Are you sure you are immune to the Tinder Swindler?

Here we’ll chat about the conman in the Netflix Documentary, the Tinder Swindler and about the women he emotionally swindled by the idea of this perfect relationship with Simon Leviev, fake Diamond Heir.

As soon as Tinder Swindler came out, I had to watch it! Stories of conmen/women are so fascinating. Not only them, but the whole constellation of people swindled by them. How they manage to keep up with the social interaction and the lies needed to con people. How they benefit from the people by creating scenarios that would make you also go to grab your wallet! Maybe we have been swindled before, and even did not realise. When do you really know someone is lying to you? These confident artists are so good at lying to your face!

In this documentary there are three women who were willing to talk about being swindled. As I said in my previous post, about Inventing Anna, we see that the people that come out in public to talk about being swindled, usually are the ones in a bad financial place after being conned out of their hard earned money! This documentary and media attraction is their well deserved redemption.

The Tinder Swindler has swindled a lot of women in his adult life!

His first name is Simon, a professional fraudster since his late teens. He was able to legally change his second name to Leviev, like a wealthy family in Israel. Before that he used many different surnames. All fake of course. The women from the documentary who he swindled, knew him as Simon Leviev, the Diamond Heir. Here we also see a similarity to the Anna Delvey story. Right? Faking to be an heiress. What a roll. Who got the idea from whom?

The first woman shown is Cecile, she got swindled out of 250k! That is a lot of money for a middle class woman. She has a Masters degree and is established in the working place, but she does not have that kind of money laying in her bank account. That is why she even had to take out loans to be able to give to her “boyfriend in distress”. How was he able to swindle this smart woman?

So first of all he showered her with attention and persuaded her with his charm. He shows her his rich and lavish lifestyle, his travels his business and partners. Then when she started to trusting him, he asks her to be his girlfriend. He is charming, good looking and very well dressed, wearing only the best designer clothing. Would you be charmed by him?

Initially there was no doubt for Cecile about his background, everything seemed real to her. First night they spent together she was with him on a private jet to travel to a “business meeting”. Would you have believed him if your first date with this man is on a private jet?

Cecile never had been on a private jet before, so she was baffled with the opportunity to do so. We see the videos she took and how excited she was. For the first time in her life Cecile eats caviar on that plane.

They spent the night together in a luxurious hotel. Where they had sex for the first time. Cecile says during her interview how in such a brief encounter, they seemed to have bonded very deeply. Simon shared with her some problem he had in the past. He tells her about the scars on his back. They are from being falsely accused and imprisoned in south Africa. He was mishandled there because he is jewish. A heartbreaking story, who knows which part is true? That he is jewish? We know by now he is Israeli. But the rest of the story? I don’t believe a word.

For this and maybe also more woman in her late 20s it seemed like a dream. Finally she found the one! After their first sexual encounter, Simon says he has a busy schedule and that she should leave. Honestly this should have been a red flag, but she did not mind. I guess that this mysterious behaviour, made her want him even more.

So back in London she contacts him. I have to add, how much I liked the portrayal of this initial phase of courtship. How we see their private messages on the screen and the sounds that fit the emotions of the messages: slow music when she waits anxiously after she puts herself out there with the message, then fast and happy music, when she receives a message back from him. What a delight when someone seems to be reciprocating our interest.

Simon showered her with attention, all distance relationship, because he is such a “busy business man”. He sends her big bouquet of flowers and flies to Oslo, when she is on a family visit.

Cecile says that they get on very well, then after a month he asks her to be his girlfriend. This was the happiest moment ever for her. He continous to create hopes for a bright future and happy together. That she is the mother of his future children and how happy he is with her. Then he opens up about his hardship at work, and how many enemies he has. Still he only throws bits and pieces of the story he later gonna use to get her money. Until now everything resembles a distance relationship, hyped with a lot of promises.

To fester her hope in a future he asks her to move in together in London and that she should go see apartments for them. The high monthly price, makes her dream of this perfect apartment together with the person she so much is longing for. Poor young woman, so into this man.

Do our feelings make us blind? Or is it the beautiful future we wish to have?

Both probably, and Simon knows how to leverage her emotions really well. When she is most excited and he has given her the most hope, Simon will start his own show:

His enemies are after him, his bodyguard has been hurt trying to prevent Simon getting hurt. A little disbelieve on my side when he said that his enemies knew who Cecile was and were going after her. But I don’t blame her for believing him. I mean, by now she really does love him.

Simon has photos to back up his story, and it gets trickier and trickier. Especially when he asks her to make a credit card on her name and send it to him,he even asks to bring him 20k in cash. She does that and soon after he disappears, because he “has to since his enemies are following him”. His story would have been full of flaws, but as a person who loves and trusts him, she followed everything he said, as a “good girlfriend” should do, right?

By now we can say that Simon is a piece of shit, right?! The lies he told to swindle her and others out of money are pure rubbish.

