Hey guys, Carson here! Today I’m posting a story from a long-time Scriptshadow reader who went through a harrowing experience to say the least. Those of you who frequent the comment section already know his story. But for those who don’t, get ready. Because this is going to make your blood boil. I did not think there were people like this out there. Here is the latest update on… the Con Queen of Hollywood.
Some of you probably know me already. I’ve been a regular here at Scriptshadow since before it had the dot net. That might have even been before Carson had his very first In-N- Out burger. That’s like the stone age! I’ve also had my fair share of AOWs over the years, so I’ve taken my beatings, and fought the good fight. I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it’s because of Carson, and the incredible community of brilliant commentators he’s nurtured over the years, that I am the writer I am today. I’d also like to thank Carson for the opportunity to write this post. This is coming full circle for me, and it’s very, very surreal.
Those of you who are active or lurk in the comments might be familiar with some of this story, but in recent months there have been some major developments that I promise will blow your mind if you haven’t been keeping up.
In July, 2015, my friend Dave and I wrote a script called “Shadows Below,” and made it onto AOW. But I was young. Naive. A mere level 3 writer on Carson’s writer-scale as indicated by this post.
So when I lost the AOW, I threw down the gauntlet! My submarine script had to be better than that damn music biopic! It just had to be! So Carson, saint that he is, reviewed it anyway… and it wasn’t worth the read.
I was devastated. I was so sure the script was great, and it wasn’t. What was I doing wrong!? But before I knew what to do with it, I got a response from one of my queries, Jing Huilang, a film development executive at a website I’d found: thechinafilmgroup.com (Don’t worry, the site’s defunct now).
After submitting answers to lengthy essay questions, she requested a copy of the script, including a forty page mood board, a synopsis, and a strategy pitch. Everything seemed professional. Legit. And before I knew it, Dave and I were on an airplane on the way to Jakarta, Indonesia, to take a meeting with a panel of producers from the company.
There was just one catch.
We had to book our own airfare, and pay for the expensive driving service employed by the company. In cash. But not to fear! They were going to reimburse us. Suffice to say…
We were about to get conned.
Only one man showed up for our meeting. He went by the name of Anand Sippy, and he was a vice president. The blowoff was masterful. The script wouldn’t get past the Chinese censorship board. Have a nice flight back to New York! That’s exactly how it went for everyone else he lured there. A quick flight in, a quick flight out, and he’d pocket the driving fees. Thing is, he always found his own targets, but this time was different. I had reached out to him. Like a fish that jumped onto his boat. It was the perfect scam. But when he told us the project was dead, I pivoted. Wait! What if it was a sci-fi, I pitched! In a fantasy world, where the politics weren’t real. Then we could get past the board! In retrospect, as I offered him the chance to turn his short con into a long one, the look he gave me was downright diabolical.
Dave and I spent months going back and forth to Indonesia, all with the singular purpose of developing the treatment for Shadows Beyond, a fantasy based on our original screenplay. Every step of our journey was dictated by a detailed daily schedule, one which we had to adhere to religiously. Our pace was grueling. Days and nights packed with work on little sleep. We took long trips all over the country, studying local myths and legends, while meticulously documenting every location with pictures and notes.
It was awesome. It all seemed like the legitimate procedures of a professional film studio. There was a lot of paperwork! All with official CFGC seals and stamps. Nearly a dozen different employees in their own e-mail chains, and each of them diligently keeping track of every aspect of the process. It fooled everybody.
And it was all orchestrated by Huilang, the female voice over the phone. The maestro. She made our schedule, and she checked on us at every opportunity. Calls every morning. Texts while we were out. Nightly development sessions. Her honey-sweet dragon-lady voice is forever engrained in my memory.
She spent hours every day talking with my mom, my dad, and my sisters. She embedded herself into my family, and used them to manipulate me, making false promises of my bright future with the company, while dangling the ever looming threat of our project getting canceled should we make even the slightest misstep. It was a work of genius…
And it ended my friendship with my best friend.
After Anand got the treatment approved, before we’d set up a trip to China to write the script, we were to have one last meeting with him in Jakarta to sign the deal memo.
So when we were both in the hotel lobby, ready to leave, and they changed the plan to have Dave go ahead and meet with him separately before they’d meet with me, it came as a surprise.
I remember it vividly. Staring out the window, listening on my phone to the Mets play the Royals in the World Series as Dave drove away. I don’t remember what day it was, but I remember the Mets lost.
Hours later, when it was finally my turn, I was driven to a fancy office building. My fifth time there. At least. And this wasn’t a run-down shanty where some shady Indonesian con artist was grifting tourists. I might have mistaken it for an attorney’s office on Lexington avenue, if not for the armed soldiers standing guard outside. A secretary escorted me past security up to the fourth floor, where I was greeted by Dave’s bright grin as he exited Anand’s office. It was going well! Green light, baby! Our movie was going to get made.
So imagine my shock, when after an uncharacteristic motivational speech from Anand about how I could do anything, highlighted by his history as a poor street sweeper from India who’d overcome adversity, he told me that the deal was canceled, effective immediately. I couldn’t even go back to the hotel. It would be a violation of their company’s security protocols since I no longer worked for them. The driver had already gone to the hotel to collect our luggage, and we were to be taken straight to the airport, never to return…
And never to be reimbursed.
But why, I protested! I was furious. Confused. It didn’t make any sense! “Dave will tell you on the way to the airport,” he told me. “Goodbye.” I looked to my friend for answers, and he was smiling, as if to reassure me all would be well.
