Hollywood Con Queen | 2. Heather
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Campsite Media. Hello? What is this? What do you want me to say? What is going on here? Oh, it's just a chameleon. Chameleon. Okay. You're listening to Chameleon, a production of Campsite Media. It takes 24 hours to fly to Indonesia from the U.S. Even in business class, it's a rough trip.

And Indonesia is not one big landmass. It's a chain of islands. Lots of islands. 17,000 islands in total. Jakarta, the capital, is on the most populated island in the world, Java. Jakarta is one of the biggest cities on the planet. And even though you're on an island, being there feels like being lost in an endless sprawl. Like Los Angeles, if LA had 10 million people. In a lot of the world, we think of Indonesia as a place people go for a beach vacation.

But as Eddie found out, it's a lot more complicated than that. He probably wishes he'd never heard of the place. My co-pilot for this show, Vanessa Gregoriotis, has spent some time there. She's been all over the globe to write about Mexican cartels, cult leaders, and all kinds of strange phenomena.

But Indonesia really stands out. It's true. Indonesia is hardly all Australian surfers and Europeans going to yoga and retreats on Bali. Jakarta is a chaotic, enormous city full of lots of Muslims and ethnic Chinese. It's like a whole melting pot. So you drive around and it's just this mashup of ports and high rises and these old fish markets and lots of slums.

And then there are these kind of huge white modern malls that are just plunked here or there. It's also famous for having terrible traffic. Famous for that. Like LA, except way bigger, more people, more crowded, and way poorer. It's not an easy place to forget. In Eddie Rayburn, the trainer we followed from Ventura to Indonesia in Chapter 1, he kept thinking about it long after he was back in California.

Eddie was worried that other people had been roped into this weird thing, but he mostly kept his thoughts to himself, not even telling the members of his own gym. I didn't tell my members for probably five or six months. And it took me a while to comprehend and understand that because, like, this doesn't happen to me, right? Like, this doesn't get by me. Eddie felt ashamed, and Andy Horowitz, that producer from Atlas Entertainment, remember he's the one who hosted that meeting at the top of the show. He wanted to help.

So we're trying to figure out, okay, if it was this intricate, they had this many pieces, clearly you're not the only one that they've done this to. Andy sat down at his computer and started clicking around. I googled Indonesian Hollywood scam. And sure enough, first thing that pops up is a Hollywood Reporter article from three years prior to this about a Chinese production shooting in Indonesia using

using big Chinese actors, it sure as hell felt exactly like what was going on. He knew it immediately. It was the scam. The same scam. But of course in my mind I thought to myself, "This was three years ago. There's no way that this con artist is still doing the exact same thing and hasn't been caught yet."

So sure enough, I see in the article that one of the women that's being interviewed is this woman, Mandy Martin, who is a very, very successful agent for makeup artists. As usual in Hollywood, if you're a big shot, you know other big shots.

We talked about this last episode. It's all a big network, closed to outsiders. But inside, everyone knows each other. I had never met Mandy Martin in real life. I wouldn't know her if I was sitting right next to her. I didn't know what she looked like. So, of course, I call Mandy Martin up, and I'm like, hey, I gotta ask you, like, a friend of mine just went to Indonesia, and literally as soon as I said Indonesia, she goes, oh, God, no. Oh, God, no.

Mandy couldn't believe it. She'd already been through her own version of this whole fake movie fiasco four years earlier. The very first email we got, it went in my spam. So I never saw it and I never responded to it.

And our first encounter with the woman who called herself Leslie came in a very irate phone call about a week later saying, why didn't anybody answer my... So we were immediately on the back foot. And I was very apologetic, thinking it was a big film inquiry and that this was a major producer that I defended. So whoever does this is a genius, right?

After I talked to Mandy, I called Eddie and I'm like, this is a much bigger thing than just you going to Indonesia and them fucking you over for this money. You got involved and swept up in a whole giant con and we're just starting to sort of peel all the layers of the onion away. This is Chameleon, the story of the Hollywood con queen. I'm Josh Dean. Chapter 2, Heather.

