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Campsite Media. Quick housekeeping note. Due to some gremlins in the machine, some versions of last week's episode were corrupted. So if you're unlucky enough to download Chapter 10 during that short window when the gremlins were running amok, please just re-download the episode and it should be fine now. Sorry. The gremlins have been banished.
Before we put all this behind us for now, we'd love to wrap up a few loose ends and clear up a few final questions. When we began this podcast, we hoped there'd be resolution at the end. But if I'm being honest, I was never 100% sure we could deliver that. And I'm so happy that we could.
And while we knew this perpetrator would ultimately be arrested, we, like many of the victims, were beginning to wonder if that day would ever truly come. I certainly never expected that Hargobin Tahil Rahmani would be arrested just two weeks later. But that's exactly what happened. According to The Hollywood Reporter, police in Manchester, England, have arrested a man believed to be the so-called "Con Queen of Hollywood,"
Vanessa and I were working when we got the news that night. Actually, we were on a Zoom meeting with a bunch of Hollywood dudes, including two writers pitching their take on what this whole adventure might look like as a TV series. Then all our phones blew up almost simultaneously. The con queen had been arrested. It was an incredibly meta moment in an incredibly meta series. And it felt weird. Great, but also very weird. I was relieved, obviously, but also a little frazzled by the news. It caught us totally off guard.
♪♪
And we know a little more now. We got the unsealed grand jury indictment on December 3rd, 2020, and also learned that Gobind was grabbed by British cops on November 26th. He remains in English custody, awaiting the process that will likely lead to his extradition, a process that will likely take him to San Diego to stand trial in the Southern District of California.
There are a total of eight charges against Gobind, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. It's impossible to say how many years he'll serve, and it's quite possible he'll take a plea deal. So we'll just watch and wait. In the meantime, victims have started to reach out to celebrate. We got that motherfucker. I can't believe it.
Like Eddie, the star of our first episode, who's now, by the way, a very successful film trainer. In fact, when Eddie called, he was in Budapest on the set of this massive TV show he's making, Halo.
November is always hard for me. It's the birthdays of my mom and dad who have passed, which the Con Queen used to sink into me and pull at my heartstrings just a little bit. And the first thing I see is that he was arrested on November 26th. That's my dad's birthday. And on that day, I just knew it was going to be different this year. I'm just extremely thankful and happy, and it's just awesome.
We also heard from Heather, whose harrowing tale you heard in Chapter 2. So relieved to hear the news. I feel freer. I feel like I can move on psychologically. Heather's career is going well, too. If you live in L.A. or in a place where there are a lot of entertainment billboards around, you might have seen posters for her last big project, The Spanish Princess. It's on Starz.
And then I heard from Tony, that semi-retired Kiwi mercenary who unknowingly brought his military buddies into Goban's web. What do you think of the news? Well, I'll be honest, mate. I'm glad he's arrested, but I sort of felt it's not over. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because there's other people still out there. He's the main player, but there's still at least that driver. I don't really give a fuck about anybody else.
Gobin's arrest wasn't the only surprise we've had recently either. There's been a ton of attention on the con queen story since our show began, and especially since we unmasked a suspect three weeks ago. And as a result, new players and sources we couldn't access before were actually reaching out to us. And while we're gratified that all our work paid off, the journalist in me will never stop wanting to dig deeper. Because even though we had plenty of time to expose the con itself,
We had only one chapter to understand Goban. Huge gaps in his story are still lost in the shadows. So I can't help but want to shine a light into dark corners. We're calling this chapter 10.5, Epilogue. One of the people who reached out in the aftermath of our unmasking offered us a flashlight for looking into one of those dark corners. She seems to be the Con Queen's first victim, not Goban's first victim. That's probably some kid in grade school.
