01x03 - Thank You for the Story

[bunniefuu]

I wouldn't want you to follow me, please.

No, I don't want to intrude.

I really just wanted to chat with you.

I was wondering if I could

buy you a coffee?

No, please, can we get the lawyers?

I'm not in a very good state of mind.

Now I'm nervous that you know

where I live and all that and

But I promise you this.

Scott, I will tell you

everything you need to know.

No lies.

Whatever you need to know.

You wanna have a walk and talk about it?

- I would love to.

- And then

I just don't want my name

out there because I'm

a little bit sensitive.

- I understand.

- And you don't know my story.

Sir, with all due respect,

I'm really scared.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't want anything to happen to me now.

Please, I beg you.

I just want my version of the story,

- and I want people to know that.

- Yes.

But I need time.

I can't be forced right now.

- I understand.

- I need a space to breathe.

Who gave you my details, sir? Be honest.

It's just from

You know, from your Instagram. I

You don't know where I live?

Do you know where my house is? Or

Well, yeah. I mean, I know.

I did try to reach out.

You know, all due respect,

I did try to reach out.

And

I'm working on a book.

And I don't want to do this without

your

- Consent?

- participation.

I genuinely want to understand,

and I want to give you that opportunity.

Genuinely, I'm not

- You don't hate me?

- No, I don't.

I came over here because

I want to learn about your life.

And what happened to you.

I need my lead time if that's okay.

Okay.

The only deal I have right now

is when you're back in the States,

- I want to be sure of that.

- Yeah.

I'll do a video Zoom interview

and tell you what I can.

Okay.

But you don't want to do it with me here?

- Alone, no.

- Alone, no. Okay.

I'm scared.

I'm sorry.

Can I leave?

I'm just scared you'd follow me.

Okay. All right, so I'll message you on

- Instagram.

- On Instagram, yeah, yeah.

- If you don't mind, for now.

- Okay.

I hope to I really do hope

to speak to you again.

- Will you promise to think about it?

- I promise to think about it.

Okay.

Thanks.

- Okay, you can go first.

- Here I go.

I just interviewed him.

And

Yeah, I'm still kinda shaky.

He was completely shocked that I had

that anybody, I think, had found him.

I mean, it was like a dam

had burst inside me.

I had freed myself to a certain extent

as a journalist.

I was no longer beholden

to the police or

I just I didn't have to wait

until he was arrested,

I didn't It was just me,

and I could just pursue him

on my own terms.

But I didn't know if he would message me.

So I flew back to Seattle.

And I just waited.

Looking back,

I think the moment he saw me

I think he did an immediate analysis

within seconds,

and probably

came to a set of conclusions

about who he thought I was

and what my weaknesses were.

At first, I was surprised that he talked,

but then, the more we spoke,

I think the clearer it became

that he did find something enjoyable

about the human connection.

Basically, every day,

he would call,

almost on the dot at 8 a.m.,

for about a month.

And I would rush upstairs and,

you know, take up my position

at the little desk in our bedroom.

By this point, the article

had been out for about two years

and his identity was still unknown

to the public.

But while I was talking to him,

a podcast revealed who he was online.

Suddenly now, he was sort of

a public figure in a way

and people knew who he was

and what he'd been up to.

And he was complaining to me

about the fallout of this.

So, one day, he brought up the fact

that this documentary filmmaker

had reached out to him

and wanted to talk.

Okay.

I know you have a lot going on,

like, how are you doing?

God bless you for asking me that. I'm

I'm trying to keep it all together.

Let's just say that.

Did you always know

this day would be coming?

It was an epiphany

when all the articles came.

I'm in shock

that all that happened.

Complete, utter shock.

I've still not processed this.

That's why I'm talking.

I don't know.

Deborah Snyder, and Amy Pascal,

and Kathleen Kennedy

are women I looked up to all my life.

And that happened?

Why?

I don't know.

For once, I don't know.

But I know they want revenge.

They wanna hit me

with all these allegations.

They're allowed to.

And I'm not allowed to defend myself.

I could get my story out,

but I want it well represented

with the truth.