I'm here. Hi, guys. Hey, can you guys hear me? I can hear you, Vanessa. Okay, perfect. Last December, after we had talked to Eddie, Vanessa called someone in London.

Can you tell me your name? My name is Heather Pitchford. And what do you do for a living? I'm a hair and makeup artist. Heather was at home during the December holidays. She had the day off. In England generally, is today a holiday? Yes, it is. Yeah, it's Boxing Day. Oh, that's what it is. Okay, it's Boxing Day. So what is Boxing Day? I've never really known. I've got no clue. It's just the day after Christmas and everything's still closed and no one goes back to work usually until the 27th.

After talking to a mysterious film producer, Heather also flew to Indonesia in 2016. That was long before Eddie's trip. Heather's a very different character than Eddie. Not ex-military, for starters. She's kind of soft-spoken, and she's a woman, which meant that flying to Jakarta alone was a very different experience for her.

That summer, she was on vacation in Crete with a friend when her new agent emailed with an incredible offer. I remember there was no television or any real reception where we were. We were sort of out in the sticks.

and holidaying and relaxing and just everything's lovely and the sun shining and yeah, I must admit I got extremely excited when I saw the email come through. The email said that a female producer wanted her for a movie called The Master. The Master. A big budget kung fu epic scheduled to shoot in Indonesia and Hong Kong. It was described in a slick PDF as a visual action adventure.

One of the first things that anyone in Hollywood does when they get an offer for a job is look up the project on something called IMDb. That's short for Internet Movie Database. Heather did that, and she got even more excited. It had A-list cast attached, and they were legitimate people who were in the industry in China, and you can't get a movie on the IMDb database without credentials. One name in particular stood out.

Donnie Yen, an A-list actor in China who was on the rise in the West too, having just appeared in Star Wars Rogue One. Donnie, you are a big action star in Hong Kong, correct? Are you the biggest action star? Well, you get to say, may the force be with you, don't you? That's so cool. I've never read a line that cool. The cast and crew was extensive. This project had bona fides. It was the biggest sort of affirmation, I guess, of the...

the authenticity of this film. You know, the fact that it was on IMDb was a huge deal for everyone because it was like, oh, straight away, oh, it's legit because it's on IMDb. It's the Bible for film. You know, it's the go-to database. The force is with me and I am with the force. This female producer, her name was Leslie Zhao. She

She said that she was from Huaxia Films, which is a huge film distributor owned by the Chinese state. Leslie was the production manager of the movie. She wanted to talk on the phone, and she spoke excellent English, but with a noticeable Chinese accent. You have to give us a chance to speak as well. In that case, I will give you my word. You give your end of the bargain as well, yeah? She had this really, like, buttery, gentle voice, but yet she was quite a stern character, so she was quite...

forward and bolshie. And if you disagreed with something, she'd get quite stroppy and irate with you quite quickly. Bolshie. That's British for combative or uncooperative. And stroppy also means angry. So Leslie sounded like she might be hard to work for. But it was such an incredible job offer for someone at Heather's level.

She wasn't too senior in the makeup world at the time. She used to work at a bank and it changed careers. I do seem to recall having the thoughts of, why me? Why would they want me when they could have all these other big designers? And if it's a big project, that doesn't sound right. Are they sure they've got the right person?

But still excited, obviously. Right. There's also a psychological reason why Heather wanted the job. Truth is, she suffered from a bit of imposter syndrome, especially with her family.

As she saw it, her sisters were the stars and she could never match up to them. I've got two sisters who are so brilliant at art and so incredibly talented at art. And I was always the sporty one. And I guess a lot of this was that. I guess stroking my ego a bit and making me feel, okay, well, maybe I am legit.

The money Leslie was talking about was definitely a draw. Much like Eddie, Heather was being offered a lot more money than usual. But it was the opportunity more than anything that spoke to Heather. There was always a part of me that felt a little bit like I was a fraud.

