When Cecilie Fjellhøy first met the person she knew as Simon Leviev for a 10am espresso date on the 4 Seasons Lodge in London in January 2018, he appeared to align along with his Tinder profile. His photos have been flashy – designer garments and costly sun shades in luxurious vehicles and personal jets – and his in-person demeanor was equally debonair. “He has this magnetism,” Fjellhøy remembers of her first impression within the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler, out this week. “There’s one thing about this man that's particular.”
Fjellhøy, then a 29-year-old Norwegian graduate pupil residing in London, was charmed by the person who claimed to be the “prince of diamonds”, a billionaire inheritor to the diamond fortune of the Israeli magnate Lev Leviev. And he or she was stunned: Simon needed to depart that afternoon for a enterprise journey in Sofia, Bulgaria. Would she wish to go together with him by way of non-public jet? She agreed – “I felt I'd be silly if I stated no,” she says – and the movie, directed by Felicity Morris, stitches collectively the journey by means of the documentation on Fjellhøy’s telephone. There’s a “Yolo” WhatsApp message to her buddies; pictures of Leviev’s safety group aboard the non-public jet; video of the lady and toddler Leviev stated have been his ex and baby, and one through which Fjellhøy kisses him on the cheek. They spent the evening collectively within the lodge, and she or he flew again to London the following day, smitten with the person with whom she started exchanging messages every day.
This being known as The Tinder Swindler, it’s not a fortunately ever after; it might take Fjellhøy months, $250,000 in unpaid loans, and an investigative group from Norway’s largest paper to determine it out, however nothing Leviev stated or did was truthful. The bodyguard? A employed poser. The jet? Paid for by one other swindled lady’s cash. The girl Leviev stated was his ex, who assured Fjellhøy he was a stand-up man? Certainly one of three girls he had swindled in Finland earlier than he was convicted and imprisoned there in 2015, who nonetheless related to him for causes that stay unclear (she declined to take part within the movie). Even the identify Simon Leviev was a dodge; the “Simon <3” in her telephone was truly a serial catfisher and conman born Shimon Yehuda Hayut to a middle-class Jewish orthodox household in suburban Israel – no billionaire father. (In 2017, upon launch from the Finnish jail, he legally modified his identify to Simon Leviev.)
“This isn’t simply catfishing – that is catfishing on a complete different stage,” Morris instructed the Guardian. “There’s not the purple flags you suppose there are in these tales.”
“We’re all slightly bit responsible of gold-plating our lives, whether or not or not it's on Instagram or what have you ever,” she added. “However Simon, once you meet him, the whole lot stacks up.” For Fjellhøy and the 2 different girls who inform their tales within the movie – Pernilla Sjoholm, from Sweden, and Ayleen Charlotte from Amsterdam – in addition to others who haven't come ahead, “it’s virtually like they enter a Truman Present, being performed out for them, the place he’s acquired a bodyguard, he does truly fly round in a non-public jet,” stated Morris.
For many of its first half, the almost two-hour movie weaves Fjellhøy’s first-person account with Sjoholm’s, who met Leivev on Tinder in March 2018. Their connection was initially romantic however become a deep friendship; Leviev introduced alongside Sjoholm on journeys to Mykonos, Rome and elsewhere with different Tinder dates, and the 2 messaged persistently for eight months. As Leviev partied lavishly with Sjoholm, Fjellhøy was trying, at his request, for London flats to hire collectively. Three months into relationship, she acquired disturbing pictures of Leviev and his bodyguard lined in blood, and a request for $25,000 – in line with Leviev, his enemies have been tracing his bank card funds. Fjellhøy had no purpose to doubt her boyfriend can be good for the cash, and who else was nearer to him? She took out bank cards, loans and extra loans for extra requests, as Leviev repeatedly assured her that cost would come by means of the following day, then the following.
It didn’t. Fjellhøy had been tricked, fallout from which rains all through the second half of the movie, as she hyperlinks up with journalists on the Norwegian paper VG, and ultimately Sjoholm and Charlotte, to unravel Leviev’s lengthy historical past of cons relationship again to his teenage years in Israel. (VG’s investigative piece, that includes messages, voice notes and video that's labored into the movie, was revealed in 2019.) Dropping the cash and credit score was dangerous sufficient, however dropping the person she thought cared about her – the boyfriend who despatched her roses and doting voice notes, the one who made a shock last-minute journey to Oslo to see her – was a worse intestine punch. The con was as a lot emotional as monetary.
Leviev “wasn’t being a form of James Bond character with these ladies”, stated Morris. “Sure he’d ship them flowers, and he’d keep in mind their birthday, and he’d be actually candy, nevertheless it wasn’t like they have been getting something. He wasn’t giving them designer purses or superb holidays. He was only a very constant, loving boyfriend.” The traditional purple flags or hiccups – not texting again, ghosting, lack of curiosity – didn’t apply to Simon, and the bar for relationship was so low that this in and of itself was exceptional. “Simon was the proper man for these girls,” stated Morris, “and that wasn’t in a cloth means. That was in an emotional means.”
“We’ve all grown up on this food regimen of romcom films and the concept of discovering the love of your life, your Prince Charming, to brush you off your toes,” stated Morris, who works in clips from traditional Hollywood romances into the movie. “I positively suppose that Simon performs on that.”
The ultimate part of the movie, which merely should be seen to be absolutely appreciated and strikes past the scope of the VG story, works in testimony and comeuppance from Charlotte, who dated Leviev for 18 months and likewise loaned him important quantities of cash that was by no means repaid. Morris stitches collectively VG’s investigations, Charlotte’s recollections, and menacing voice and textual content messages from Leviev to disclose a vindictive pathological liar lastly snagged by his previous. It’s due to all three girls that he was arrested in 2019 in Greece and extradited to Israel; he was sentenced to fifteen months in jail for theft and fraud expenses he skipped out on in 2011, and launched after 5 months on account of good habits.
Simon Leviev, as he's nonetheless legally named (his now-private Instagram account, @simon_leviev_official, at the moment has 97,500 followers, bot proportion unknown), declined to formally take part within the movie, although he did reply to WhatsApp messages from the Morris’s group. There was a “back-and-forth between us and varied legal professionals that he had employed for us to talk to”, stated Morris, however “an interview by no means materialized.” Leviev, nonetheless, did ship voice notes which can be included within the movie through which he denies all the ladies’s claims of fraud and threatens authorized motion.
Regardless of the identify, The Tinder Swindler just isn't truly that a lot about Tinder, or a warning towards the perils of on-line relationship. “We’re not saying that folks shouldn’t use relationship apps,” stated Morris. “We’re not saying that folks needs to be extra cautious than they're, as a result of most individuals are cautious.” As an alternative, the message is extra one among perseverance by means of gaslighting, monetary wreck and the concern of judgment. Fjellhøy, Sjoholm and Charlotte knew the response and skepticism that might come from talking out, but “they’ve been courageous sufficient to say properly, truly, the one possible way that we’re going to get justice is to reveal him,” stated Morris.
That justice, if not in jail time or monetary restitution, can come by means of a public file. The very first thing you do with a Tinder match is Google them, says Fejllhøy, who continues to be on the app, on the finish of the movie. And the outcomes for Simon Leviev? Pages on pages of articles unraveling his lies.
The Tinder Swindler is now out there on Netflix
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