Gautham Menon and Madhan Karky duped ... Read how ...

Oct 14, 2013

Nate Danja Hills is a famous American publisher and record producer who has collaborated with the likes of Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Timbaland. Since the past two days, there has been a hue and cry over an impostor of Nate who has gotten in touch with many prominent Tamil cinema personalities such as Gautham Menon, Madhan Karky and Chinmayee, for a project involving Justin Timberlake. We got in touch with Madhan Karky to know the nitty gritty of this controversy and the ace lyricist spoke in depth about the same

"This person impersonating Nate Danja Hills got in touch with me through email asking me to collaborate with him on a project involving Justin Timberlake. I was asked to contribute exotic foreign language words. I was interested in the project and was asked to come to the US. He asked if I had a Visa and I said that I had a Visa valid till 2021.

I was then sent a song, which had a distinct South Indian flavor. I wished to speak to him and asked for his number. He was in Canada that time and I spoke to him after 11 30 in the night. I asked him how come the tune had such a South Indian flavor and he replied that he followed South Indian music a lot.

After that, he sent five more tunes and most of them were fresh. But, when I used the Shazam app on these tunes I found that a couple of tunes had traces of other songs' beats and grooves. This planted the seeds of doubt in me.

When I asked him how he came across me, he replied that he did a Google search on the best Indian lyricists. What increased my suspicion was when he said he got my mail address from Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. This would have been a clear case of invasion of privacy and against Twitter's policy, if it had indeed happened.

I then followed the verified Twitter handle of Nate Danja Hills and asked him to send me a Direct Message, so that I could verify that it was indeed Nate. My doubts were increasing by the day. I confirmed that this man was indeed fake when he asked me to verify with Gautham Menon.

When I spoke to Gautham, he said that he had been in touch with this man over the past 2 years, on and off. Gautham was even asked the contacts of Anushka and Samantha but he refused to divulge those. Gautham's travel to the US was also arranged by this man, but he couldn't go as he was busy with some commitments. It seems he had even told Gautham that Warner Bros had offered to buy the rights of Thanga Meengal.

I then contacted Chinmayi by chance and found that even she had been in contact with this man for the past 4 to 5 months. Now, I feel that all the tunes that he had sent me may have been composed by our own Tamil composers. Many talented individuals seem to have been duped by him.

After I found out using the TrueCaller app that this impostor was actually a man named Raman in Canada, I sent a mail to him asking for his true motives and intentions behind such fraudulent dealings with so many creative individuals and also warned him that I would complain to the Indian Cyber Crime cell. There has been no response to my mail and all communication has been cut off. I wish to highlight this so that there is a stop to this at once"