Chapter 1: What is the Con Queen scam and how does it operate?
If I was willing to put this much work into a scam, I could make millions.
It sounds like a Hollywood movie.
There were hundreds and hundreds of victims. It wasn't really about the money. It was about something else. It goes back to 2018. I was at the time I was working as a features writer at the Hollywood Reporter. And at the time I covered almost exclusively what I like to call the kind of sleazy or dark underbelly of Hollywood.
So, you know, anything that had to do with crime or cons or, you know, fraud or murder or just all the all the sort of weird things you know, kind of unseemly stuff that happens in Hollywood, that was kind of my beat. It sort of became my beat. And it was just a lot of weird stories, you know, strange tales. And so one day, a colleague of mine came over to my desk and she gave me a tip.
She said that a contact of hers, a big Hollywood producer, was being impersonated.
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Chapter 2: Who are the victims affected by the Con Queen's actions?
And she said, maybe you should look into it. And at the time I thought, well, okay. But I didn't, I didn't really think much of it. It was, you know, I heard a lot of stuff like that, a lot about just random cons or weird little grifts and things like that. So anyway, I looked into it. I talked to the folks at the producer's company.
They said, yeah, there's, there's something going on, but we're not sure what. There was somebody or a group of people, some entity was, was impersonating These famous Hollywood producers, all women. And these are not names that, you know, your average Joe would have heard of, but, but in certain circles, they were huge, you know, hugely influential, very powerful people.
So for instance, folks like Kathleen Kennedy, who produced, you know, E.T., for instance. Amy Pascal was another. She produced some really big movies. There were a number of these very high powered women who were being impersonated.
Well, not only were they being impersonated, but whoever was impersonating them was contacting up and coming professionals in the entertainment industry and selling them on the idea of some sort of work project for which it was required that they then travel to Indonesia.
And so these, you know, these up and coming artists, a lot of photographers, you know, actors, screenwriters, people who were sort of in the business of entertainment were being contacted supposedly by these, by these famous women and, and, and being told that they needed to go to Indonesia on these fake work projects. So right away, you know, it, it,
it immediately took on these very strange overtones because I thought, well, this is just completely bizarre. Who would do this? Why Indonesia? What's the point? Where's the money? How does it all fit together? What's going on? It didn't really make much sense. And of course, as a journalist, when it doesn't make much sense, you get more interested. So I was pretty curious at this point.
Then I spoke to one of the victims, this young guy, he was a photographer, and I got on the phone with him and he unspooled this story for me. We spoke for like two hours and he just told me this absolutely unbelievable story about how he had gone to Indonesia, thinking he was working for Amy Pascal. He had blown through 50 or $60,000.
It was the entirety of his life savings, money that he had earmarked for medical care for his child. So he'd lost all his money, which was bad enough. But what really struck me in my conversation with this guy was how... sort of damaged he was. I mean, this guy was really messed up by this experience. He had spent weeks, weeks and weeks, many weeks.
I mean, I think it might've even been a few months in this kind of relationship with Amy Pascal, this woman thinking that he was on this fantastic work project with Amy Pascal. He'd gone all over Indonesia.
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Chapter 3: What motivated the journalist to investigate the scam?
He'd taken flights and buses and cars. I mean, he'd gone everywhere. He'd done all these things. And the whole time he'd been in this ongoing conversation with the woman he thought was Amy Pascal, and she turned out to be this incredibly abusive, manipulative, volatile, contemptuous woman.
And she had kind of strung him along for weeks and weeks, taken all his money, put him in these impossible situations, and And really just engineered and orchestrated this crazy psychological mind game on him. And so when I spoke to him, he had just emerged from this and he was wrecked. I mean, he was just a total mess.
He'd lost all his money, as I said, but he'd also kind of lost his self-confidence and You know, his whole sort of work life was messed up. His family life was a mess. So it had just torn his life apart. And I remember I got off that call
And I just thought, okay, well, there's something going on here that is different than what I at the time understood to be your average scam because there was so much work that had gone into this, huge amounts of labor on the part of the scammers to pull this off. And what I would subsequently learn is that the amount of money he lost was the exception rather than the rule.