And I guess if this happened to me, it would solidify my position and confirm that I wasn't an imposter. And it would prove to everyone, I guess, that I was legitimate and that I was good at this. And also, like, I always had this very strong conflict because I'd never done an art class. I didn't feel like I'd taken the same path as other artists had to get to this position.

And it would have also confirmed to myself that I am good at this, that I am an artist. Still, to land the job, Heather needed to move fast. I asked my agent to go back and ask all these questions and try and investigate a bit further. And I just remember saying to this friend of mine, like, God, if this was true, it would just be fantastic. You know, I happened to be going through a divorce at the time, a separation. Like Eddie, Heather was off to Jakarta within a few days.

Leslie wanted her to scout locations to get inspiration for how she'd do the actors' makeup. It was odd, but Heather was game. This was an adventure in addition to an opportunity. It's quite unusual for a makeup artist to go and scout locations, but I hadn't ever done a job of this scale before and I was going to be the head of department, so I was actually sold on that idea.

When she landed in Jakarta, Heather was overwhelmed by the swarms of cars and trucks and mopeds that clogged every lane of every road. It was chaotic, noisy. Driving from the airport to the hotel was really, really busy traffic. In fact, that was one of the things I noticed about Jakarta right from the get-go, was just everywhere you looked there was traffic jams.

After hours of travel, she finally got to the hotel and let herself relax. It was just a really comfortable room, nice size, and I put my bags down and sort of set myself up. While I was still in the car, the driver had said to me, tomorrow bring pillow. We have five hours in the car in his funny non-English. That next day, Heather was scheduled to scout locations with a driver. A gallery, a theater, maybe a dance performance if time permitted.

She was also supposed to meet the director at one of the sites. But a lot of the time, it was just traffic. All taillights and exhaust. So that was why he told me to bring my pillow. So I had my pillow on the back seat. I had my phone, my battery charges, my data, my bag, my backpack. I had my water. You know, I was pretty well equipped for all eventualities and was told, according to my itinerary that I was going to go to

this local spot and take photo. You know, the guy was like, "Take photo, take photo." And I was like, "Yeah, but when am I going to meet the director? I'm going to meet the director, yes?" And he never answered yes or no. He just said, "Take photo, take photo." This was part of the job, Leslie told her, to take photos of things that inspired her, that might help Heather imagine how the cast should be made up. So I arrived after a very long journey to the first location.

The first location was weird, super weird. A tourist attraction for Indonesians, not foreigners. It's a very odd sort of like, um, "Heidi" exhibition. I don't know how else to explain it. There was lots of Asian tourists around and everyone was dressed up in these kitsch outfits from the "Heidi" movie. As in lederhosen and long Swiss braids in Asia.

The driver insisted that they were still on schedule. He then said to me, you're going to meet the director soon. Take photo, take photo. So I walked around. Heather felt herself getting irritated. The stop seemed pointless. And where was this director? She fired off some emails from her phone to Leslie and to her agents, Jane and David, even though it was 3 a.m. back in London. Hey guys, she wrote, what's happening here? ♪

I get to the second location and it's this amazing, incredible outdoor theatre where all these people in masks are dancing and it's loud and we all had to sit in the audience and play xylophones and marimbas and all these instruments. And I was playing, you know, still at that point, like quite sort of excited about this and taking loads of photos of the makeup and like all these... Heather was one of the few Caucasians in the place, maybe the only one. So she stuck out.

At one point, having been there for a while, she approached a ticket desk to ask for directions to the bathroom. And a woman working there stopped her because she was alone and looked a little out of place. She said, "Are you with the film production company?" So I was like, "Yes, I am." And I got really excited to talk to her. And she said to me, "Oh, there was another girl here as well for an interview." Heather considered that. Another woman, like her, at the same site, for the same movie?

It raised her adrenaline a bit. Was this some kind of tryout? Was more than one makeup artist being considered? And I'm like, my heart's beating faster and I'm now getting competitive. And I'm going, oh, I need to know everything you've told her. You need to tell me as well. We need to be equal in the running for this show. The Indonesian lady said that she was excited to see foreigners showing such interest in her culture. And she'd given the other woman some more information about the venue and its performances. She sent it by Facebook.

