01x02 - A Different Animal

[bunniefuu]

The Con Queen article

had gotten a lot of attention.

But people were still

being lured to Indonesia

and more people were being impersonated.

Over the course of the investigation,

I spoke to over four-hundred people

who were victims.

So, we learned that he was

running this scam for almost ten years.

And it honestly took ten years

before anybody did anything,

so he had an MO that he was using

and it was working for him

and nobody was stopping him.

We work on a fair amount of cases

where there is an impersonation aspect

that facilitates a scam, but this really

just felt different from the beginning.

In a lot of cases, the con artist

picks a mark, targets them for money,

gets the money,

and then tosses the victim aside.

And that's not what happens here.

When I was talking to victims, I never saw

two approaches that looked the same.

And that was something

that was really unique about this

is everyone's story had a little quirk,

a new addition to, you know,

the psychological aspect of it

and what he would put people through.

The first time I heard from somebody

who had confronted him

and the conversation continued,

I was really surprised.

But then, it just kept happening.

And so, I don't know

if that was a psychological thing

to just turn the screws

one last time on people, or what,

but it didn't make logical sense

from a scam-running perspective.

The victims all,

independently of each other,

come up with the same

kind of language to describe him.

And that language is,

"psychological t*rture",

you know, a kind of "psychological abuse".

No.

I definitely think he was consciously

toying with people, for sure.

They were put in a puzzle

and he would watch them squirm.

So, for instance, he did

a very bizarre thing with this victim,

he told them to watch The Truman Show.

And that really jumped out at me,

because The Truman Show

is sort of a perfect metaphor

for what he was doing to his victims.

Which was creating

an entire elaborate artifice,

and then placing his victims

inside the artifice

for the viewing pleasure of himself.

It's almost like a God who creates a world

and then allows his creations

to contemplate the possibility

of awareness of their creator.

And says, "Ha-ha,

look at what I'm doing to you.

Is this gonna be enough for you

to kind of wake up?"

I was really fascinated

with the psychology of it.

I had a pretty good sense

that he was a lone operator,

that he was the mastermind of the scam.

I had some basic biographical information.

I knew that his real name

was Hargobind Tahilramani,

that he went by, "Harvey" as a kid,

and that now that he was in London

operating an Instagram account,

he went by the name "Gavin".

I think Purebytes was, perhaps, a way out.

A way to restart his life

after he left Indonesia.

Oh, my God!

We're on top of the world. Let's explore.

Then you have to wonder,

"Well, to what end?"

Was it because he wanted to be successful

and have a legitimate

social media presence,

that would give his life

substance and meaning?

Or was it to build

the social media side up

so that he could use it

for some nefarious purpose?

I'm fascinated by the fact that I could do

anything and everything

I put my heart into.

And you can, too.

I was working at a restaurant

called Goodman, it was a steakhouse.

And I was working there

for about six years when I met Gavin.

We got to know him pretty quickly

because he was always

a little bit problematic.

We could never cook

a steak correctly for him

and he'd go as far

as putting it in his mouth,

chewing it, spitting it out,

putting it on a linen napkin

and handing it to you to say,

"This isn't correct, Julian".

The strange thing was, you didn't

have to do anything to the bill for him,

he was always happy to pay.

He made it very clear with the staff

that he was an Instagram food influencer.

And at the restaurant,

he'd photograph the food sometimes

We're here right now

at Goodman's Steakhouse.

Fabulous steak

and fabulous people. Come on.

Eventually, after getting to know him

is when he started to follow my Instagram.

So then I had resigned from the restaurant

and I get a message from him.

"Hi, Julian. I have some ideas.

I think that I could do with your services

for my Purebytes account.

Would you like to meet to discuss?"

So, I meet him in a coffee shop

and he tells me,

"Essentially, what the job will be,

is I go to lunch, I go to restaurants,

you come with me,

photograph everything

for my Instagram account.

That's going to make it look a little bit

more professional and I pay you.

I employ you.

It's a Monday to Friday gig."

And I said, "Okay, cool.

That sounds feasible.

Let's see what happens."

And he says, "Okay, film me."

But I made it clear to him that I was fine

with the photography side of things

but I was certainly not a trained

or skilled videographer,

but we can do our best. And he said,

"I don't even care. Just film me."

