Hi, I'm Ryan Levy.

Hi, I'm Ryan Levy.

Hi, I'm Ryan Levy.

Welcome to Cyber reasons's malicious life. Three months into her investigation, Nicole Kostearis was stuck.

She was hunting a predator, a scammer who targeted freelance professionals, mainly from the movie industry and impersonated powerful female producers.

The scammer promised her remarks an opportunity of a lifetime to take part in a Hollywood blockbuster production. She sent them to

Indonesia to scout for filming locations or fulfill similar bogus tasks where they were

then asked to pay thousands of dollars for various services, never to see their money again.

After speaking with many of the victims, Mikkal had formed a vague picture of the person she was going after.

Initially, she thought she was dealing with a team of scammers, perhaps working off of

pre-written scripts in a sort of a boiler room setting. But after listening to several recordings of the

scammer, as she was impersonating different people, she picked up on several common similarities.

Although the Hollywood con queen, as she was known, could imitate an amazing variety of

accents and speech patterns, she tended to reuse some phrases such as just a real heads up or no no no no no it

it made Nicole realize that all these different people were actually one the same And the con queen was absolutely driven.

She worked hard, running multiple scams in parallel and calling her marks at all hours of the day, be it the middle of the night or in the early morning.

She meticulously researched her victims and the VIPs she impersonated, and was very knowledgeable about every aspect of the movie making business.

Nicole suspected that she might be working in the movie industry.

Most intriguing about,

about, she didn't do it for the money, or at least not only for the money.

Other impersonation scams that I've personally investigated work within business hours, Nicole said in an interview.

It's a business. You're clocking in and clocking out.

...