But this woman, an Indonesian named Sam met Gobind in one of the biggest blind spots in our story. The period between Chippenang prison and the start of the long con we've spent a year investigating. So I really wanted to talk to her. I thought she might be able to help us understand how this random dude walked out of jail and embarked on this second life as a master con artist. First time I met him, it's already like, oh, he's a trouble. We'll get into Sam's story right after this.
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. When we unmasked our suspect, we felt that we had gotten to the bottom of the mystery. But there were a few pieces of Hargobin to Hill Romani's story we still didn't really understand. Like, how did he get this idea to drag people over to Jakarta for fake films? How did he turn into that guy right after getting out of prison?
We knew that all this was happening in 2011, but other than that, the whole year was a blank for us. Until this woman reached out via LinkedIn. Good morning. I guess good evening. Good night. Yes, good evening. It was late in Jakarta, but Sam was wide awake and wanted to talk. Sam begins her story in January 2011. She was working as a freelance talent manager when she received a call from this event producer who called himself Harvey Tahil.
Harvey wanted one of Sam's clients to perform at an event. But there was a catch. The event was at a prison. Specifically, Chippenang Prison in Jakarta. Odd, but not crazy. Maybe this was a charity gig. So Sam booked the gig and took her client to the event as promised. And she first met Harvey Tahil in this small room off the yard. He was sitting in this little table and he was very sleek and, you know, very well behaved and everything.
And she was like, yeah, I'm here. Say again? Yeah, I'm here. I'm here. I mean, I'm in jail. As in Harvey wasn't a promoter. He was an inmate. Oh, yeah. I threatened the embassy. I have a fight with my boyfriend and I just want to give him a lesson. So I threatened the embassy, said I want to put a bomb.
Despite this incredible admission that he was locked up for a bomb scare at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Sam, well, she just rolled with it. There was nothing scary about it. He seemed nice, right? Yeah, he seemed nice. Rudy was scary. She means Rudy Satopo, who she also met that day. He's looking at my client with a very uncomfortable look. And did you always have a bad feeling about other times you met Rudy? Yes.
Her client did the job, and this part won't shock you. Our man Harvey never paid her for it.
Still, when Harvey called her again a few months before his release from Chippenang, asking her to help him restart his life, Sam said okay. It seemed almost exciting. I thought this guy needs a second chance, that's all. Harvey was talking a big game. He said he wanted Sam to be his producer at a new company he was starting up, Weyang Cinema. Remember that name? And their first project? An Indonesian version of the ABC TV classic, Dynasty. ♪
Dynasty was a smash hit 1980s TV soap opera that aired in primetime about a super rich family living in Denver. For a few years, it was the most popular show in America, and it was campy as hell. Alexis. Yes? I didn't thank you for your present.
Harvey told Sam he'd obtained the rights to adapt it and had the paperwork to prove it. With him, in prison. He even had an investor of sorts. An older Chinese prisoner named Sam Well, who was willing to cover Sam's fees and to start paying for development of Dynasty's scripts and casting. Harvey wanted Sam to wine and dine celebrities and TV producers. He asked her to meet them in fine hotels to make an impression and promised to reimburse all costs. Which was kind of true, for a bit.
She'd go to Chippenang and this prison investor guy, Sam Well, would pay her back, in part. Fast forward a month or two, Harvey gets out of jail. They met for lunch, making Sam literally the first person Harvey Tahil, Gobind Tahil Rahmani to us, met when he left Chippenang.
That's wild. And he didn't just meet Sam. He became a fixture in her life overnight. For the next month or so, Sam covered hotels, meals, transportation, all of Harvey's expenses, basically. But of course, the Dynasty Project fell apart. Well, so much for frankness. Harvey claimed that he hated all the writers and the character descriptions and synopses Sam presented for him. But he also had a new project in mind, a Miss Teen Indonesia pageant.
Remember that name from Chapter 9? Harvey told Sam he'd also acquired rights to this from Univision. He wanted Sam to organize a press conference to announce the pageant. She did that, calling on her contacts in the media and put herself forward as the production leader for this ambitious project. Harvey, meanwhile, was working on his lineup. He forwarded her emails of his exchanges with reps from Whitney Houston, Tyra Banks, and Katy Perry. Sam showed them all to me. They're legit.