So I said, "Do you mind if I just look at your phone and look at the name of this person because I want to see if I know this person?" She said, "Yes, of course." And she pulled up her phone and she showed me her Facebook and it was the name of this other makeup artist called Anna. And I saw that we had like 25 mutual friends in London. Soon the driver appeared and said it was time to go with no real explanation. "Change in plans," he said. "The production meetings were all canceled." Again, no producer, no director.

It was weird. Driving back to the hotel, it was really dark. I remember stopping at a service station because I was desperate for the loo. And I thought, oh, it'd be so great to get a cup of coffee for my driver, most importantly, because he'd been driving all day and I'd get him a cup of coffee to keep me alive. Heather was wired when she got back to her room. She felt anxious and stressed because she hadn't met anyone from the production, nor had she heard a word from Leslie. What Heather really needed was a drink.

Because it's a Muslim country and so I think you need a special licence to serve alcohol. Anyway, I went into the restaurant, ordered myself some food and I said, "Oh, can I please get a beer?" And they were like, "No, no alcohol." And I was like, "Really?" Like, "I just need a beer." I was feeling a bit stressed and I was like, "I just want a beer."

Anyone who's traveled much knows this feeling. You're in some strange location in a completely different time zone, feeling drained and alone, just turned upside down. Usually, though, there's some plan to cling to. Imagine having all those exhausted, lonely emotions and not knowing that things would get better. And one of the waiters snuck off to some store somewhere and found me a beer and sat me in a corner where there weren't any other people sitting and drinking.

So I had my beer, had my meal, went up to my room, and then I opened up my laptop. Prior to arriving in Indonesia, Heather had written to some contacts in the region. People she knew from a previous job in Malaysia. Friendly letters with some questions. She was just curious if they knew anything about this film or its producers. One of the girls who I contacted in Hong Kong is, she's a PA to an actress in Asia, and

And I asked her to please get in touch with Donnie Yen's PA to find out if he is in fact on this movie. Even though his name's on IMDb, I asked her to fact check that with her friend. And I opened up my computer. There was these messages from her. The production assistant told Heather that no, Donnie Yen wasn't slated to be in the film.

In fact, his people didn't know anything about the film. And I remember at that point my heart sank and my blood boiled and everything that happens to you when you have a shock. And I just remember thinking, "Oh, God, is it really true? Really, is this true?" So maybe the deal had fallen through. It happens all the time, over conflicts with scheduling, budgets, creative differences.

But worse, maybe something was off with Leslie. Heather was confused and a bit lost. So there I was then, I'd just had this really interesting day, I'd had these two conflicting things. On the one hand, this totally random stranger who works at the tourism bureau come to me and say, "Oh, are you here for the film production interview?" Just like confirming that it was real and another source of information saying, "No, no, it's not real."

So I decided that I was going to go and do one more day because I had only the two days booked to go out and drive. After the break, Heather's adventure in Jakarta gets even stranger.

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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You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. The sun came up over a new day in Jakarta, but Heather had hardly slept at all. She was suffering from a toxic combination of jet lag and anxiety. Still, exhausted as she was, she grabbed her pillow and climbed back into the car. They started at a gallery this time, which had photos showing all kinds of faces in all kinds of makeup. Heather took hundreds of pictures. I was going around this gallery and looking at all these things thinking, oh, how would I make that into a character makeup on someone? And

What if someone came in and they had short bob and I had to make it into a long updo? Imagine how I would... I was trying to do a good job, you know? The driver didn't stick around for this. He dropped her off and said to meet back at the car in a parking lot at 5pm.

but heather finished early she had two hours to kill there was this one bar in the whole of the city center where you could drink alcohol it was like a speakeasy it was quite dimly lit lots of crystal chandeliers very garish like very ornately decorated i just remember feeling like i was in a gatsby movie it was very strange it was like this oasis of alcohol and cigarettes um

I just remember sitting there and drinking and eating some nuts and thinking, "What am I doing?" And I went back to the car and I said to the guy, "I want to meet someone now or I'm going back to the hotel." Again, all he could tell her was, "No meetings." They were all canceled. And again, there was no explanation. The first day, Heather took this news okay. Now, it pissed her off. And I said, "What do you mean, no meeting? It's on my itinerary. It's the reason I'm here." And I was getting really angry with him.

