Hey, there's a new investigative podcast called Chameleon Hollywood Cunxin, queen from campsite media to journalists and hosts Josh Dean and Vanessa Grigoriadis unspoiled the story and active hunt for the con artist behind one of history's strangest and longest running scams. This case has been covered by several media outlets over the span of many years, like the Hollywood Reporter variety, BBC News deadline, Vice New York Times, just to name a few. This scammer has been nicknamed in the press as the Hollywood concubine, who for seven to eight years has been pulling out this incredibly complicated scam and effecting over a thousand victims.

Josh and Vanessa have spoken to dozens of those victims from several countries and the private investigator who's also been hunting the scammer for years now. They've gathered a trail of evidence leading to potential suspect like a fake passport, photographs and a ton of tape recordings. Here's a clip from the podcast.

So the idea was that we'd go ahead. This one town like an hour outside of Jakarta and look at a hotel in that area and a location where they want to film.

It didn't really seem like work. It felt like sightseeing. And every day plans were canceled, locations changed. The original idea was to scout a few days around Jakarta, then fly to Bali. Buddy said the schedule is in flux.

We're supposed to take a fly on day three and all senators say, hey, we're like, we've got you've got another Friday. We're going to go on and it's all right. But now there's a change fee. Can you cover the change fee? And the lawyer will process the rest of it right now. It's all right as I turn to books. OK, all right. Cool. And then a change and then change again.

And then in front of the cash for all these changes and incidental costs, fully confident that he'd be reimbursed five to seven business days, they said.

Also, do you started asking if Eddie could recommend a second trainer to fly over and join him at this point?

And I do form kind of like, all right, what's going on? I just things aren't adding up for I could just something's not clicking right.

You know. As much as Eddie wanted this job, he forced himself to do a gut check, he was supposedly part of a huge production, starting immediately, but somehow he hadn't met a single person from the crew. It didn't make any sense. And he couldn't just hang out in Jakarta indefinitely waiting for this tiger girl in the jungle production to start. And to make matters worse, the pain in his back, which he thought he could control, was becoming unbearable.

And like, I need to get home, my back's killing me. I've got to run and jump. Right. And I can't stay another week.

But Eddie's a man of his word, not the kind of guy who walks away and leaves a mess. So we called a friend in L.A. to come over and take his place. He even paid some of the costs for the guy then feeling like he was out of options. He got on a plane to head home when he landed in Japan again on a layover called and she was pissed.

Am I on the phone with Dee? And she goes, Well, Eddie, I just don't have a good feeling about doing this with you or anybody you put me in contact with. And she goes, don't worry, I'm going to ruin your name in the movie industry.

And he tried to stay professional. He had been a good soldier. And when he had to bail out, he'd found a backup.

I was like, listen, I've done nothing to you. I've done nothing but respect. I've been over backwards. I've come over here. I've sacrificed everything on my physical body and means to provide you the service I promised you I would do is no reason for you to be acting that way.

Eddie obsessed about it the whole way home. He couldn't understand how a woman in D position could be so unreasonable after that conversation in Japan, where she's like, Eddie, I'm going to ruin it.

I was like, There's no way that this professional woman married to the CEO of Viacom is acting this erratic.

Right. You know, like you have got off the rocker, young lady, and you are in left field and you're not even facing home plate like you're just gone. But here's the thing.

Eddie couldn't just write off either, because what if he was wrong? What is being erratic that it all just blow over and she'd reach out the next time there was a job?

That's the thing about Hollywood. The people at the top can really abuse the lower ones almost with impunity, and they'll still come back for more. And most of the time, look how long it took to catch Harvey Weinstein when he was raping those actresses.

When he got home, Eddie called Andy and that other guy from the workout class, Charles Charles, manages actors. So his job is to be connected, the producers and development execs. And he knew an assistant who worked for a producer who was supposedly on the same project as D.

And so I got her and I wrote an Ima's hamster's have a meeting with you. But I can't control these guys. And I don't we haven't. You know where I'm on the books.

They never heard of you. Something definitely wasn't right, Charles especially felt it. Here's where for me where, like my, you know, Inspector Gadget Lights all went off is he forwarded me an email from Dana Goldberg. But when I saw her email address, I was like, oh, I know Dana really well. That's not her email address. So I called her as I. Do you know anything about this? Do you know anything at all about this, you know, job in Indonesia?

And I don't even know what you're talking about. Not only do I know what you're talking about is like, why are you calling me to ask?

Alarm bells were officially ringing. Andy and Charles asked Eddie to send over all the correspondence he'd gotten from Dee and Charles, who happens to know a lot about computers, found that the domain registry for Dibakar Dotcom, which MDD had been using, was registered just two days before she first contacted him. He also found something in the NDA the D had asked Eddie to sign the wrong name in the source code may open up the source code and Acrobat and I saw it in the source code.

Leslie Linklaters named Barry then, which meant the text of the NDA was actually ripped from another document, one intended for a different producer entirely, specifically the bad ass director of Showtime's Homeland, Leslie Hlinka. Gladder Charles did know Leslie, but he did know her long time agent. So he called him and I said, Do you know anything about this?

You know? And he said, Oh my God.

This again, as in not this story. Again, the story of the fake movie and the wasted trip to Indonesia, it was suddenly very clear that woman on the phone, the one who sent Eddie to Indonesia, who was supposed to reimburse his expenses, whoever that was, it wasn't debarkation. It was someone somewhere pretending to be Baksh. So I would like a technical adviser that would sort of safeguard the assets, which is myself and and obviously the project, and double up as a combat consultant for certain actors, for certain parts.

Eddie was dumbstruck career wise, he was back to square one. The money he borrowed from his girlfriend's dad was gone. He had no way to pay it back. Worse, it was hard for him to see how he'd ever trust anyone in the business again.

It's it's sad that I don't trust people now. I just realized that everyone in Hollywood is only out for themselves. You know, the reality is someone who's smiling to you, to your face will turn around and cut your throat and watch you bleed out.

But what was actually going on here, Vanessa and I puzzled over this. For weeks, we kept coming back to that agent, the one who said, oh, my God, not this again. How many other people knew about this scam? How many had fallen for it?

And like who was behind this, the more we learn, the more questions we have. On one hand you could see this whole story is just some guy flying to Indonesia for a job that didn't work out. On the other hand, it really screwed Eddie up.

Con artists trade on belief.

And there's nothing bigger than your belief in yourself in this case, Eddie's belief that he is a great trainer who should be hired for a high paying film gig, losing that faith.

It just completely shook Eddie's trust in humanity.

But what was the goal? Why would anyone do this? That's what Andy kept asking himself.

What did they get out of this? I couldn't figure out what they got. And like, any time you're being scammed, they're either taking money or something from you in this. He's telling us all this for days and every time we're talking to him like they can get from you, like, why subscribe and follow to join the journey in catching the Hollywood con queen.

Now, to listen to the show, just search for Chameleon, Hollywood icon, Queen and Apple podcast wherever you listen.