Harvey really was communicating with these people, calling himself the head of corporate affairs for his production company. — Wait, that's Katy Perry's passport? — Seems so, because I tracked down and then it seems legit. — Where did that come from? — I have no idea. He forwarded it to me. — Not just Katy Perry's passport, but the passports for all of her crew and dancers.
Tyra Banks' agent wrote that Tyra was willing to judge the Miss Teen pageant, but only if her long list of demands could be met. I know it's all good to be true, but, I mean, we just never know. I mean, it might happen. Yeah, it didn't happen. But Sam told us that Harvey did have one success, one thing that really happened. He managed to lure another big act. In May of that year, 2011, he got the Korean boy band 2AM to fly into Jakarta. What?
And they paid their own way. He promised them the publicity would be worth it. Again, he asked Sam to organize an event. This time, an intimate meet and greet for select fans of the group at a small club. It's supposed to be a secret gathering. But it didn't stay a secret. Tons of fans showed up, and it got out of hand. We have like hundreds coming, and the club was like broken because there's so many people. This understandably freaked out the band.
All the blame and the cost fell on Sam.
and she had no money to cover the damage. Her personal accounts by this point were empty from paying staff and covering Harvey's various needs. She had to borrow money from her friends just to pay for her daughter's school. I mean, like, I've gotten in so much trouble. I have no money. And what happened when you talked to Harvey about this? He apologized with his charm. He said sorry, and then he will pay, and he will...
As far as the local media and entertainment community was concerned, this club fiasco was Sam's fault. And this is just you asking him to take some responsibility, right? Yep. And he wasn't doing it? No, no.
It's hard to know if the Miss Teen Indonesia thing was a fraud from the outset, or if Gobind was deluded enough to think he could actually pull it off. But one thing's clear: he must have gotten a taste for tricking people into commitments. It probably came easy for him. The problem was, he'd overplayed his hand in Jakarta. He burned too many bridges and alienated all of his contacts right out of the gate. So he had to look elsewhere. And he looked to Hollywood, where it's so easy to pull the wool over people's eyes.
One other talent was clear. He was very good at destroying lives. Harvey flat out ruined Sam's reputation as a manager and producer. In the end, she just wanted him to pay her back and to explain to people that he was at fault, and then to go away. She showed me a series of increasingly angry and desperate emails she was sending to him. She wanted Harvey to step forward and to help clear her name. At least do that.
How did it end? Did he just disappear? He just disappeared. I mean, he promised to see me and give my money back, but he never showed. Sam continued to try and get her money back, but it never happened. Harvey just sort of faded away to wherever he was living. But he did reply to some emails. And what he said in those offers us a glimpse into what kind of person this was deep down as he began his transformation into the con queen. More in just a minute.
You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. After hearing Sam's stories, you see signs of the kind of scammer Gobin was about to become. He had already started pretending to be important, flirting with powerful people, and making promises he couldn't keep. He wasn't yet making up fake movies in the sense of writing scripts or creating lavish PDFs. But you can see the seeds of that in these events and projects he was pulling with Sam. ♪
But there was something else I got from Sam. Gobin revealed himself to her in other ways, in moments of what felt like genuine honesty, like in an email he sent to her after the 2:00 a.m. club fiasco and before Sam cut ties. He told Sam that he was, quote, "on a mission to shape and make my life" and that he was his own worst enemy. He was feeling listless, with only Rudy Satopo to anchor him. -The things that have come to my life are my doings, and the sum total surroundings make it worse.
Clearly Harvey was in a confessional mood that day.