And I said, "Right, back to the hotel now, straight away. Let's go." I got in the car and it was 5:00. It was like peak traffic, you know, death by traffic. For two hours, Heather sat in standstill traffic, just crawling to her hotel. She was stewing over this unprofessional bullshit. But also outside, the streets were getting more unfamiliar. And I just remember the sun was going down.

and I was driving through stop-star traffic. I had also placed my Waze app with my hotel address. So I now was like, "Okay, we better be going to my hotel." But I couldn't really tell because the traffic was so bad, we weren't moving. Then we started moving and the sun was going down and we drove through the most awful, awful part of town.

It was a shanty town, a neighborhood of ramshackle homes that reminded Heather of certain townships back in South Africa where she was born. These were not places a young woman wanted to be alone after dark. I remember driving through this what looked like a township and thinking, "I'm a single woman on my own. I don't speak the language. It's getting dark.

I can't get anyone to call me. I'm really scared now. And I remember at one point I had one hand on my backpack and the other hand on the door. And I was at this point crying my eyes out and saying to the driver, get me back to my effing hotel right now. I'm really scared. And so I was then pleading at him, just saying, please help me. Where are you taking me? Why are we not going back to the hotel? And at this point, my Waze app

was telling me that I wasn't going back to my hotel address. So at this point, I genuinely felt that I was being abducted. Heather tried to talk herself through it. The driver had only been nice to her so far. He'd done absolutely nothing menacing or even creepy.

But there was also something off about him. Basically what I thought was he was taking me into a really dark, dangerous part of town and he was going to hand me over to some people who were going to either attack me sexually, assault me or traffic me. The only way I can describe it is blind panic, fear and all the worst thoughts come into your head.

For some reason, in case he was making nefarious plans, Heather pulled out her phone and, without him knowing it, began to record the driver's chatter. Heather wasn't sitting back. She got proactive about the situation. She figured at some point she could find someone to translate what the driver was saying.

She sent emails, made calls, and posted on Facebook. She formulated a plan for, well, if things went really bad. The reason I had my hand on my backpack and on the door was that I felt like he was taking me somewhere, and my only way to survive was to jump out before I got to that destination, because I felt like if...

If I got to wherever he was taking me, that's when the bad things would happen because he planned it. And if I ruined his plan by jumping out of a moving car, which I was fully prepared to do if I felt like it was heading in that direction, then that would be my only way of guaranteeing his plan wasn't going to work, you know? The worst thing is not speaking the language because you don't know how to plead with anyone or how to...

talk your way out of a situation or how to, I don't know, like do anything because you can't speak to them. I was terrified that they were going to, he was going to take me to somewhere where I would be gang raped and murdered. You know, that was my fear. Heather needed to know what this driver was up to. Finally, she called a friend in Hong Kong, a woman with connections all over Asia, and asked if she knew anyone who could speak Indonesian. This friend did know someone.

A friend of hers in Melbourne, Australia who spoke the language fluently, as did her husband. The friend said she would try to reach them immediately and get them to call Heather back. So I got this call from this couple that I hadn't ever met before and I explained to them that I was in the back of a taxi, I was on my own, it was getting dark, I didn't speak Indonesian and the driver didn't speak English and I desperately needed them to speak to him and tell me what was going on.

So her husband came on the phone and I put the phone towards the driver's ear and said, here. And they had a conversation and I took the phone back and I said to the guy, hey, what's going on? The husband was looking at a map with a pin drop on it that Heather had sent him so he could see where she was. To your right, is there an airport?