That is to say, there were hundreds and hundreds of these victims who went to Indonesia. And the vast, vast majority of them lost relatively little money. you know, on the order of a few thousand, you know, a few thousand dollars, really not all that much. This guy happened to lose a lot, but yeah.
I'm sorry. How did he lose so much? Because I know that the scam, watching the scam, there was so little money derived, you know, as far as, you know, profit for the scam. Like, I mean, most of the money these people are spending is on
hotels and cars and traveling and, you know, buses and trains and, you know, whatever air, you know, airfare, like that, the money that the con artist is getting was actually like, you know, a thousand 1500.
I mean, these people are costing these people tens of thousands of dollars, like cost them $10,000, but the actual money that the con artist made was 1500 bucks, 1800 all like, it's like, and there was, it was so much work. Yeah. Because I was watching it with my wife and I was like, if I was willing to put this much work into a scam, I could make millions. Yeah. Like, what is this?
What is this person doing? Why is why are they doing this? Like, it doesn't it didn't make sense.
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Chapter 4: How did the investigation into the Con Queen evolve over time?
You know, it's not worth it.
Um, yeah, I wrote, so I wrote a book called, um, bailout and it was about a guy named Marcus shrinker who had, uh, he had run a few different scams and, but he was a pathological liar. Like, I mean, like a very, I don't want to say good pathological liar because he wasn't,
Except, you know, the problem with pathological liars is that they'll lie about little tiny, silly things that you figure out it was a lie, you know, and they very quickly reveal that that's not true. You know, you like you pick up a phone or you bump into the person the next day or whatever, for whatever reason, but he would tell these ridiculous lies. And it was to make himself feel better.
And he got a kick out of fooling people. Well, this is just pathological liars in general. They they drive extreme enjoyment out of fooling someone and it makes them feel better to fool people and to, and that you feel that this person is important. He constantly, and this is the thing about the guy. He was married to a beautiful woman. He was a pilot. He had three beautiful children.
He lived in a multimillion dollar house. He had a successful hedge fund. He drove nice vehicles, plenty of money. He's a top-tier individual, and he's still lying. He lies about working for NASA. He lies about being a fighter pilot. None of these things are true. You were never in the military. You were never a fighter pilot. You never worked for NASA. But it was a constant thing.
It's like you're already somebody that – people look up to.
So, you know, the whole, so, and then when I was watching it and I was the, the, um, documentary, I was thinking like, there's, he had to get some kind of sick, you know, um, pleasure out of, you know, endorphin rush or whatever you, you know, you call it like by fooling these people or by, and like you said, by controlling them or allowing, you know,
it almost seems like a different kind of like a pathology because I don't think, because there just wasn't enough money in it. In my opinion. But then again, I don't know, like the person with the $50,000, I'm not sure how that individual ended up getting the money because initially like the little fees that they had to pay along the way, got to pay $1,000 for this, 600 for this.
So I could see that. And maybe being in, is it Indonesia? Maybe that's a lot of money there. Like, you know. Yeah. I don't know. Like I'm thinking, is that, is this a lot of money? And he's doing this to over a hundred and some odd people. Oh, more than that.
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Chapter 5: What psychological tactics did the scammer use on victims?
I mean, you could disprove it in a second. And yeah, I think there was a very strong propensity to do that because, yeah, it afforded a certain amount of pleasure. I think what you said about fooling people is key. I spoke to a number of experts on psychopathy and various other pathologies, uh, just to get, you know, to get my head around what I, what I might be dealing with with this person.
And so I learned quite a bit about these different personality disorders and, and, um, in the process of reporting the book and the documentary. And one of the themes that came up was this issue of kind of fooling people, getting one over on other people and the pleasure that can be had
They can be derived from going through with these really elaborate ruses and then sort of stepping back and seeing how people stumble and fall and trip over themselves in these traps that you've made. And that was really interesting to learn about.
