Con artists, grifters, hustlers, imposters and scammers are the focus of Generation Hustle, which recounts some of the most wildly inventive scams of the past decade. ET spoke to the creator and executive producer of the HBO Max project, Yon Motskin, as well as director Martha Shane about what you need to know about the frauds featured in the 10-part true-crime docuseries and why it is OK to enjoy these unbelievably true stories.
“We’re living in the age of the grift,” Motskin says of building a series around the ideas of “invention and reinvention.”
“It’s about money on the surface, but in most cases, I think money is just the starting point and it becomes about something bigger and deeper and more complicated, whether it’s identity or class or fame or status,” he continues. “Just being somebody that you’re not, I think has always captured my imagination and it’s captured a lot of people’s imaginations.”
Each of the standalone episodes offer a fresh and concise take on the various crimes or acts of deception committed by Anna Sorokin (aka the Fake German Heiress known as Anna Delvey), the Hollywood Con Queen and scam-rap artist Teejayx6. The series also dives into the fascinating rise and fall of WeWork, an attempt to create the “Silicon Valley of the East” and a frat boy’s failed Ponzi scheme.
“The series really looks at how changes in our contemporary world, like the rise of social media for example, have changed what it means to be a con artist or a fraudster today,” adds Shane, who helmed two episodes, including one about Sorokin. “It’s made it both easier in some ways and more difficult in some ways to get away with these kinds of things.”
And when it comes to Sorokin’s story, she saw it as “being all about Instagram, really.”
While each episode recounts an unexpected tale of real-life criminals, who face very real consequences, Motskin didn’t “want to glorify” their illegal acts, “but at the same time, there’s nothing wrong with watching people do interesting things and get away with it.”
He adds, “It’s fun to watch them and go along for the ride. We wanted to do something that was light, that pop and was fun to watch, and was also twisty and pulpy while still sort of scratching at deeper things when we could.”
The Frauds
Hollywood Con Queen (Episode 1)
A man posing as Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, former Sony Pictures chair Amy Pascal, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife, Wendi Deng, among others, became known as the “Hollywood Con Queen” after it was discovered he was conning various Hollywood hopefuls and up-and-comers out of thousands of dollars. He would convince these gig workers to self-finance trips to Southeast Asia where they believed there was a lucrative project that would take them to the next level. Instead, they encountered fees after fees that would never get reimbursed. Hargobind Tahilramani, who was arrested in November 2020 for allegedly impersonating the female executives and leading the scam, faces eight federal charges including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
