investigative reporter Scott Johnson After spending years tracking the mysterious scam artist known as “Hollywood’s Queen of Hustlers,” this is the first hollywood reporter Then in his own book, and now as a consulting producer on a new AppleTV+ documentary series of the same name. The three-part series tells the story of a scam artist who impersonates female Hollywood executives in an attempt to lure actors and other victims with great career opportunities. “It took me a long time and was really fun and eye-opening for me,” he said recently. If you know the story or have a chance to watch the doc, you’ll agree.
I spoke with Johnson about how he uncovered the scam and its intricacies, and what it was like confronting scammers on the streets of Indonesia. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You create a lot of stories, but with this one, you wrote a book and made this documentary. What is it about this thing that fascinates you so much that you spend so much time with it?
Scott Johnson: At first, I didn’t think much of it and just got this random tip. I just thought, ‘Okay, this is going to be some random scam,’ like any other scam in Hollywood. And then I started talking to people and victims and investigators about it, and it was so weird and so complicated that it didn’t make sense. So I spent quite a bit of time trying to understand it, and I think the process was really sitting with it and trying to understand how it worked. That kind of attracted me.
The stories of these victims are so compelling. I mean, they were so scared, they lost all this money. They’re really just damaged, and a lot of them are a mess because of it. It affects their lives, their families, their ability to trust others, to trust themselves, and it shakes them to their core, many of them. And there are lots of them. Every week I receive letter after letter, and the number keeps growing. As the weeks, months, years went by, it just kept evolving in all these weird ways.
Peeling back the layers, then I would discover some new components of it, so it’s not a simple or straightforward story. I think that appealed to me as a storyteller and it provided a lot of motivation for writing the book and then doing the document because there was this endless territory to explore.
I’m an actor too and I just feel for those other actors…well, everyone who was brave enough to be interviewed. Did you notice how he was able to pick out those he deceived?
Scott Johnson: Well, there’s a lot of research that’s been done on this. For every person who develops some kind of relationship with a scammer over the phone, there are plenty of people who don’t get through the phone, who don’t pass the initial screening; either they’re too suspicious, or they don’t meet some of the criteria he’s looking for. They’re not interested in taking it to the next level, or they don’t want to travel to Indonesia or other places. Therefore, people have to meet certain parameters to be among the last victims.
But there’s a lot of research, and I don’t know if you’re like most people, but we put everything online. We are on social media, we are on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and IMDB, we have websites, we produce photos, blogs and newsletters, we are everywhere. A lot of information about these people is often published by them themselves as they try to build their careers and make a name for themselves. It is therefore easy to mine information from public registers which can then be used, crafted and sculpted in the hands of skilled manipulators so that they can develop a narrative that appeals to those on the other side.
I’ve said this before, but I think the scam itself has several factors that make it compelling. One of them is the voice work, obviously, it’s impressive, but I think the more substantial and impressive feat is the persuasiveness of crafting these really well-crafted fantasies and these stories that, once hooked, people are willing to Trust that they are willing to go on this journey, whatever it is, is different for everyone. I think it’s a very bold step, and if you think about it a little bit, I think it becomes clear.
While watching the documentary, I loved the video of you talking to him on Zoom. He talks, man, and when he talks and talks, your face is both fascinated and like, “I gotta take out the trash. I gotta feed the dog. What were you thinking about during that time?”
Scott Johnson: I mean, you just made it. Like, “I have to go to the grocery store. I have to take my kids to this or that activity. I have to go to the bathroom. I have something to tell my wife. I’m going to be stuck in that room for hours.”
I don’t know if there’s anything like that in the files, but it’s not the only conversation, I get calls all the time. I’ll be out with my kids, or at the grocery store, or at the park or whatever, and I’ll get these calls, but I can’t always answer them. So at the time we were talking, it was a relentless, almost a full-time job, every day for weeks.
You once confronted him on the street, were you nervous about that?
Scott Johnson: Honestly, it is. I’ve done this a few times in my career as a journalist, and it’s never particularly easy or comfortable, especially when you know people don’t want to talk to you. But yeah, it’s scary. I didn’t know nearly as much about him at that moment as I would in the weeks that followed, so I didn’t know what his reaction would be, if he would lash out or be violent or threaten me in some way Either run away or fight me. I’m a little scared, my heart is beating fast.
Toward the end of The Doctor, when he opened up about his life, did you feel like he was still trying to manipulate you, or did you think he was being sincere? Because as I was watching, I started to feel some sympathy for him, but then in the back of my mind, I was like, “No, no, no, he screwed all these people up.”
Scott Johnson: I have to say, in that moment, when I was filming this, when I was in the conversation, I had the same reaction that you had, which was a wild swing between feelings, like this was a Someone looking for someone. So, yes, it evoked a certain level of sympathy in me, and at the same time, like you, I had another story running in my head that said, “Wait a minute, but you did this, that, and another A thing. I hear the voices of the victims on a constant loop, reminding me of all the other terrible things that have happened.
I think I said it in the documentary, there’s a real cognitive dissonance, trying to navigate on the fly that emotional landscape of feeling compassion and a desire to understand, and then on the other hand, a real, very genuine skepticism, a desire to understand Push back, question, be a tough reporter and get the truth because in the end that’s what matters to me.
Sometimes one strategy works, sometimes another works, and it’s hard to know what’s going to work moment-to-moment, second-to-second. If you’re too compassionate, you’ll get rolled over and cheated, if you’re too aggressive or whatever, you’ll alienate someone and maybe even cut off contact prematurely. So I’ve been trying to balance those factors and focus on really trying to understand and get to the truth of what happened.
The scam is so sophisticated you almost have to be impressed with how he handles everything that happens to him.
Scott Johnson: Oh, absolutely. Yes. I think that’s the most important thing that interests me, is the complexity of it, and as you said, it does take a huge amount of energy to handle all these calls with multiple people at the same time, which all Indonesian people are drawn to provide in some way help. And then becoming a food influencer and fending off people who are clamoring for money is kind of crazy. We used to joke…I also asked him that if he put his mind and energy into something productive and good, I think he would be hugely successful. Because he obviously has energy and a weird work ethic, he just chooses to channel it that way.
The end of the doc doesn’t really end the story. But for you personally, are you over it?
Scott Johnson: Yes, I think so. I would love to move on to other things. It took up a lot of my time and it was really fun and eye-opening for me. Producing this document has been extremely rewarding and fulfilling, and writing the book has certainly been a real joy. So, all those things, I feel good about and proud of, but, yeah, I’d love to move on.