Because I know both of you

will verify it, and will check it.

And then there's

some sort of integrity out there,

where people would say,

"Okay, he said the truth.

So, there was something."

Other news articles, they said,

"His motivation wouldn't be money only.

There's something behind that,

that we don't know."

So, what you're doing

is you're unlocking that.

So, the closer you get to know me,

the better you know

why I'm doing what I did.

You have to understand

what people go through.

I mean, I've never been happy,

I've never had a friend.

If you had to think back

of the happiest time,

when would that be?

Yes, that would be when I was a kid.

I would watch movies.

My father, he'd watch olden day films,

so he would have a library of films.

Sound of Music, a must.

Casablanca, essential watching.

And he would ask us to watch the Oscars

because he loved Hollywood blockbusters.

But the art films as well.

I love Disney animations.

Aladdin, I loved the most,

'cause you know,

with my nose and the way I looked,

I considered myself Aladdin.

And although

I had a crush on Aladdin.

The Little Mermaid.

I remember watching it for the first time

and I was gobsmacked by Ursula.

She was this larger than life,

like, drag queen.

But what people liked in high school,

they would love the Teen Beat

and Teen Machine and 90210.

And I would go deep with Hollywood films.

I would say, The English Patient

was one of my favorite films.

That was so romantic.

I would watch Meryl Streep films.

And I remember Meryl Streep

was a master of accents.

Sophie's Choice, right?

I mean, oh, my God.

Oh, the truth. The truth.

I don't even know what is the truth.

I loved it, you know?

Because it gave you a worldview

of what the country was

and how the people spoke.

I remember watching My Fair Lady

when I was a kid, with the c*ck accent,

and being mesmerized by Audrey Hepburn

and how she, you know, put that on.

Then what did you take down

me words for?

How do I know you took me down right?

And Southern accent, for instance,

I would see Jessica Lange in Sweet Dreams,

she was playing Patsy Cline.

Hi!

Oh, Mama, we're still at the airport.

But the film I loved, which I wasn't

allowed to watch when I was younger,

and an actor I love the most

that got me more into everything

was Glenn Close.

I loved her in Dangerous Liaisons.

Like, the last scene in that film

where everyone finds out that

she's the culprit, she's the conwoman,

she is the woman who's done everything,

and they boo at her.

And she goes home,

and she faces her mirror,

and she takes off her makeup.

That made me realize that

"Whoa! There's so much

you can do as an actor, eh?

There's so much worth in this job."

Did you know what you wanted

to be when you got older?

Yeah, I always wanted to write or direct

or be part of the entertainment industry.

It's the craft,

it's what people do there that excites me

and I wish I was part of it.

Harvey graduated high school in 1997

and then left Indonesia

to go to college in America.

When I first came to the US,

my father wanted first to test the waters

if I was any good at accounting.

I was ridiculously bad.

But then I was on the speech team

and I did well.

In the late '90s, Harvey

was a student at LA City College,

where he was on the competitive speech

and debate circuit.

Debaters tend to be very ambitious.

The folks who compete are people

who want to focus on performance.

We get a lot of students

who want to become actors.

From day one, Harvey wanted

to be in front of an audience.

I've won speech tournaments in the US.

Everyone accepted me

for who I was in the States.

That was the most beautiful time

because I discovered I was able

to impact people,

I was able to influence people.

I got too ambitious, but I did it.

I was introduced to Harvey

at a speech tournament.

Harvey always talked about

being somebody that was famous

and that maybe would act

or do big things.

I always thought that if he,

you know, would apply himself

that certainly he could

have some kind of success.

Harvey definitely made an impression,

first of all, because of the way he acted.

Harvey was so obsessed with us.

But, second of all,

what happened afterwards.

We were at a tournament.

We're in the final round

and I'm watching his speech

and I said, "Well, what?"

This is Marianne's speech.

Marianne was famous in the speech circuit.

While Harvey was

giving his performance,

it was, like, verbatim the same.

So I went to one of my coaches and I said,

"Harvey has stolen this speech."

Harvey ended up being disqualified.