- Action.

- I'm right here in Chinatown

and my good friend, Sir Julian

Yes, sir. Yes, sir

Decided for me to get this specialty.

This is the special fish-shaped custard.

Around about 2 p.m., he said,

"I've really gotta make a phone call."

And I went, "Okay, cool."

And then he kind of said to me,

"No, you need to leave.

Like, go away! Disappear."

Gavin always had a little bit

of an underlying distraction going on.

He'd say, "I haven't slept."

And you know, "I've been up all night."

Between what he was doing for Purebytes

and the facilitation of the scam,

he must've been on the phone all day.

And he called people all hours of the day.

It would be four in the morning, UK time,

and he's having a conversation

with this person who's in Indonesia.

And on the same day,

he would be talking to somebody in LA,

who just bought a plane ticket.

So, he definitely had people

in different phases of the scam

at the same time.

I found out from sources

that he was calling about 50 people a day

to gauge their suitability

as possible marks.

And he would keep notes

on all of his victims

in the Gmail drafts folder.

It's a skill set, really,

to be able to keep the symphony playing

and here he was in real life

keeping track of the various stories

he would tell about himself.

He started to openly talk about being

a producer working in the film industry

and then eventually he started to mention

that he was working for Netflix.

There were references all over his page

to working for Netflix,

so he would invent

entire interactions and jobs

that he was supposedly working on.

Which speaks to a very deliberate,

well-organized plan to deceive people.

It's almost like he couldn't control it

or something.

It just kept happening again,

and again, and again.

That's it. Good.

And now, look off to the left.

That's it.

As a photographer,

I am known for taking portraits, mainly.

Often, celebrities

but also chef portraits,

so people in the food industry.

Gavin Ambani, he wrote me an email.

He said that he got in touch with me

because Itamar and Sarit,

two very well-respected chefs,

recommended me.

And he said he wanted

some portraits done for Instagram.

I replied to him and said, "It's

not really something that interests me

and you might want to try someone else."

Then he got back in touch and said

he was the son

of the Ambani family in India,

which is a big, influential family.

And he'd be willing to pay anything

I wanted for me to take the portrait.

So, pretty much straightaway

we had two shoots planned.

The first sh**t we did

was with two chefs, Itamar and Sarit.

My idea then was to have

this scenario of breaking bread.

I got the sense that that was

something very special for him.

At the end of the sh**t,

I talked to Itamar and Sarit.

I said, "Well, you know,

you recommended him."

And I think I thanked them for it.

And they said,

"Well, I don't really know him that well."

Itamar said, you know,

"I've only talked to him once or twice

and Sarit's never talked to him."

But to some degree,

he's done what an influencer does,

they exaggerate their position a bit.

The idea behind the second sh**t

was to sh**t him at a high-end tea room.

I remember on the day of that sh**t

that he was stressed.

He was on his phone a lot.

I just thought, "Well,

it could be a stressful day at work."

And as soon as I asked him

to focus on the camera,

he switched and

he was exactly how I wanted him to be.

At the end,

when we were packing up, he said,

"Get the invoices through and

we'll pay you, you know, straightaway."

Gavin said he's got an auntie in Hollywood

that works for the family

as an accountant.

So, I made up the invoice to her

and sent it

and got a reply from her.

He was very insistent.

Constantly going, you know,

"You gotta make sure that you get paid.

Have you been paid yet?"

I'd go, "Well, I'll check."

And, "No, I haven't."

And he started

talking about new deadlines.

So, then it was all like, "Oh, well,

if you don't get the money by then,

I'll come and pay you in cash."

One time, he said he was gonna

turn up and give me the cash.

And I remember then

I waited for him for a while.

An hour later, I got a message,

"Oh, held up in a meeting with my auntie.

My auntie is here now."

And I thought,

"Well, okay. I'll write the auntie."

And I get a reply straightaway.

Then you kinda go,

"That is That's bull."

And I thought,

"I'm gonna contact Itamar and Sarit."

So, I said, "Look, I'm really sorry.

I haven't been paid by Gavin."

After I talked to Itamar,

I get an email from Gavin Ambani saying,

"I've just come off the phone with Itamar.

