Gobind has been pulling the fraud with the fake movies and the fake TV shows and the fake art shows. We think six or seven years now and hundreds of victims, maybe a thousand victims. Wow, wow. Is he capable of doing that alone or do you think Rudy is a part of it? My mother believes that it's possible that he's acting alone because he can...

to be a lot of people as well. Right. He pretends to be men and women. He does American accents. He does British accents. He does Chinese accents. He does Singapore accents. Did you hear him do that? Yes.

I've heard that he became a woman to call management artist back then in US when yeah eyewitnesses he called Enrique's manager and she became he became a woman you know

Apparently Gobind used his convincing female voice when he pulled that miracle and got Enrique Iglesias to fly to Jakarta for the Miss Teen Indonesia scam in 2011. Which means he's been using vocal impersonations successfully in his scams for almost a decade. And his favorite medium is the phone. Whenever he contacts anyone, it's usually mostly from phone. Mm-hmm.

And email. In the scam that we've been following, he's also very good at... He seems to write fake movie scripts and he makes like documents, like movie treatments with like graphic design. I mean, is he also talented creatively as a writer and a designer? He's very genius. He doing by himself, by himself. Nobody's help him. I saw it. Eyewitnesses.

He make the proposal, he make the right thing, everything he do it by himself. No other person behind him. So you wouldn't be surprised to hear that he's managed to impersonate dozens of people and fool hundreds of Americans and British and Australian people? No, I'm not surprised. I mean, I know you don't know the scam in particular, but do you have any thoughts or theories about why he would be doing this? Like what his motivation would be?

Well, he always tells me that I want to be successful. I want to show people, I want to show my family who dumped me. You know, I have to be a successful person. Make my mother, my family proud of me. You know, and I'm going to show you guys that. I think that's the motivation. But I don't know that he's going too far with this kind of criminal thing.

I told her even more about what we know. How adept the scammer is at juggling personalities and falsifying documents and switching from one victim to the next. You know that movie, Catch Me If You Can? Yes, right. That's what I think about Gobind. He is so smart. He's genius. We asked her if she had any idea where Gobind was specifically. London, she said. But he claims to travel often to the U.S. to visit family.

Washington state, she thought. That's what Bill Bin claims. But I guess you can't necessarily believe anything he tells you, right? Yeah. How does it make you feel to know what he's doing? Now that you found out about the scam, does it change your feeling about him? Yes, I'm so disappointed right now. I feel so like, you know, like someone cheated on me. That's what I feel, broken hearted.

Saifa told us that she hadn't seen Goban since 2012. But like she said, she still talks to him almost every day through Instagram. Now he has another account. He constantly changes his Instagram account. So he will just write to you from a different account and then direct message you? Yes, always direct message me. And he's friendly and just acts as if everything's normal. So you would have no indication that he's been up to trouble? Yeah, it's just...

basic messages like a friend would give to a friend about whatever they're seeing in Instagram. But he's never called you on your cell phone or texted you or emailed you? No, only Instagram DMs.

If he were to change his account again, there's no way to reach him unless he contacts her, right? Because if he changes his identity a lot. Yes. Yeah. He never gives me his England number. Never. He never gives me the email address. I know he always changes his WhatsApp number. He never sticks with my number. Did that ever strike you as strange? Do you wonder why he's being so secretive?

Before that, yes. But sometimes he said that because he has problems with his boyfriend, that's why he changed his number. That's what he's excused. I mean, now that you've heard about it, I mean, I know you're disappointed. I mean, he's likely going to go to prison again. I mean, how do you feel about that? I would be so sad. But he has to be responsible for what he did. You know, because he said he wants to change.

— He missed his chance. — He missed his chance. It seems that where she's landing on this is that her friend Gobind may be too far gone. He's just been at this con game so long with such tenacious commitment that probably nothing is going to change him. — I think that prison in Jakarta is not going to change him. Prison in Jakarta, it make it worse.

But maybe he needs a... He needs psychological assistance because he's very mentally unstable. As good as we felt after the Greg conversation, following this talk with Saifa, we were twice as high. We were so close. All we lacked at this point was the suspected con queen's true identity. Then Bintang came through again. The bomb threat turned out to be the key.

Immediately after this talk, I asked Bintang to go back and look for news stories from around 2008. If a guy in prison had phoned in a bomb threat to the U.S. Embassy, well, that seemed like news that would register. And it did. Within a day, Bintang had unearthed the story from the local press. The bomb threat had been made in 2008 by an inmate at Chippenang Prison outside Jakarta. That prisoner's name was Hargaband Punjabi Tahil Rahmani. Hargaband. Gobind, I guess for short.

Finally, a real name. The reporter went to visit that prison around Christmas in 2010, and his story revealed that Gobind put on an American accent when they spoke. Then, in the middle of the interview, Gobind apparently decided to pull a prank, so he switched over to an Iranian accent. And he claimed that was the accent he used when he first called in the bomb threat. He was laughing about it, and he said he told them that the bomb was going to explode in 72 hours.

But for whatever reason, the U.S. Embassy staff was even more worried by a second bomb threat 20 minutes later. Gobind again. This time, he was threatening to bomb the Pentagon and the FBI building in the U.S. He told the reporter that he spoke in a Russian accent for that one. Gobind admitted that he knew these threats scared the staff, but he sure wasn't sounding regretful. He just giggled about the fact that he was able to sound like an Iranian and a Russian. Here's the kicker, straight from the story.

Satisfied by his own prank toward the U.S. Embassy, he then fell asleep. He didn't even consider the risks of his impulsive prank. Gobin also told the reporter that he did this prank, quote, just to release anger toward my family. Fuck the West next, gonna cash your bad checks.

Up next in the final chapter of Chameleon, we dig deeper into the life of the man we think is behind the notorious con queen scam and tell you everything we know about the most wanted man in show business.

You'll even hear from the man himself. The first things first is you. If you believe in yourself and you believe that the universe conspires in your favor, you're going to get by. That's next on Chameleon. Chameleon is a production of Campside Media. It's developed, created, and written by Vanessa Grigoriadis and me, Josh Dean.

The executive producer is Mark McAdam. Our associate producer is Abakara Don. Fact-checking by Callie Hitchcock. Editorial support by Doug Slaywin, Natalia Winkleman, Rod Sherwood, and Ashley Ann Craig-Momb.

Additional reporting in Jakarta by Debbie-Auntie Farid's, Bintang Lestada, and Tony's Guys. Our technical consultant is Ben Decker of Emetica. Our theme song is Bad Checks by Houses. Sound design and additional music by Mark McAdam. Our consulting producers are Andy Horwitz at Atlas Entertainment and Charles Mastropietro at Circle of Confusion. The

The executive producers at Campside Media are me, Josh Dean, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scher. If you enjoyed Chameleon, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. It helps other listeners like you find the show. And make sure to subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you have any information about the Con Queen scam or were a victim and would like to share your story, please call 203-807-4453. You can also email us at chameleonpod at gmail.com. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.