How to download a file for specific users - php

Question

I use code like that shown on the first part below to download a file from an external site that isn't mine. The token is required and if it isn't valid the download fails. I want to duplicate that action with my own site. I have control over both the sending and receiving servers but can't get this to work. Would someone explain what I am doing wrong, please?
Here is the code on the sending server:
$url = "https://example.com/download/index.php?token=$someid";
$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 20);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, '1');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, '1');
curl_exec($ch);
try {
if(curl_errno($ch)){
throw new Exception(curl_error($ch));
}
}
catch (Exception $e){ echo $e->getMessage(); }
$statusCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($ch);
if ($statusCode == 200) {
handle the downloaded file
} else {
echo 'Result = '. $statusCode;
}
And this is on my site (the receiving server). The true is just for testing so when I execute the above code I should get a 404 but it just shows "Result =".
if (true || ! empty($_GET['token'])) {
header("HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found");
exit;
}
header("Location: http://example.com/myfile.zip");
exit;