Con Artists Use Appeal of Hollywood Glitz to Live It Up

After several years of operating the Stardust Limousine Co., owner Mike Haggerty had heard just about every con game around.

But when he received a phone call from a man who said he worked for producer-director Steven Spielberg, Haggerty was torn between feelings of suspicion and hope.

“It all sounded too good to be true,” Haggerty would recall. “How often does a Spielberg account come your way?”

Haggerty complied with the request for a limousine from his Chatsworth company. He sent a driver to pick up the “Spielberg group” and subsequently was out $700 when Spielberg’s production company, Amblin Entertainment, told him that the call was a fake.

“It was a simple con and it worked,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Steven Ipsen said.

The con man was David G. Bojorquez, 29, a waiter and aspiring actor from North Hollywood who for three weeks in January lived it up, attempting to charge it to Amblin Entertainment.

Using Spielberg’s name, Bojorquez and his friends gained quick and easy entry to a world they had only glimpsed before. They dined at L.A.’s finest restaurants and rode in limousines. Bojorquez gave away bottles of Dom Perignon and left 40% tips. Wherever they went, they received star treatment. Bojorquez had all the bills--more than $16,000 worth--sent to Amblin Entertainment.

“It was like seeing heaven,” Bojorquez said of his glitzy evenings on the town, “then descending into hell.”

Last month in a plea-bargain with the district attorney’s office, Bojorquez pleaded guilty to four counts of grand theft. Four other charges were dropped.

A San Fernando Superior Court judge sentenced him to three years in prison and ordered him to pay back four businesses named in the complaint.

Although Bojorquez’s tale of deceit has a made-for-the-movies ring to it, prosecutors say he is just one of numerous con artists who successfully use the names of Hollywood stars to con businesses out of money and merchandise. With just the mention of a star’s name, con artists have scammed businesses of thousands of dollars in goods and services.

“This is not an isolated occurrence,” Ipsen said. “It happens all the time.”

In fact, Spielberg’s name has been used in scams so often that Amblin Entertainment has hired a private investigation firm.

The firm was instrumental in helping police track down Bojorquez, but officials wouldn’t disclose what led them to him because they are investigating similar cases.

Understanding why otherwise knowledgeable and experienced business people fall for Hollywood scams is a matter of understanding the motivation for profits and the reality of living and working in the movie capital of the world.

“They see the dollar sign and abandon all caution,” Ipsen said of business owners. “They’re ripe for a con man.”

Often businesses are so eager to gain lucrative accounts that “they end up doing things that seem amazingly stupid from a business standpoint,” Ipsen said.

But sometimes even precautions designed to deter such crimes fail to stop the con man. He knows the system and has devised his own means of thwarting it.

In an interview from the state prison in Tehachapi where he is serving his sentence, Bojorquez attributed his ability to con so many people to a combination of having the right information and gaining the trust of his victims.

During the entire charade, Bojorquez said, he was never asked to show identification or prove that he worked for Spielberg. But he is quick to note that the scam involved more than him simply calling a business and saying he worked for Spielberg.

Bojorquez, who was on parole for forgery at the time of the incident, claims to have learned the con--what he calls “manipulative business tactics”--from a friend involved in the entertainment industry. This same individual, whose name Bojorquez would not reveal, gave him information relating to Spielberg and his company.

“He gave me the key,” he said. “I just used it to open the door.”

He refused to say what the information was or how he used it.

Bojorquez said he was motivated by a desire to experience the glamorous Hollywood lifestyle.

“It’s something people dream of doing in a lifetime. . . . You’re so caught up in the euphoria of going out and having the time of your life, you don’t think about the consequences,” he said.

From the reservation call to the tip given the driver of the limousine, Bojorquez’s nights on the town were meticulously planned using a system of deceit that left almost nothing to chance.

Nearly all of his victims have noted how familiar he seemed with the system and how well he played the role of a Spielberg employee.

“He was very smooth,” said Andrew Higgs, owner of La Petite Chateau restaurant. “He had obviously rehearsed his part well.”

On a Friday evening or on the weekend, Bojorquez would call a limousine service and a restaurant saying that he worked for Amblin Entertainment and that he was sending a party over for dinner at the company’s expense.

He often called when offices were closed and it was impossible to check and confirm the reservation with Amblin employees.

Bojorquez, who used several fictitious names, always gave specific instructions about the billing.

“He said just put it on the Spielberg account,” said a maitre d’ at La Serre restaurant who refused to give his name. “He didn’t want the people to pay or see the bill.”

Some of the restaurants Bojorquez chose were places that Spielberg is known to frequent.

Daniel Pang, owner of Fung Lum in Universal City, said his restaurant has done business with Spielberg’s company for years and that the call wasn’t unusual.

“Steven Spielberg has been using the restaurant for 10 years so we had no doubts” or suspicions about the call, Pang said. “We do a lot of business with them.”

Bojorquez and friends dined at Fung Lum three times and ran up a bill of $994.

Other restaurants, such as La Petite Chateau, had no previous dealings with Amblin Entertainment and saw the call as an opportunity to get a proverbial foot in Hollywood’s door.

“We were most anxious to do business with them and we weren’t about to turn them down on a Saturday night,” Higgs said. When the call came, Higgs complied and was stuck with a bill for $411.

Bojorquez’s evenings always started with a limousine ride from a home to a posh restaurant. But it wasn’t Bojorquez’s home.

“They would get picked up at exclusive homes south of Ventura Boulevard where you figure no scum bags live,” Haggerty said.

The actor and members of his party would choose a nice house and stand on the side or at the end of the driveway until the limousine arrived, to make it appear as if they lived there, Haggerty said.

Once at the restaurant, the role-playing continued.

During a meal at La Petite Chateau, “they even discussed entertainment industry-type things. I’m not too sure he didn’t believe he actually was who he was pretending to be,” Haggerty said.

It was Bojorquez’s biggest role and he quickly became comfortable with his manufactured identity.

Shortly before his arrest, Bojorquez said, the con had become too easy and those in the group were becoming sloppy.

“You can’t dictate an entire evening and expect it to go as you wish,” he said.

Working with the private investigators hired by Spielberg, Los Angeles police detectives arrested Bojorquez as he was registering for business classes at Valley College.

Although Bojorquez said five others were involved in the scam, only he was prosecuted. Ipsen said many more companies may have been duped by Bojorquez but simply wrote off the loss because they were too embarrassed to report it.

A sullen and seemingly remorseful Bojorquez expressed apologies to Spielberg and his victims and expressed hope that something positive may come from all this.

“Maybe we helped,” he said. “Maybe with this being more exposed people will be more aware and more cautious. There are a lot of con men out there, and they prey on kindness and weakness.”