He used landmarks to help figure out where exactly they were and what direction they were traveling. And he said, okay, your ways is telling you you're moving away from your hotel. However, he's just taking you a different way to try and get around the traffic. He knows you're upset and he's trying to take you back to your hotel. Heather relaxed ever so slightly, but she was still terrified. Then her phone rang.

It was Leslie. I don't understand what you're talking about. She called me and said, what's going on? I've heard that you're terrified. I've heard that you're upset and you're crying. And I just, I don't know what to say. Like everything I said, she had a reason or a response to. She was like, please, please just, you know, calm down. You know, she spoke in a very specific way, gentle, but with a very firm voice.

You know, her personality was like very, why? Why are you scared? Oh, well, you know, we still want you for this job. I'm going to be there when you get back. You know, quite stern and firm and argumentative. And like if you said something that was a fear or a question, she quite quickly and firmly came back to you with the retort. Why was there no information at all? And why couldn't you clarify? She kind of made you feel like you were...

crazy or wrong to question her. That was her tactic. Heather almost started to trust Leslie again, but her head was all over the place. When she got back to her hotel, the one that Leslie had chosen and booked for her, she looked at everyone differently. I was then also suspicious of whether the management at the hotel were involved.

So I walked into this hotel, imagining all these eyes on me, imagining they've all contacted each other and told each other that I've caught on and what are they going to do next? Are they going to try and, I don't know, grab me before I go back to the airport because they now know that I know what's going on? Like, totally paranoid. No idea whether the hotel staff are involved at all.

So I go up to my room, I'm just like basically terrified now. She even worried that there might be hidden cameras in the room filming her every move. I'm too scared to even have a shower because I'm worried about leaving my bags. There was no way Heather was going to sleep. Because of the time difference, she couldn't reach anyone back home to talk her through this either. So Heather just spoke into her phone. She recorded voice memos and sent them to a friend named Liz.

If you do speak to someone, will you, at the same time as you're talking to them, ask them if they've heard of any scams like this from, you know, that might be the answer. If you explain to them what you think's happened, they might go, oh yeah, this has happened before. So it might be something that's familiar to them. This is the Hotel Santica premiere. I think someone's at my door, weirdly. Hold on.

Somehow, she finally did reach both of her agents, Jane and David, who were in two different places on the other side of the world. Jane was on vacation in Israel. David was home in London. When I talked to them later, their words came out in a torrent.

Horrible. Heather was so distraught and I remember it so vividly because it was a Friday afternoon and I was meant to be going away on a camping weekend. I felt so sick to my stomach that I could not go on. I had to cancel the weekend.

And you just think the worst. Oh, my God, why have they got her out? You know, we've sent this, like you said, precious client of ours across this world for an amazing opportunity. And you're just thinking the worst thing. Yeah. Was it about drugs? Heather was hoping they could calm her down. Yeah.

But if it was anything like this, Jane and David weren't exactly reassuring. Finally, Heather reached her friend Liz, the one she'd sent the voice memos to. Liz

Liz tried to talk her down. I said, Liz, I'm really scared. I don't know what they're trying to do to me. No one's physically harmed me, but I just feel like they're still trying to cling on to me. They've got the cash, but they're now still trying to cling on to me and trying to force another meeting. And I don't know what they're going to do. Liz told her to sit tight while she contacted the British consulate in Jakarta for advice. And not long after, the consulate called Heather directly.

I remember the guy phoned and said, "Listen, I can't necessarily say that anything bad is going to happen to you, but what I would like you to do is put your passport in your bra, pack your bags and head straight for the airport." The guy at the consulate is paid to deal with crises. If he was worried, this must be serious. Heather packed frantically and, just to be sure, checked online to see if the airport was open this late. It wasn't. It was closed until morning.

The consulate guy had also told Heather to go to the hotel manager and alert him to her situation, to let him know that she felt she could be in danger. But what if the manager was in on it? Surely I don't want them to know that I've cottoned on, if they are involved. And he said, "No, you need to tell every single person you come across. You're a victim of a scam, you're scared. You need to tell everyone as far as you can reach."