He's been shouting at me

because I haven't paid you."

"Now you've made me

want to commit suicide."

I'm going, "What is going on?"

You know? "This is incredible."

As far as I knew then was,

the only way I was gonna get money

is to go through small claims.

I know the stress of it and I know

it's not a fun process to go through.

I decided just to forget about it.

It's not worth it.

And that's the last I ever heard of him.

I am in Trafalgar Square,

and right now

this is a quintessential spot

for tourists to come and see these lions.

He would do things like accents

and it was always in jest,

it was jovial, it was him acting for me.

Well, I just came back

from the Roman Amphitheatre

and it was wonderful

and all that good stuff.

It made me realize

that he wants to show all these characters

that he kind of thinks he's made up of.

So, once he trusted me enough,

he suggested that we start

photographing things in his flat

and modeling himself off these

Bon Appétit magazine YouTube chefs.

- You got the burgers. We

- We got the answers.

Right from there, right from the pot.

Come on, Vinny,

stick your camera in there.

What he liked about them

was that they're full of life,

they're all good looking,

they're energetic,

very talented behind a kitchen counter.

Maybe he thought,

"Well, I can do all of that,

because I've got a cameraman,

I've got nice outfits,

and I have the ability

to make a cooking video."

- Hey! What's going on, Julian?

- How are you, Gavin?

Amazing, as you can see.

You know what, Julian?

Lots of people talking smack

about others, including myself.

Been there, done that.

I was one of those people, as well.

- That's not very nice.

- That's not nice, but at the same time,

if we let people get to us

and we take revenge, so to speak,

we'll never progress in life.

He was adamant

that he was gonna use it as a platform

to get back at people

that he thought had done him wrong.

When I was bullied

because I was a big kid.

Of course I'm going to talk about it.

I will!

What are you talking about, Julian?

I thought that,

"This is all a little bit strange

and not really what I signed up for."

Then eventually he started

to push the boundaries a little bit

in terms of squeezing my cheeks

or telling me I'm beautiful

or wanting to hug me.

And then one day he said to me,

"I'd like you to photograph my outfit."

And then, so,

he proceeded to undress in front of me,

and he said to me,

"Don't worry. I'm not gonna r*pe you."

So I'm trying to photograph it and

the one thing that I thought about was,

he told me that Harvey Weinstein

was one of these people he revered

and he said

that Harvey taught him all the ways

of how to operate as a producer.

"Harvey was a great guy

and these women are just vindictive,

and they're liars,

and the Me Too movement is a scam."

Which was a kind of scary thought

to be trapped in a flat

with someone that believed that.

I thought to myself,

"Little do you know, this is the last day

I'm putting up with this sh*t."

By putting out into the world

so much on his own social media,

it was clear to me that he's somebody

who's not able to exist

without sharing his vision with the world.

But it also was his own undoing.

Because it became a part

of my day-to-day life

over the course of two years,

to go on Instagram

and look at this profile,

and there were two timelines.

I'm tracking the storyline of the scam,

and I know he just went out

to eat at this restaurant

and an hour previously,

he was on the phone

with a new person in Indonesia.

He was putting more information

out there into the world.

I don't think he knew

I was paying attention or following along.

And that's just old school detective work,

but I really wanted

to gather that evidence

should it prove useful

for law enforcement in the future.

But there were definitely nights

where my husband told me,

"Turn off the computer."

It'd be, like, three in the morning

and I would be like Carrie Mathison

connecting my dots all over the place.

I definitely was obsessed

with seeing it through.

Nothing's dissuading him

from what he's doing

and so I felt like I had to be an advocate

for people, because nobody else was.

A lot of it was being done outside

of work hours, when I could get to it,

because I had my real job,

and my real cases.

One time, someone called

and I really needed to be taking notes,

so the only notebook I could find

was this one

and so this became

the case notebook for a while

where I just kept it on my desk

and scribbled in details

and hilariously,

it's now locked and I can't open it.

So the secrets of the Con Queen

live in here,

but this one, my official one,

is just silly pictures.

So, this is the life of a working mom.

You know, when these victims

would go to the FBI and get rebuffed,

very often the next person

that they would turn to would be Nicole.