He finished with this. Yes, I am not an honest person as yet. Given the situation, I have been hiding in lies to cover the real truth. But, I am doing so now. I don't believe it's ever too late to recoup what's been lost. Even wars and natural disasters can be restored with solid belief, unity, and focus. Most importantly, trust. You have given me that trust, and somehow, I have lost it somewhere in your heart.
Huh. I mean, back in Chapter 9, we heard Saifa insinuate that Gobind knew he needed to get help and that he wanted to change his ways. But this email was years earlier, and these are Gobind's words, verbatim. I'm trying really hard not to fall into the trap of seeing Gobind as sympathetic in any way, but I do sense real vulnerability here in these confessions of a man who'd just gotten out of prison and had no family to fall back on.
He seemed to need Sam, this other person who believed in him. Especially in the early days after prison, he sometimes had very strange requests. I'm kind of like sometimes keeping him company in a hotel room because he's just too scared to live alone, to stay alone. So I was like, okay, what should I do? So I just opened my laptop, sitting in the room, and he slept. But
He never had a deep sleep, I guess. She's not kidding. These supervised naps, they were like 20 minutes. One of the things that's always struck me about the con queen is how he would juggle victims across the globe, around the clock, calling and emailing at all hours. He just didn't sleep, it seemed. And Sam confirmed that he was basically like this back in 2011. But there was also this very human need for connection Harvey seemed to have. He even slept in my car.
So he's like, "Just took me around, drive anywhere, I just need some sleep." And it's like, "Okay, fine." If he wasn't such a poisonous person, it would be sort of sad. Yeah. I assume you'll be happy to see him back in prison? Yeah. Just like, he needs to be locked up, like, forever. The memories of this half year of hell may be painful for Sam, but the truth is, her life has turned out fine.
She was employee number three of one of Indonesia's hottest tech companies and is VP of culture there now. She helped set the tone, keeping people happy. Which is maybe why the thing that pisses her off most about Harvey Tahil a decade later isn't what he did to her. It's how he's hurt the people of Indonesia as a whole. Hearing your podcast, it's even harder because we have all these great people, the wrong impression about Indonesia.
I don't know, if one day I may be really, really rich, I really want to invite all the victims back to Jakarta, to Indonesia, to show how beautiful this country is actually and how good these people are actually here. And just to erase all their memories and to change all the impression that they have now. So it upsets you that he's also hurting Indonesia's reputation? Yes.
To be honest, it's more upsetting than what happened to me because this country has so much. And yeah, I mean, like, it's hurting Indonesia. And that's the one that will make me want to kill him. It's like the universe was listening in on us because right after Sam and I talked, someone else from her story decided to speak up.
Rudy Satopo. That father figure Gobin met in prison, who allegedly mentored him, or at least used his connections to help Gobin pull off some of his first scams after Chippenang. Two days after Gobin's arrest, one of our Jakarta-based stringers, Bintang Listata, got a new number for Rudy and gave it a call. This time, Rudy picked up. He was in Bali. And this is his voice.
There wasn't time to translate the conversation, so right after they talked, I called Bintang so that he could tell me what he learned. I think Rudy was kind of worried because there were news articles out there that were mentioning his name and correlating his name to the Hollywood con queen Bintang.
Now, keep in mind who we're talking about here. Seasoned fraudster Rudy Satopo. The very definition of an unreliable narrator. Bintang suspects that Rudy was trying to save face a little, rather than trying to give us new information. I mean, even through phone, you could just hear the... I wouldn't say delusion. I would say he's very charming. He has his way of controlling the narrative. I mean, I rolled my eyes a lot while I was talking to him, but...
It was very interesting and surprising as well. First and foremost, I wanted to know what Rudy had to say about Gobind. He said that Gobind and I, he's not my mentee. I'm not his mentor. They said that we were friends. They said that I was his guardian. None of that. I was his counselor. He said that I was a counselor. Basically, Rudy's version is that he wasn't a mentor and that they weren't friends. He was just helping out this troubled kid.