I recall him being really embarrassed

and really upset,

and I don't remember seeing him

at a lot of tournaments

after that happened.

A month after things kind of settled down,

our coach called John and I

to meet him in his office.

And they asked us

if we had heard from Harvey lately.

And they shared

that they had received a letter

and that it was a suicide note,

and that Harvey had taken his life.

He specifically said that,

"Jennifer and John Parsi

were responsible for my suicide."

That we were really bad people

for what we had done to him,

that he was kicked out of the only

community that he ever cared about.

I was devastated.

I mean, I considered Harvey a friend.

And for him to

to say that I had something to do with

him feeling like he couldn't live anymore

was something that really, kind of,

rocked me to my core.

The next year,

in the build-up to nationals,

we start getting some emails.

The person talked

about how unfortunate it would be

if a b*mb were detonated

while I was performing my speech.

"We know you're going to nationals.

We will be there.

And if you show up, we will k*ll you."

There was all these people kind of fussing

and talking about what we should do.

We would have someone

who was either escorting us between rooms

or sitting in our rounds to make sure

we were secure and safe.

And then, the police said that the emails

were coming from Indonesia.

And as soon as we heard it was Indonesia,

it was just, "It's Harvey!"

"Harvey's alive!

He's alive! He's not

He hasn't committed suicide."

Why would someone fake that?

You think this person is dead

and that you're to blame for their death

and all of a sudden,

not only do they reappear out of nowhere,

but they are threatening you.

He really could show up with a g*n.

He really could show up with a b*mb.

Who knows what he's capable of doing?

It was, like, all of this

intense energy and then

nothing.

We made it through

the tournament unharmed,

but it was emotionally overwhelming.

With Harvey, you always knew

that he was capable

of doing something really bad.

That his interest in fame,

that his interest in being great

meant that he was willing to do anything.

In America,

I was able to showcase my talent,

and that's where I felt happiest.

Los Angeles, they call it

"The City of Broken Dreams," right?

Maybe a little part of me still hasn't

completed what I set out

my heart to do.

It wasn't a necessary

part of our investigation

to really delve too deeply

into his upbringing,

but it helped

to further understand his history

and what he had done in the past.

He called in a b*mb threat in college

and he wasn't charged

with a crime for that.

But I know from public records

that he supposedly had

an established history of theft.

That's ultimately why

he left the United States when he did.

And so, it was clear that this wasn't

a one-off long running scam,

that this was a lifetime

of well-established cons.

I was just feeling really conflicted

and torn about him.

I mean, I'm very sympathetic

to the victims.

They didn't deserve losing all this money,

and those who suffered psychologically,

I feel terrible for those people.

But ultimately, I'm a journalist,

I'm doing my job,

I'm writing a book about this person,

it's my duty to do my best

to get his side of the story.

But it was this very confusing

landscape of half-truths

and warped perceptions

that I think he enjoyed perpetuating.

It was just a constant process

of navigation,

trying to, you know, figure your way

through this labyrinth of his mind.

Even if the story was kind of half true,

I wanted to hear from him.

And I had decided

that I would go to Indonesia.

Because I wanted to find out for myself

what was true and what wasn't.

In 2020,

after months and months of trying,

I finally got an email back

from Harvey's sister.

And she painted a portrait of the family,

where they'd grown up

in this nice Jakarta neighborhood.

The father had been an engineer

and taken them

all over the world on trips,

including to the US.

And she also told me about the way

that Harvey's behavior

had affected the family.

She described Harvey as a very unstable,

volatile, troubled kid.

He would have nightmares, bad nightmares,

and sometimes he would wake up screaming

and thinking that he was being attacked

or that ghosts were in the house.

He was also considered kind of an oddball

by a lot of the other kids.

He was starting to show

distinct anti-social personality traits.

According to the sister,

there came a point

where she was increasingly worried

about what was going on with him

and she asked him if he was taking drugs.

And in response

he sort of lashed out at her,

pushed her down a set of stairs.

They just didn't know what do with him.

He was sort of out of control.

Harvey claimed that his family

cut him out of a large inheritance,

which included houses in Bali and Jakarta,

and a lot of money.

