The first thing all of the women in the new Netflix documentary “Tinder Swindler” say they do when they match with a man on a dating app is Google him. And when they did their research on Simon Leviev, they liked what they saw.
“You always check the Insta,” said Cecilie Fjellhoy, one of the women who ended up in a relationship with Leviev. Leviev’s Instagram, shown throughout the film, had 103,000 followers and was filled with photos of private jets, business meetings and faraway beaches. “This guy is just having a very different life than I ever will experience. And I was just thinking, it would be kind of cool to just meet up,” said Fjellhoy.
The documentary revolves around several European women who share the details of their relationships with Leviev, an Israeli man who claimed to be the son of a diamond mogul. They believed their relationships to be monogamous, but unbeknownst to them, Leviev was juggling multiple relationships at once. His glamorous lifestyle wasn’t necessarily a mirage, he did indeed jetset around Europe spending frivolously on expensive dinners and at bottle service nightclubs. He’d gain each woman’s trust with his generosity, then suddenly claim his business enemies were tracing his transactions and threatening his life. He needed to borrow just a few thousand dollars. Then a few thousand more.
Although the entirety of the documentary takes place in Europe, these types of romance scams are becoming much more prevalent in the United States, including in the Bay Area. A recent release from the FBI cited that there were 742 local reports in 2021, with a total of $64,858,450 lost. That’s an increase from $35,131,104 in 2020. Santa Clara county accounted for the most victims and largest losses, with 188 reports and $21,889,670 lost.
From left: Cecilie Fjellhoy, Ayleen Charlotte and Pernilla Sjoholm photographed on Dec. 3, 2021 at Black Book, Soho, London.
Joshua Wilks/NetflixThe unraveling of Leviev’s scheme began after Fjellhoy turned to her creditors in desperation after becoming deeply in debt. They had an in-person meeting, and when she showed them a photo of Leviev, the creditors alerted her that she was not his only victim. Fjellhoy then went to the biggest newspaper in Norway, VG, and shared a cache of Whatsapp texts and video messages that are shown throughout the film. The correspondence is devastatingly personal, and it’s impossible not to feel sympathetic to Fjellhoy’s plight.
The Norwegian journalists learned that Leviev had previously been convicted of a similar scheme in Finland under a different name (Shimon Yehuda Hayut) and sentenced to three years in prison. Once Leviev received an early release, he began looking for a new set of victims, even enlisting one of the original women who filed a complaint in Finland to help in the ruse.
The VG journalists are also featured prominently in the documentary. Footage shows them traveling to Israel to visit an address associated with Leviev. They find a letter on the door addressed to him, then his mother arrives, claiming to have had no contact with him since he was 18 years old. Then the journalists visit the local police, confirming that Hayut and Leviev are indeed the same person. Soon after, they find the names of even more women listed on flights that Leviev booked using Fjellhoy’s money.
One of them is Pernilla Sjoholm, a Swedish woman who has also been lending Leviev thousands of dollars. The journalists reach out via Facebook to alert her to the scam, and she agrees to cooperate. She travels to a hotel in Munich for a meal with Leviev, where a VG photographer is hiding outside. Leviev sees the photographer and flees the scene. Afterward, Sjoholm confronts Leviev over the phone, which was filmed live by the documentarians. He denies everything and threatens that she’ll pay for her betrayal.
Once VG’s story is published in February 2019, it goes viral. Then Sjoholm and Fjellhoy meet for the first time and start a PR blitz to spread the news of the fraud and hopefully kick-start other criminal investigations. He was soon reported to the police in at least seven other countries.
At this point, another women’s story begins. Ayleen Charlotte, another of Leviev’s girlfriends, finds the VG story on Instagram. When she confronts him, Leviev denies any wrongdoing, and Charlotte pretends to believe him, realizing he no longer has anywhere else to go.
Joe Stassi as Simon Leviev in “The Tinder Swindler.”
Courtesy of Netflix“He always told me, keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. To make him believe I was still on his side, I told him I still love him; that I believed everything he said. I even called these girls bitches,” said Charlotte.
Now without any income from other women, Leviev is desperate. Naturally, he asks for more money.
“That’s when I get my idea. I was going to swindle the Tinder Swindler,” says Charlotte. She works in the luxury fashion industry, so she knows that Leviev’s expensive designer wardrobe is worth thousands of dollars. He agrees and gives her his clothing, which she begins selling online, continuing to string Leviev along while pocketing the money for herself. Even though it doesn’t compare to the amount he had defrauded from her, Charlotte’s satisfaction is palpable. After a few weeks, Leviev realizes what’s going on, and bombards Charlotte with threatening voice messages, which are played back in the film.
When Leviev leaves one of Charlotte’s Whatsapp responses unread for an extended period of time, she realizes that he must be on a flight. She quickly pieces together his destination and his new alias, then sends an urgent email to the police. When the plane touches down in Greece, Leviev is arrested. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison for crimes he committed in Israel, but was released after five. The film’s closing sequence is a montage of Leviev’s current life, or at least what it was like prior to the release of the film. He had a website selling business mentorship advice, was dating an Israeli model, and seemed back to living his luxurious lifestyle.
It may seem like a paltry set of consequences for a man who defrauded women of an estimated $10 million, but the release of “The Tinder Swindler” has at least had a few positive effects. Ranked No. 1 on Netflix’s global movie popularity ranking (with 45,800,000 hours viewed), the positive response inspired the three women featured to start a Go Fund Me campaign, which at time of writing, has raised 88,000 of its 600,000-pound goal. The film also led Tinder itself to remove Leviev from all of their dating services (including Match.com and OkCupid). However users of Hinge and Bumble should still be very wary of anyone claiming to be the son of a diamond mogul.