She wound up talking to them,

oftentimes for hours and hours,

even after the demands of K-2's clients

had essentially been met.

This case was unique

in that we're not generally able

to talk about the work that we do,

but so many people were being affected

on an ongoing basis and being harmed,

that we made the decision

that for the public good,

we would put our contact information

out there, so that if somebody Googled

"Indonesia scam producer",

something would pop up.

Then, one day, while we're out at brunch,

my phone starts ringing.

And I look at it,

and it's a blocked number.

And when I picked up,

Gavin was on the other end.

That's what started the series

of conversations over about a week period.

He would just call

five in the morning my time,

I'd be on the subway into the office,

and you know, I had to always

pick it up whenever he would call.

He definitely used his tricks on me.

I think he definitely was trying to

psychologically profile me a little bit.

He said,

"I know you're just doing your job.

I respect working women."

He used a lot of flattery.

He referenced things

about my personal life

that I'm not sure how he cobbled together.

You know, the conversations

I kinda just let him talk.

He never once

admitted to doing any of this

and he was,

you know, trying to get rid of me.

Trying to make me go away.

And then he just said, "Miss Kotsianas,

you know lot of things.

There's penalties for people

who know too much.

You know too much."

Like, in a way, I had to disengage.

I said, "I'm not picking up

the phone anymore."

But that was the only time

that he ever did anything

that made me feel uncomfortable.

And I think it was probably

because he was aware

that the walls were closing in

and, you know,

I was partially responsible for that.

The role that Nicole played in this

was just critical.

You have to remember Harvey

had been on the FBI's radar for years

and they just hadn't ever done anything.

And she, pretty single-handedly,

helped build the case.

I think the biggest mistake he made

was thinking that, like, I would go away

as long as he stopped

impersonating this client, or this client,

and that just didn't happen.

Because by that point,

we had amassed enough evidence

in terms of the losses combined

for the victims that we knew of,

and it was well over a million dollars.

And then the FBI could do something

about it and did do something about it.

Because it got to the scale

where it was the sort of thing

they could devote resources to.

And so, that took us

two years to get to that point.

And a case was formally opened.

The FBI put out a press release

announcing the existence

of the investigation

and also soliciting victims

to input their information,

and that really enabled the investigation

to take it to the next level

and it moved us

from the central contact point,

moved it to the FBI.

So, I went back to the victims

I had already spoken to and said,

"Look, there's momentum here."

That moment was a big breakthrough for me,

because it is the sort of case

that falls between the cracks all the time

and I thought, "We're going to be able

to do something here."

When the FBI decided to officially

open an investigation,

I wrote about that.

And I had the sense

that an arrest was imminent,

but over the course

of 2019 and 2020, that didn't happen.

The challenge for the FBI was that,

first they had to identify

what the crimes actually were,

then they had to gather all the evidence

to tie those crimes directly to Harvey,

and then they had to coordinate

with foreign law enforcement agencies

to make an arrest.

I was convinced

that COVID was gonna stop him.

Nothing else was stopping him,

but I was like, "He's not gonna be

able to get people to fly."

And then, sure enough,

I get a call from somebody who says,

"I just sent five-thousand dollars

to a bank account in Indonesia

for some martial arts training

that I'm gonna do over Zoom."

He got with the times.

He adapted to what we all were doing

and how we were all living,

and tweaked his scam to fit it.

Then as time went on, people would say,

"What is taking so long?"

Of course, it was frustrating to us, too.

But the wheels of justice turn slowly.

And so, I just stayed on it.

I kept writing about it.

I would do little updates.

But I started, at that point, to think,

"Well, this is just bigger

than simply an article."

So, I had decided to write a book

about this whole saga,

because I really wanted

to explore it more.

And one of the big questions for me was,

"Was this person acting out of malevolence

or had something happened to him?

Had he been traumatized? Had he been hurt?

And if so, how?"

So, I thought, "Well, maybe there's

a chance that he would talk to me."

Because if I'm gonna

write a book about him,

I can't not hear what he has to say.

And I'd been trying for a long time,

I'd sent him WhatsApp messages,

I'd sent him emails.

I mean, I'd tried Instagram.

I'd tried to call

numbers that I had for him.

He just ignored me.