And while some of that,

or maybe all of it may be true,

his sister contends that it was all due

to his misdeeds and criminal behavior.

So I would be up late nights,

like at 1 a.m. in the morning

to 3 a.m. or 4 a.m.,

and I would make phone calls

and I would just talk.

And that was the beginning

of where my life got f*cked up.

Hello.

Hi.

Doulos was a church retreat

for conversion therapy

but through the spiritual way.

In our clinic here,

we have holistic therapy.

Okay.

If somebody comes here

and they are h*m*,

do you try to turn them back

to heterosexual?

- Oh, yeah.

- Yes, of course.

Of course? Okay.

- With Hargobind

- Yeah.

- is that what you did?

- Yeah.

To cast out to cast out the demon.

I say, "In the name of Jesus,

demon, go!"

They say, "Ahh!"

He screamed loud.

He was like, "Whoa!" Like that.

Okay.

So this is where the patients live?

- Yes.

- I see.

They took us to this room

where Harvey lived for six months.

As we were walking around this room,

I couldn't help but marvel

at how he went from there

to, by comparison,

pretty upscale hotel room ten years later,

impersonating these incredibly

powerful women in Hollywood.

It was just this incredible leap

through time and space

that was kind of shocking.

After the Christian institution,

I got a curfew to come home

at 8 p.m. by my sisters.

Can you believe it? A grown man.

Eight p.m.

Harvey's sister explained

that in their attempt to help him cope

with his erratic,

criminal, volatile behavior,

they tried a number of different things.

But according to her,

inevitably he would always, sort of,

return to his old patterns of behavior.

And the doctor came in and said,

"Do you know why you're here?"

And I said, "I really don't."

One day, he said,

"So, tell me, how g*y are you today,

from the scale of one to ten?"

And I said, "Ten."

He added medication.

And he said, "That will help you."

This I can't process.

Why did I have to go

to a mental hospital and be punished?

And why isn't there a law for them?

Why can't they be punished too?

Why do I only have to be punished?

When I was talking to him,

the story took on the flavor of this

It was like a movie.

It was this epic story

in which he was the star.

I realized, with Harvey,

there were aspects of his character

that reminded me of the Joker.

It's a chicken or the egg thing

with the Joker.

Was the Joker a sensitive soul

whose dreams were crushed by the world

and then became a bad person

by dint of being

so tortured and persecuted

by an uncaring, unfeeling world?

Or was the Joker

pretty evil to begin with

and had that power

just unleashed by life?

And now, folks, it's time for,

"Who do you trust?"

Is there a kind of Joker-esque element

of somebody whose dreams were thwarted

and is now taking his vengeance

on the world that spurned him?

Maybe.

He made a big deal

about how his life was so difficult

and that whatever bad things he had done

should be seen in that context.

But a lot of his actions had to do with

this weird satisfaction that he gained

from hurting people for years and years

with such obvious glee.

You know, that's psychopathic.

Is he a psychopath?

Can you feel bad for a psychopath?

I don't know.

But the reality is lots and lots of people

grow up facing incredible hardships

and they don't go on

to become career criminals.

I keep coming back to that.

That whatever he was struggling with

really doesn't excuse any of the behavior.

Having just come out

from the mental hospital,

I started staying in hotels.

And I couldn't pay for the hotels.

My understanding is that he expected

his sisters to pay the bills.

Because I wanted my inheritance,

and I wanted it to be loud

and my sister to hear it.

I got a call from Hargobind.

And he goes,

"I have these hotel bills

that I have to pay.

Right now, I need your help.

But don't tell my sister about this

because she's not well.

She has cancer, and she's dying."

I thought, "This is so weird."

But I said to myself,

"Okay, I'm just gonna pay for it."

And then I called the relative

and I asked, "Are you okay?"

And she goes, "Yes, I'm okay."

"Are you sick?" "No, I'm not."

"Okay, I have to tell you a story."

And then I decided to go to the police.

Around 2007,

this pattern of theft caught up with him,

and he was arrested.

The result was that

he wound up going to prison.