In the car he confirmed that unspoken look. It was my sister’s fault! But not to worry! We can fix it! At Huilang’s behest, my brilliant sister, who at the time was a vice president for a major financial institution in Manhattan, was attached as our manager. She had been corresponding with Huilang on a daily basis for months, but somehow that relationship soured, and unless we legally cut her from the project, the deal was off! Oh, no!
I was heartbroken. But fine. If that’s what they wanted, then that’s what they’d get. We always did everything they asked of us. Failure was not an option. It was at the airport, waiting for our flight due to depart in sixteen hours, when the house of cards came crashing down. I called my sister, prepared to break the bad news, when she floored me with news of her own.
It wasn’t my sister they wanted out, it was Dave. They didn’t want him to write the script. They thought he’d cause problems. They even claimed he said horrible things about me and my family in his meeting. What a contradiction! Who was I to believe? I knew in my heart that my best friend would never lie to me. But my sister had it in writing. She even forwarded me the e-mails. Dave was resting peacefully on a bench, arms and legs wrapped around our luggage. He was no Judas.
On the surface it seemed a paradox, but in that moment, I saw it for what it truly was. There was only one explanation.
I was being conned. And this was the blowoff.
The subsequent fallout of the next few months was more devastating than the [x] Wasn’t for me. I was wounded. So was my family. Emotionally. Financially. Dave never spoke to me again. My mom felt humiliated. How could she, a Brooklynite with street smarts, fall for a con artist!?
But I wasn’t left with nothing. I had the treatment. And fueled by both the inspirations of the supportive scriptshadow community, and the occasional mockery, I persevered, and the treatment transformed into a script. A high budget, four-quadrant fantasy, that would be nigh but impossible for an unproduced writer to sell. It felt good to finish it. It was special. A gem that ought never have existed, if not for the glory of the con. And once it was done, I moved on to the next script, and the next.
Over the years, people always told me I should write a movie about my experience. I was in the perfect position. I’d reached out to numerous people who were also conned, and was even involved in group private investigations to track the perpetrators down and bring them to justice. But it wasn’t movie material, I protested. What was so cinematic about a couple writers touring Indonesia while writing. It lacked that x-factor, and I had fancier projects on my mind, determined to put it all behind me.
Until this article dropped in the Hollywood Reporter.
The Con Queen of Hollywood. Hundreds of people conned over the years. Major players in Hollywood impersonated by a mysterious woman over the phone. Big names. And it was all the same scam. She was collecting a fortune in drivers fees. Wow! It was finally hitting the headlines. I immediately called Scott, the article’s author, and started a dialogue with him to discuss my story, and everything I’d managed to learn.
It wasn’t until the following year that the bottom dropped out, when Scott published this article on the Con Queen.
That’s right! It was all one person. But not only that. It was a man! Huilang’s voice, the one that was in my ear, all day, every day, for months, was a man the whole time. But not just any man. Anand Sippy. The vice president we’d met with time and time again. He played every part. All the paperwork. The accountants. The higher ups at the company who were quick to keep us in check with harshly worded emails. The woman who’d turned my family and friend against each other, who’d acted as a creative mentor through a lengthy development process. The woman masquerading as legends like Kathleen Kennedy and Amy Pascal. It was him. All him. He was the mastermind behind it all.
I immediately got on a call with my friend Raza, who I’d co- written a bunch of scripts with, and we both had the same thought at the same time: now this is a movie.
Everything was happening at once. This bombshell information coincided with me being contacted by Jigsaw Productions, Academy Award winning Alex Gibney’s company, who were working on a podcast about the Con Queen and wanted to interview me.
What I found out, surprised me. I was one of the first people who got conned by this guy. Only a few other writers fell victim to the scam in 2015, and since mine was the only long con, I met him, in person, more than anyone else. Mine also had me traveling all over the country, so it meant he made the most money off of me. After I got conned, his scam changed. China Film Group was no more. He moved on from writers, and turned his sights on social media influencers. Photographers. Actors. All done over the phone. As a woman. Never in his real voice. Never with an in-person meeting. All with a new plot in mind. One born from my experience.
He had them go on tours. Via the trusty driver, he made out like a bandit. My determination to turn a no into a yes, had changed the game for everyone.
During this whole process, Raza and I wrote the script and decided to center it around the Con Queen himself. Making it a biopic on him. What drew him to lead this life? Why impersonate these powerful women? Being a victim of his nefarious schemes, and the one who interacted with him the most, I felt confident in telling his story and breaking down his character as I wrote. It was certainly cathartic in a way, but most importantly, it’s an engaging script about a man facing a complete crisis of identity, lashing out his worst instincts on those who would fall into his web of lies.
But there is a softer side to him. One that I saw in that final meeting with Anand Sippy. A rags to riches story. A hard worker. A man whose criminal genius one can almost admire.
Although getting conned like this was obviously a rough patch in my screenwriting career, I can only hope that this recent string of publicity can lead to some sort of justice. If not through the retribution of the law, then through the redemption of art.
Verifiable entertainment entities can request a copy of the script by contacting me: gregorymandarano@aol.com
Also, this Monday, March 9th, Jigsaw is releasing the first two episodes of a podcast series entitled, “Lies We Tell.” One of which is about the Con Queen, and features my interview. If you’re interested at all in this story please give it a listen and support the great work they do over there at Jigsaw.
“Lies We Tell,” can be found on the Luminary app.