And I couldn't understand the reasoning and he said it was because even if they are involved, if they know that you've cottoned on, they'll back off and they'll stop doing whatever it is they were going to do. And I said, "Are you sure?" And he said, "Absolutely." He said, "They don't want to risk an international incident if they don't have to. The chances are they'll leave you alone." When she told the manager what was happening, he was kind, helpful even. He told Heather he would put a security guard at each door of the hotel.

Heather had also been told by the consulate guy to tell no one about her movements. She trusted the manager, but not enough to let him know exactly what her plans were. I said to him, "I'm not going to tell you when I'm leaving, but I need to get from here to the airport at some point tonight." "No problem," he said. A car would be out front whenever she needed it. The driver wouldn't know who he was picking up, just that he should wait for as long as it took. Heather even led Leslie to believe she would meet her at the airport in the morning.

but set the meeting time after her flight would have already taken off. And he put a guard on each door and put a hotel car outside the front door and he said, "I'm leaving that car there all night until the time that you need it. You just take it and just go. I don't need to know when you're going."

There was one more fairly ominous piece of advice the consulate guy had for Heather. Whatever you do, keep your luggage in view at all times in case they, whoever they were, try to hide drugs in your bags. So Heather spent the night huddled with her bags, wired, on high alert. After the break, Heather sneaks off to the airport and tries to make a clean escape. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.

It was still dark out when Heather got in the hotel's courtesy car and made her way to the airport. Jakarta at this hour was quiet. It felt good to be on the move, but Heather couldn't help feeling vulnerable and paranoid. I didn't know if they'd made a hidden compartment or sliced the bottom of my bag open and put some drugs in there. Like, I didn't know whether I should leave my bags in case I go through the x-ray and they pull me aside for drug smuggling. I just didn't know what was going to happen.

So I was going through passport control and I took my luggage to the desk, put it through and at that point I was just... I think I had my phone in my hand with my family's number either on speed dial or on the phone to them, I can't remember. And I'd said to them, "I'm just going to have you on the phone before and after or during the time when I go through the machine in case I get arrested or something."

And I went through and I was like shaking and devastated and just terrified. And I hadn't really slept since I got on the flight to go out there. So I was exhausted. And my phone starts frantically ringing. Of course, it's Leslie. Because they've now realized I've left the hotel without telling them. My drivers got there and I'm not there. Leslie had apparently realized by this point that her UK makeup artist was jumping ship.

Too scared to silence her phone, Heather just let it ring. She got through security without incident and immediately found a dingy airport cafe where she could hide out until her boarding time. But Leslie wasn't giving up.

And Heather was so paranoid by now that she assumed she'd been followed. So she's ringing my phone non-stop for probably about an hour. My phone just rings and rings and rings. But at this point, I'm so terrified. I'm crying. I'm sitting in the back of a cafe. And I'd sat in the corner so that I knew that there was no one could sit behind me. Like, I was terrified. I didn't know if this woman was in the airport watching me. The phone is ringing and ringing with her name on.

Heather sat there, suspecting everyone, until her departure was finally announced. And then she ran to the gate, got in line and boarded the flight back to London. It wasn't until I actually got, physically got onto the airplane that I felt safe. And I collapsed. I just collapsed. And the air hostesses just were so brilliant. They put me on the back seat of the airplane, all across the seats.

and a blanket over me, and I just fainted. Because I was so relieved to just be out of there, and I hadn't had a single moment to feel safe. Heather slept almost all the way home, or if she was awake, she doesn't remember much.

Back in London, Jane and David tried to intervene and get Leslie on the phone again. They wanted to know where the few thousand dollars they'd fronted for Heather's trip had gone. Eddie, from last episode, didn't have any tape recordings of the fake D-backish, that producer or whatever she was who'd called him. But with Heather, there were some tape recordings. In this case, Jane and David recorded their conversation with Leslie. What we'd like to know, Leslie, is where's our money and why haven't you been in touch with us since Heather was out in Jakarta?