We notice how much of an heartless liar he is when the second lady, Pernilla from Stockholm gets interviewed and tells the story about the same time period of Cecile, when she was out on a tinder date with Simon and they actually did not develop romantic feelings but became good friends.

Simon probably noticed Prenilla need for a good friend and he became that for her. They weren’t sexual partners, but he became the best friend Prenilla never had. He invited her often, she never had to pay for dinners or night our. He flew to Mykonos when she was there to see her with his girlfriend, not Cecile, but a Russian Model. The same time, he said he was Cecile boyfriend! What a rat, right? With the cash she gave him he was living the lavish life, while she was worried about his safety. Incredibly heartless!

Prenilla explains that it is impossible that he had only the money from Cecile, because he was spending much more then that. 5k night rooms, 2k tables at billionaires clubs, fine dining, etc. The whole summer, while he was telling Cecile he was in trouble laying low from his enemies, he was actually travelling all around Europe finest places, spending more money then anyone I know. He was living life like he was really a diamond heir, without enemies though. Who knows what he told his Russian model girlfriend?

The story of him is not finished yet. Plenty of stories are uncovered by the Norwegian journalists who investigated this case first. They even find his house in Israel and see he is no Diamond Heir at all. No rich upbringing, quite the opposite: he does come from Israels poorest areas. One of the apartment with his original name is occupied by his mother, who claims not knowing her sons whereabouts. Do you believe his mother?

The journalists also find Pernilla, who at that time has given Simon 40k. Like with everyone Simon promised her an abundant check, even more then he owed her, but these checks never arrived. The journalists ask if she knows where Simon is, and she says she is supposed to get an expensive watch from Simon in Munich to settle his debt with her. The journalist ask if they can follow her in Munich.

Well turns out the watch Prenilla eventually got from Simon in Munich was fake, but at least journalist got good footage from Simon and his “buisness partner”. Who knows who this partner is? Maybe Simon is only the face and these other people are helping him in this piramide scheme?

I honestly believe Cécile is a smart woman! Unfortunately she figures Simon out when he already did a lot of financial damage. The creditors from Amex visit her and she shows them Simons picture, and they knew him already as a fraudster. By this time she has given him 250k from 9 different creditors.

She falls in depression and is afraid to commit suicide, so she takes the best decision for her and admits herself to the psychatric ward. This helps her also with the stress of the creditors, who are now off her back and now she can collect her thoughts and herself.

She did go through extremely stressful times, first believing him, her boyfriend in danger, than finding out he is scamming her and the breaking up, while she was still in love with him. This all together must have been so horrible.

In psych ward she contacts Amex card creditors to find real name if Simon, whos real surname is Hayat. She then finds article of finnish woman who also have been scammed. Simon had been under arrest there for 3 years. She thinks maybe she can sell her story to the journalist and get more visibility, so Simon gets arrested.

The journalist she contacts, take a real interest in the story, which for them is like in movies. They take all the information Cecile has about Simon and their messages. Amex also gives Cecile the bank statements, where the journalists find Pernilla and contact her.

One of the Journalsit says Simon is basically praticing a ponzi scheme, using the money from one woman on the other. All this happens internationally, so he is always fleeing the authorities.

Thanks to Cecile, then Prenilla the article gets a huge tractione online. They did not finish yet, they continued promoting it by guest apparances on shows. Cecile and Prenilla are a good, teaming up trying to bring Simon to justice.

Since the huge amount of people seeing the news, Ayleen current girlfriend of Simon at the time, found on instagram the article and contact Prenilla, they create a network of three fearless women against scammer Simon!

Simon was starting to be recognised he could not swindle no one any longer. To Ayleen he explains how everything is a lie and that she can trust him. By then Ayleen sees too many similarities between hers and Ceciles story and cannot believe his lies no more.

Ayleen wants him to get arrested, but she also gave him 140k by then, so she wants to get her money back first. Simon is in real trouble now, because he can’t scam any women. That is why he repeatedly ask Ayleen for money. Even the audacity to ask her to sell her car or her house! But Alyeen has an idea: Since she works in the luxury fashion industry, she thinks, let me swindle him out of his luxury clothes! So she tells him she believes him and meets him in Prague, promising him she will help him sell his clothes and send him the money as soon as possible. In reality, Ayleen never sent him nothing!

Thanks to Ayleen he also gets arrested, because she knew the name of his new identiy and where he was flying to. Unfortunately he did not repay his victims, nor spend much time in prison in Israel after being arrested (5 months). Anyhow, this documentary came out after his release from prison and is creating him a lot of trouble. Especially as the heirs of Ldd Diamonds are suing him for identity fraud. I honestly think this documentary is helpful for future victims to see the strategies of these swindlers and create awareness of emotional fraud! Plus, we see how this professional conman even after being caught, is still lying, so surely not a word he says should be trusted.

What do you think about the tindler swindler?

If you enjoyed this article,

you can read more on the category fraudsters:

Anna Delvey, can a fake heiress fool the rich?

Vegan Sarma, falling in love with the wrong man

Thanks for reading.

See you in the comments.

Yours,

Queen BingeEye