When he was in prison,

Harvey was responsible

for this kind of absurdist scam

involving ordering food

from the Four Seasons

to the tune of something like

7,000 dollars and not paying for it,

and having it distributed

to the prison inmates

and the guards and even the warden.

And for that he was sentenced

to more time in prison.

And then at the end of that call I said,

"You're gonna be responsible

if the embassy gets boom!"

And so, after that he thought

You know, "This is a threat."

And I said,

"I hope I made my point clear.

I hope they can trace the call."

There are different versions

of the b*mb threat incident.

There's Harvey's version

and then there's the version

that appears in the court record,

which I take to be the definitive account.

And I said, "You need to forget your past,

and you need to move forward,

and you need to be successful.

Find a way.

Whatever way it is, find it."

From here, where I had aspirations

of doing so many brilliant things

in the film scene in Indonesia.

I could have, but I wasn't allowed.

I wasn't allowed to be in that community.

- Is that Scott?

- Hey.

We met with Joko Anwar,

who is a celebrated

Indonesian film director.

This filmmaker, Joko Anwar,

is thriving today

talking about g*y rights.

I could've been that person.

I don't want to fight them or say they're

less talented because they're not.

They are talented.

They've done things that are great.

I applaud them for it.

But does it mean I'm less talented?

Does it mean I don't get a chance too?

One day in 2013,

I heard that Michelle Sampoerna

was going to produce a movie in Indonesia.

Michelle Sampoerna is a businesswoman

and the daughter of the owner

of the biggest tobacco company

in Indonesia.

There were a lot of my actor friends

getting a casting call in Jakarta

from Michelle Sampoerna.

But they were auditioned by a middle man.

This Indian guy.

One of my friends who auditioned

in Jakarta,

he was told to take off his clothes.

And he got his picture taken,

and he got so embarrassed, and he left.

Somehow, he knew the name

of this Indian guy.

Hargobind Punjabi Tahilramani.

And then I got a text message.

It says,

"I want to help you with your career."

And I said, "Oh, okay.

So this must be Hargobind

Punjabi Tahilramani." You know?

So then I texted back,

"Thank you so much, Hargobind."

And he called me, and he was livid.

And I said, "What's wrong, Gobind?

I mean, if you want to work together,

you have to be

We have to be honest with each other."

And he just

Click.

Since that time on,

he's no longer impersonating

Michelle Sampoerna,

some Indonesian tycoon,

but Hollywood tycoon.

He used Indonesia as an exercise ground,

and now he needed a bigger ballpark.

At this point, I knew from other sources

that law enforcement

had been closing in for a while

and that they had been preparing

for an arrest for a long while

but they had been really getting

very close in recent weeks.

So I had to get as much as I could

and understand as much as I could

in this short window.

And it was both

really fascinating and interesting

to be in that dynamic with him,

but also very frustrating.

Every time I'd pressed him

a bit more on the scam,

he would sort of deflect and

we would be off on some other tangent.

I found out today

that he continues to scam people.

On Tuesday, he and I had two phone calls.

That same day, he got, like, 2,400 dollars

for these these Zoom classes.

And I'm hearing about all his life,

his stories, his past, his traumas

even as he's scamming people

on the same day,

and from the same place,

and presumably the same telephone.

Even after we handed off our case,

we stayed in touch with the FBI.

We built a rapport and

a working relationship that we were

You know, they trusted us as a partner

and they were receptive

and appreciative

of all the information that we were

we were sending their way

and the people that we were

connecting them to.

We were still plugged in

and hearing from a lot of victims

and then passing along the information.

And so, I kinda was serving as "the voice"

for a lot of those people

who were harmed by this.

And nothing's dissuading him

from what he's doing,

and so it was clear that

this was only gonna stop

with him in handcuffs.

We'd been talking on the phone

for about a month,

and he would just bombard me

with these endless tirades.

He would go off on Nicole

and just, really

go after her for, you know,

hours on end.

As time went on,

the calls just became

increasingly unhinged.

And that really was an extreme

I had not heard from him before.

I had heard many recordings

and talked to many people

and I had not heard him really engage

in that kind of way before,

so I think he sensed and he was rattled

by what was going on

and what was out of his control.