I contemplated many times

going to try to find him,

but one of the tricky things

was that he was moving constantly.

You could keep track of him on Purebytes,

but you never really knew from one day

to the next, where he actually was.

How's it going, Instagram folks?

I'm currently

at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

He was in London one day,

he was in Manchester the next.

Currently in rainy city, Manchester.

That should be the nickname of Manchester.

So he did a lot of travelling

around the UK.

I'm currently at Leeds.

I'm in the sleepy town of Gullane.

Rise and shine.

I'm currently in Edinburgh.

And so, the prospect of going to the UK

and poking around in half a dozen

different cities until I find him,

was not really an option.

And then, Harvey took Purebytes down.

He just dismantled it. He took it offline.

At which point he sort of disappeared.

And I think I'd gotten a little bit stuck.

I didn't know where to go

with the story

but everything sort of changed

in September of 2020.

A woman in Indonesia

named Haseena Bharata,

with whom I'd been in touch,

she was somebody who knew Harvey as a kid,

and Haseena had an Instagram show.

So, one day, she messaged me

and she said that she planned

to have Harvey on the show.

As Hargobind, as himself,

which had never happened before.

Hi, there. How are you?

Fabulous. How are you?

You're looking good, Gobind.

Thank you so much.

- So good to see you after ages

- Likewise.

and thank you for wanting

to share with us your experience.

I mean, he was taking

all kinds of risks by doing this video.

But I think, in his mind,

it was an attempt to establish himself

as a renewed, reinvigorated,

reborn person

living his best life in the UK.

How and what made you who you are today?

There's still a long way for me,

Haseena, to go.

I mean, it's still a long way and

You know, I had to go through so much.

I've done a lot of wrong things in my life

to get by, to survive,

because there was no way out.

You know, I was very destitute,

very troubled, in my life.

And today I'm happy, I'm enjoying my life,

I'm on my 20th floor

overlooking the beautiful city of London.

Now I had this piece of information.

Here he was, in a location.

I realized I could use the data

from that interview to try to find him.

I took a bunch of screenshots

of the interview,

because there was a window behind him

and you could see

a skyline and a cityscape.

I had a friend who grew up in the UK,

I sent a bunch of pictures to him

and I said,

"Can you identify anything

in these pictures, anything at all?"

I had one picture in which you could see,

in the background, a tower

and it said, "City Tower" on it.

And my friend and I figured out

together where we thought he was.

Where he actually was.

And where he actually was,

was not London, as he told her,

but it was Manchester.

Now this is where

Manchester is, obviously.

We zoom back in to the city

and this is the tower that you were

talking before about. City Tower, here.

But I kept coming back to this image,

this cluster of buildings here

because it just seems so familiar to me.

I realized that the photo

was gonna be mirrored

'cause he's taking it as a selfie.

But I've come across

these three buildings here,

and you can see that, you know, it matches

the red and then the yellow and the white.

I kind of looked around to see if

what I could see, and then, yeah,

lo and behold,

- it is that building there.

- Oh, my gosh. There it is.

You can see the City Tower is there,

so I think that he's taken

from one of these apartments here.

There were a couple of buildings

that were correctly positioned

such that they would give

that vantage point

that Harvey had from his window.

And one of them was called

The Light ApartHotel.

And that made perfect sense

because The Light ApartHotel

is a kind of a temporary dwelling

where you can rent

a fully furnished apartment

for a day, a week, a month.

It's perfect for somebody like Harvey

who didn't want to be settled anywhere.

And I thought,

"Well, just a couple weeks ago

he was in this Light ApartHotel

doing a video,

it's COVID,

he's probably not travelling much,

I've gotta go find him."

And so, I booked a flight

and I booked a reservation

at the Light ApartHotel.

A big part of this journey is,

my attempt to get to the bottom of this

before he becomes unavailable.

It might be a very long time,

but it might be next week,

it might be tomorrow,

and I don't wanna miss the opportunity

to at least try to find him,

try to get to him

to see where he's been holed up,

to see what his life is like.

Then I landed in the UK,

I checked in, and the rooms there are

It's just glass all around.

It felt very exposed,

and I sort of marveled at the idea

that this person who had so successfully

hidden from so many people for so long

was quite possibly

living in this fish bowl.