He also made excuses for Gobind, saying that when he acts out, he's not in control. It's part of his mental illness. So, according to Houdi, every time Gobind lashed out, he would black out, and then he would wake up and ask people like, oh, what did I do? Can I just say this is all very convenient, that...
that Rudy claims that he was only a counselor and that he was just helping out this poor disturbed boy and that Gobind claims that everything bad he does, he forgets about and it has to be when he's not medicated. I mean, it like, it feels to me like a very convenient story that explains like the bad behavior of two people.
When I asked him about his opinion of Gobind's being arrested, he kind of blames it on his mental illness, which for me sounds like a very convenient case for an insanity plea situation. I think they're really trying to cover their asses. That's a thing I've wondered about and that some victims have raised with me too. Could Gobind try to plead insanity to blame his years of con queen transgressions on a mental illness? Rudy seemed to be setting that up.
Clearly, Rudy wasn't going to give us anything juicy. He was smooth, convincing. But he did slip up a bit at the end. We now have names for two men we know have worked for the con queen, driving victims around Jakarta over the past five years. Indonesian cops confirmed to us that the FBI has asked about these specific men, but said that there's been no movement for their arrest. There's no red notice, at least not yet. And according to an Indonesian detective, their current whereabouts are not even known.
Did Rudy know these guys? He just quickly denied it. And I was like, oh, really? I mean, this is just the info that I got from our research team. Rudy said he had no knowledge of these men. They weren't old friends from Chippenang. And he attempted to change the subject. But Bintang wasn't having it. He pressed again. And this time, Rudy said he had heard that they were the Con Queen's drivers who drove around victims. But where had he heard that?
Rudy said, I read about these guys in some articles. Beforehand, I had just Googled these names and they do not come up in any sites, any news or any articles. But he knows that these are kind of Gobind's accomplices. For me, that's fishy.
What that means, we can't say. Except that, as of today, December 10th, both of these drivers are still free.
Probably in Jakarta somewhere. And I'm not as certain as I once was that the con queen didn't have other accomplices too. In that way, the story isn't completely over. That's certainly how Tony feels. I told him what I heard about the drivers and the cops. Basically, that someone needs to actually press charges and open a case. Tony has always considered the driver who spent days with him and who drove his buddies around to be culpable.
He wants that person to be punished too. If people want to formally make a criminal complaint, I think they're willing to investigate these guys. That's what I intend to do. I mean, when we can travel again, I'll let you know. We hope you do, Tony.
It's been easy shorthand for reporters to credit our podcast with Gobind's arrest. And while I'd love to take that credit, it's really owed to Nicoletta Katsianis at K2, one dedicated agent in the FBI's San Diego field office, and some ADAs in the Southern District of California. This group of people took on a really complicated investigation, built a case, and got their man.
I know all the victims are very thankful about that. We just made Gobin sweat a little and maybe applied some public pressure because victims were ready for justice and the con queen clearly wasn't going to stop.
Chameleon has been a production of Campside Media. This episode was written by me, Josh Dean, and produced by Ashley Ann Krigbaum. I want to give a special thanks this week to both Devyanti Fareed and Bintang Lestada, who helped us throughout the series and really came through on this episode. Our executive producer is Mark McAdam. Our associate producer is Abakar Adan.
Consulting producers are Andy Horowitz at Atlas Entertainment and Charles Mastropietro at Circle of Confusion. Fact-checking by Callie Hitchcock. Editorial support by Doug Slaywin and Natalia Winkleman. Our theme song is Bad Checks by Houses. The episode was mixed by Ashley Ann Krigbaum and Mark McAdam.
The executive producers at Campside Media are Vanessa Grigoriadis, Adam Hoff, Matt Scher, and me, Josh Dean. If you enjoyed Chameleon, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. It helps other listeners like you find the show. Thanks for your support this season, and stay subscribed to the feed for major updates on the case, should they occur. We also have a season two of Chameleon in the works, about an entirely different scam coming next year. Watch this space, and take care.