I was gonna say, it's funny, because I read several studies. And there aren't a lot on pathological liars. And I read a book, or two books, one of the books, it was called lies, lies, lies, the psychology of deception. And, you know, it was, and it's funny, because it referenced some of the studies that I then read, you know, they're not long, they're, they're 12 pages, 14 pages.
But yeah, I read it. And you know, you're reading it, and you're like, and it would divvy up the different types of pathological liars. And, you know, it was, it was super interesting. And then it's so funny because once you've read that material and you're having these interactions with this person, you're like, okay, like I, that makes sense. Like I can kind of understand that.
Like, I don't know why you said that, but yeah, It doesn't, it doesn't even have to be for a benefit. That's what really killed for somebody who, you know, for myself, who clearly doesn't have an issue lying, but there needs to be a benefit. Like, I don't just walk around lying and saying that I, I, I won, you know, in 2002, I was a quarterback and won the Superbowl.
Like, that's like, I'm not going to say it. Like there needs to be a benefit. Like that's the kind of ridiculous stuff that he would say, you know, and, And you'd go, okay, well, I know that's not true. And I could easily find that out. Why would you even say that? It makes no sense. There's no benefit other than you feeling good right now
because maybe you're trying to one up me or like, it just didn't make sense. Like I couldn't even, but you could see it. It was so clear. And the fact that this guy was willing to do it, it was the same thing with, you know, I forget what, what is the name of the person eventually?
I mean, he has lots of, he had lots of different names obviously, but, but we, he's most commonly known as Harvey. So we can call him Harvey for the purposes of the show. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: How did the scam adapt during the COVID-19 pandemic?
And I thought, I'm just going to go try to find this guy and get him to talk to me. So I flew to Manchester.
Hey, real quick, just wanted to let you guys know that we're looking for guests for the podcast. If you think you'd be a good guest, you know somebody, do me a favor. You can fill out the form. The link is in our description box, or you can just email me directly. Email is in the description box. So back to the video.
Yeah, I was going to say the way you tracked him down was what you had someone that did the the global positioning where they studied all the data. I have no idea how that works, but did you ever see the documentary, Don't Fuck With Cats? Yes. Yeah, it was great. That was what it made me think of. I was like, who has this software? How does this happen?
Well, it's funny. It might seem sophisticated, but it was... Well, I'll tell you the story. So what happened was Okay. I told you he's a food influencer, right? So one of the things he did was he had like 50,000 followers on Instagram. And I think most of them were just bought or purchased or whatever.
But he had this whole persona on Instagram, which was he'd get on there and he'd say, hey, Instagram folks. That was his thing. Hey, Instagram folks. And he'd say, today I'm in, you know, fill in the blank. And he'd hopscotch all over the UK. So he'd be in London, then he'd be in, you know, Edinburgh, then he'd be in Leeds, then he'd be in, you know, whatever, pick your city, Bristol, whatever.
And he was just all over the United Kingdom. Yeah. And so you just, you just never knew where, where he was. And sometimes, you know, he would do a video and then he wouldn't post it for a week or two. And by that point he would have moved on to some other city and stuff. And he never, he never gave anybody any insight into where he lived or. or anything.
So it was just this roving food influencer. That's who he was. Yeah. His handle was pure bites and it was just this roving food influencer who was tasting the greatest dishes from, you know, Edinburgh to London and everywhere in between and bringing, you know, bringing his, his delightful treats to you, the viewer. And so.
So the thing was, though, that when COVID happened, of course, it kind of curtailed people's movements. They couldn't really go maybe as far or as wide as they normally would. So one day in that summer, he, for some reason, it's still a bit unclear why, but for some reason, he decided to do an Instagram interview with this old classmate of his from his childhood.
who was sort of interested in his life. So he gets on the Instagram live thing and he starts talking to her and he starts telling her about his life and his difficulties. And, you know, it's half truths, half lies. He's just full of it. She later told me she thought he was just full of shit. But anyway, at one point, so he's sitting there, right? He's got the camera on him.
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Chapter 7: What insights were gained from interviewing the scammer?