But it just felt like

a pretty lonely existence

living in this glass house, you know,

in the middle of this bustling city.

I'm here in the hotel.

I'm talking quietly because

I don't know how the sound carries in here

and for all I know

he could be on the same floor

or in the next room over.

Okay, that's all for now. I'm

Let's see what I can find.

So, the next day I woke up and I thought,

"I'm just gonna sit here in the lobby."

So, I just sat down, pulled down my hat,

tried to make myself inconspicuous,

and just buried myself in my phone.

So, I sat there for about an hour,

and then, all of a sudden,

I heard the elevator ding.

And I heard the voice.

And I just knew

right away that it was him.

And so I followed him.

I okay, I found him.

As soon as I made my way into the street,

there was a lot of buses,

so I was kind of trying

to keep an eye on him.

But then, to my dismay,

he was actually headed

into the entrance of the giant mall.

There were hundreds and hundreds

of people in the mall.

So, I just spent the next

two hours or so just circling.

And I couldn't find him anywhere.

Writing a book is a massive endeavor.

It's four years of your life.

You know, why this story?

There were aspects of this story

that I think spoke to some themes

that had been present

in my life ever since I was a kid.

Ideas around deception, manipulation,

those things sort of

spoke to me at a deeper level,

because of what my childhood was like.

My parents divorced when I was about six,

and I wound up

going overseas with my father.

We had already lived

in India when I was a kid,

and later we moved

to Pakistan and Yugoslavia,

and it was really exhilarating.

We were kind of off

on this big adventure.

But what I didn't know was

that my dad was a spy for the CIA.

And when you're fourteen and your dad

tells you he is basically James Bond,

it's intoxicating to be let in

on such an interesting secret.

But the reality is

a little bit more complicated,

because in the movies,

James Bond didn't have a family,

but real spies do have families.

And sometimes,

those families have to become complicit

in a certain amount of deception.

When I was a kid,

I had to help him maintain his cover.

I had to keep our story straight.

The CIA actually

commissioned a study one time,

where they tried to figure out

what job in the civilian world

corresponded most closely

to the job that my father had,

which was a case officer.

And that job was foreign correspondent,

which is what I was for many years.

And I didn't have to lie

to protect my father,

but I had to kind of

lie about him to protect myself,

because I was often working in these,

you know, dangerous places,

and w*r zones, and the kinds of situations

where any sort of affiliation with the CIA

would've been

very dangerous and even deadly.

So, there were aspects of the story that

resonated with my own self-conception,

this idea of the masks that we wear

and the lies that we tell.

But Harvey's lies

and his sort of forays into transformation

took on these really grotesque forms

and became altogether sadistic and warped.

And that drew me to the story, I think

in a way

that other scams might not have.

Today was a good day.

After two years

and three months I found him.

When I saw him, my heart started racing.

I had to take a bunch of deep breaths.

So I think tomorrow,

what I'm gonna do is get up early

and if I see him leaving,

I'll try to follow him again.

And then the next morning, I took up

my exact same position in the lobby.

And sure enough, he was there again.

So, I followed him

and he did the exact same thing.

And this time I was closer to him,

and I was very diligent

about not losing him.

It was strange to be doing that.

But I just wanted to find the best way

to approach him

so that he would talk to me.

He made his way to the grocery store,

and then he went back in the hotel

and back up to his room.

So, now I had a sense

of where he went every day.

Today, he was all by himself again.

But I'm a little bit nervous

about confronting him,

because I know that he can and has been

you know, very volatile, and even violent.

That's something I've been grappling with.

My dad emailed me overnight

with some suggestions

about what to say, how to say it

I've got butterflies in my stomach.

I I'm not sure how this is gonna go.

There is gonna be somebody filming me

maybe from a distance with a mic on,

so I can hopefully, pick up some audio.

There. Wait, is that him?

Right there. This one?

He's turned the corner. Here in the mall.

Looks like he's going

on the same route as yesterday.

He's in a long line.

When he comes out,

I'm going to approach him.

Sorry, excuse me.

Can I have a minute of your time?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, hey

Sorry to bother you. My name is Scott.

I'm the journalist

who's been trying to contact you.