Original subtitles

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 Cockney 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 bomb 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 kill 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 gun. He really could show up with a bomb.

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 bomb 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 fucked 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… homosexual,

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 gay 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 bomb 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 gay 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?