I'm just, sort of,

reaching the end of my rope.

Just He calls all the time.

Calls, you know

four or five times a day.

Keeps me on the phone for hours.

It's really hard on my family.

I almost just want him to get arrested

just to have a break.

So, something that I was doing every day

was checking his WhatsApp,

which I knew was connected

to the phone number

he had been using most recently.

And it was Thanksgiving

and I was making turkey and stuff.

And then I sat down and looked.

I noticed that his WhatsApp went inactive.

This morning, we had a

an appointment to have a phone call

and he didn't show up.

And he didn't contact me all day.

I'm pretty sure, I'm almost sure that

that he's been arrested.

Within about 48 hours,

we had confirmation

that he had been arrested

and that he was being held

for extradition to the United States.

And then with that information,

I had enough

to break the news of his arrest.

The next day, I published a follow-up

outlining the charges against him,

which included, wire fraud,

conspiracy to commit wire fraud

and identity theft.

I found out he was arrested

with the rest of the world.

And the three-plus years

that we were working on this,

the primary driver for me

was all the victims,

both, the people who were impersonated,

who had their good names tarnished by him,

and all the people who lost money

and really went along on this ride

that was really manipulative and damaging.

And it did personally affect me.

There were a lot of people

who I spent many hours on the phone with,

who were clearly working through stages

of, you know, grief and depression

as they unpacked

what they had just been through.

It's so hard to comprehend

how one single person

has had all of these individual

instances of power and manipulation

over so many people

across the world, for all of these years.

It is crazy

that even after articles

about this guy started coming out,

he kept doing it, even to me.

I think I'm naturally a trusting person

and it obviously messed that up a bit.

And it was, emotionally

one of the most extreme things

that has ever happened to me.

I don't think I ever could have predicted

that I would talk to so many people

all over the world

who were harmed by him.

He leaves a mark

on anybody he interacts with.

You know, I don't think

I'll ever have a case

that resembles this in any way again,

and that's probably okay.

I don't know

what the right outcome is for him.

Because there were periods

where I was legitimately, authentically

confused about who he was

and how I should feel about him.

And so, when I was working on the book,

I called up a psychiatrist in the UK

and I said, "Look,

I'm dealing with this con artist

who claims that he has been grappling

with bipolar disorder his whole life

and that that should be a factor

in considering his crimes."

Well, this guy who is an expert

in psychopathy said that very often,

psychopaths will use

other medical diagnoses as crutches,

as crutches, as kind of escape hatches

because it allows them to say,

"Well, you know,

all my behavior should be seen

in light of this debilitating

mental illness that I have."

But psychopaths don't have remorse.

Unfortunately, I think he displayed

a lot of those tendencies.

There was a profoundly narcissistic view

to his sense of the whole scam.

Even the fact

that he talked to me is troubling now

because it's possible that all of it,

everything, was

was planned.

For instance, like, what if,

by talking to me

and presenting himself

as so wildly erratic

and calling at all hours

of the day and the night

and going on these tangents

and talking for hours on end and

It's crazy.

So it's easy for me

to then conclude what? He's crazy.

So is that the con?

Like, he's crazy so he can't be guilty?

You know, that it is another layer

of the scam.

Everything we've been doing,

all our conversations,

everything he told me,

everything he shared with me,

everything that we're doing

here in Indonesia,

that all of this is somehow going to serve

some invisible agenda that he has.

So, much in the way that, you know,

he plotted and planned

and orchestrated these

elaborate fantasies for his victims

to bring them here, here to Indonesia.

And now, I'm sitting here

in the exact same place,

and maybe the scam is all around us.

Maybe I'm in the scam right now

and I just don't see it.

I'm stuck in here. What if I don't see it?

And

And what if you don't see it?

It's like all those movies

he watched as a kid.

It's all about stories.

To a certain extent, stories enclose you

and they lock you into a narrative,

but to a certain extent,

stories give you the means of escape.

There's always some new story to tell.

So, what if that's what's going on here?

And what if the story

that's gonna enable his escape

is the one that somehow we're enabling?