Where did you go? What happened? You know, do you have any emails or supporting documents to, to, to, to help us? And so they, they had an entire digital infrastructure in place to help build their case because there were victims from all around the world. I later figured it out. There were every single continent on the planet except Antarctica. There were victims from everywhere.
And so, you know, they had this digital, the FBI had this digital portal, they were soliciting information. There was, there were, there was an investigation in the UK.
This guy had already been dragged, you know, had been taken to court by various victims in other scams and in other sort of criminal enterprises that, that had, you know, for small, small amounts of money, but still there were lots of people who'd, who tried to get him in court in the UK already. The Indonesians, the authorities in Indonesia were looking at it. The Americans were looking at it.
The Brits were looking at it. So there was a kind of a net that was closing in. COVID was further complicating it. And yeah, here he was. I mean, he was basically on the lam. He was hiding. He wasn't communicating with me or with any other journalists. And he was doing his best to stay hidden. And so...
And it was not a given that an effort to communicate with him in this way was going to be successful.
Right. Yeah. He hadn't been answering your messages. So you would assume you show up and he'd be like, get away from me.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And also, you know, by that point, I had been talking to other people like in his family, People had known him as a young person, people who had a much, much deeper understanding of his past and who he was and what he was capable of as a person. And I had heard some really disturbing things about.
things he'd done, behaviors, many of which were just deeply manipulative and criminal. But there were some stories I heard in which he acted violently. That was troubling for me. As somebody who was going in search of him, I obviously didn't want to get into any kind of situation where I would be in danger or where anybody else around me, even people in the street potentially would be in danger.
So that was a concern. So there were a lot of factors that went into, or that I had to think about when contemplating this. I didn't wanna And I didn't want him to hurt himself either. He was the subject of an investigation. There were serious people in the FBI and in the United States Department of Justice that wanted to hold him to account. I didn't want to stand in their way.
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Chapter 8: What is the current status of the Con Queen and the investigation?
So I guess what I'm saying is that there was this huge kind of sprawling universe of stories that he was totally embedded in. And so the con such as it was, existed, you know, in this kind of larger context of stories. And so I found myself, you know, getting drawn into his world of stories.
Kahn was kind of embedded in these, you know, in this whole sort of sprawling universe of stories and myths and, yeah, half-truths and delusions and, you know, and movies he'd seen and books he'd read and stories that he'd concocted himself, like literally stories that he'd written or dreams he'd had. And so the whole thing became a kind of an exercise in
in trying to figure out, well, which which of these stories is real, which is total delusion or fantasy? How do they relate to each other? How do they influence each other? And and what does all of that say about about about the con, but also just about him and then about, you know, at an even more kind of meta level about this conversation that he and I were having? Like, was this just another
story that he was telling was he was he using me you know was he like what was going on and and that that so so ultimately that's kind of where i landed at the end of all these conversations was just feeling like i was in this kind of kaleidoscopic alice in wonderland alternate universe peopled with with the the characters of his fiction of his imagination and and his
and his sort of fantastical life. And it was a very strange place to find myself. It was very strange to suddenly be, to feel like I was inhabiting his imagination in a way. But as a writer, it was great material because he would like, He would just tell me these absolutely wonderful stories about trips he'd taken and people he'd met and what it meant for him and his development as a person.
And I just found all that stuff fascinating.
Well, while this is happening, because at this point you'd gone back to where were you living? Yeah, I was living in Seattle at the time. Yeah. So you've gone back to Seattle. You're having these conversations. Is he still running this con? How is he surviving at this point?
Yeah, so I left him in Manchester. I went back to Seattle. As far as I know, he stayed in his apart hotel there where I had found him originally. And we carried on having these conversations. And over the course of the next several weeks, I had conversations with him, but I was sort of simultaneously through other sources, investigatory sources and law enforcement and this kind of thing,
tracking what he was doing, you know, purely on the for the scam. And one day I learned that I got a report basically that that very day he had you know a victim had had had revealed that he had sent something like a few thousand dollars anyway to uh to to to to the scammer and what had happened is that he had Ever since COVID started, he had started tailoring the scam to COVID.
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