When Heather called us, and you'd have to give us a chance to speak as well, Heather called us. We contacted Heather. We had an appointment. She ran away from the hotel, and she went to the airport without informing, and we'd already gone halfway. And David had already sent an email which was stating that she had already gone. But, Leslie, can I just stop you and say, in all of this, the money has never hit our account. So, you know, what's gone wrong there?

No, can you ask that to my finance? I will talk to her. Because in the meantime, there was no contact on why you disappeared. We didn't disappear, Leslie. I mean, we were there the whole time. Heather was out driving around in the bush, and nobody made contact with her. You know, it became quite a difficult situation for her. You know, she's a woman alone in a foreign country. They got disconnected, but the recorder kept running.

The line was bad and she rang back twice. It's sweaty now. Something's not right, is it? Can you just carry on the conversation to say, like, we're not interested in the other person. We're just keen to understand where the payment is for the services we're paying. Yeah, just focus on the money. Yeah, focus on Heather went out, she did what they wanted her to do. Because this won't be big bucks for them. This won't be big bucks for them that we've paid out.

Shall I just... Hang on, let's give it an hour and then I'll just... She didn't run away, like her flight time changed. No, that's what she said, she ran away. Is this her? Yeah. No-one has said she's run away.

What do you mean, solved?

Yeah, we want... To be honest, all we want is to be reimbursed for the money that we've laid out. Yes, we'll do that. But you can also let us know once that money is in, why did Heather run away? Because we're confused. Listen...

If you can reimburse us, Leslie, we will be all ears. I will give you my word that I will tell you everything, but we want to be... I will give you my word by Wednesday you will get everything solved. Okay. Like, Wednesday you have it in your account. I will put that in writing tomorrow and you'll get it solved. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jane. Bye. Bye.

But of course, she didn't solve anything. In fact, after this call, Jane and David never heard a word from Leslie again. The number she'd been using was a fake. And so was the email. She just vanished. And Heather, like Eddie, she couldn't stop running through the trip. What had happened?

She felt, truly, like she'd dodged something terrible. Did I narrowly miss having drugs put in my bag because I got back to the hotel early enough that they didn't have a chance? I don't know. And then she remembered Anna. Like, where's Anna? Anna was the name of the other makeup artist that one, the nice lady at the performing arts theater had told Heather about. From the minute it popped into her head, Heather couldn't stop thinking about this other artist. She asked her agents to look into it, to make sure this Anna was alive and okay.

But they couldn't find her anywhere. And then we were even more worried because we'd heard about Anna at this point because Heather had reported back to us. Then we tried to find Anna on the internet and she'd completely gone off the radar. Like her last, like, you know, there was no tweets or no social media or anything from this. We were like, good Lord, what's happened to Anna? Anna was Polish but lived and worked in England. Finally, Jane got her number from a mutual Facebook friend and called. Anna picked up.

She was still in Jakarta. She was still in the frame of mind of, like, I'm competing for this job. I think she was a little bit cagey because she didn't understand why we were ringing her if we were also going for the same job. And my agent just said, look, Anna, we're just a bit worried. Havers had to fly back. We don't feel that you're safe. Are you OK? Fuck the what's next. Go and cash your bad checks. Fuck the what's next.

Next week on Chameleon, we go in search of Anna. I got like a strange phone call from a British phone number. But you know, I didn't want to speak in the car because of the driver. And we'll take you deeper and deeper inside the rabbit hole of this incredible scam.

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 Abakar Adan. Additional field production in London for this episode by Emma Barnaby. Archival research by Megan Shope. Editorial support by Doug Slawin, Natalia Winkleman, and Rod Sherwood. Our technical consultant is Ben Decker of Mamedica.

Our consulting producers are Andy Horwitz at Atlas Entertainment and Charles Mastropietro at Circle of Confusion. Our theme song is Bad Checks by Houses. Sound design and additional music by Mark McAdam. The executive producers at Campside Media are me, Josh Dean, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scherr. 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, Stitcher, 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.