Man pretended to be Hell’s Kitchen, Chopped producer

A man who was arrested last week, accused of defrauding a startup, pretended to be a producer for Food Network’s Chopped and Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen, befriending several contestants from the Gordon Ramsay-hosted show even though he apparently never turned

In a series of in-depth articles, Gawker uncovered the apparent deception of Daniel Kaufman, aka Dan Kay:

• The Montauk Grifter: How One Con Man Used OkCupid for Fun, Fraud, and Profit: “He also said he was a producer on Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen and the Food Network’s Chopped—he claimed to have created the latter—and a friend of Gordon Ramsay. Needless to say, he was none of those things.”
• It Looks Like the Montauk Grifter Conned Gordon Ramsay, Too: Chopped host Ted “Allen emails: ‘While a devious mind bordering on (alleged) criminality certainly is a prerequisite for Chopped producers, nobody on our staff knows a Dan Kay. I’m told that we asked IMDB some time ago to remove Chopped from his credits.’”
• How the Montauk Grifter Infiltrated the World of Hell’s Kitchen: “Dan convinced at least four Hell’s Kitchen vets, from three different seasons, that he had worked on the show. He hung out with them, partied with them, hired them, and told them he had cancer for good measure.”