The Tinder Swindler arriving on Netflix this February is a documentary for fans of true crime. It tells the story of fake diamond mogul Simon Leviev, who conned and swindled millions from victims he met on the dating app Tinder. It's more like a slick Hollywood film, however, featuring exotic locations, a millionaire conman and a frantic race across the globe to arrest him.
The film, by the makers of previous hit Netflix documentary series Don't F**K With Cats and The Imposter, show exactly how so-called ‘Tinder Swindler’ Simon Leviev defrauded scores of women he met on the dating app out of millions of dollars to fund his luxury lifestyle. Then we'll hear how those wronged women helped bring about Leviev's downfall.
So here’s everything you need to know about the extraordinary feature-length documentary The Tinder Swindler on Netflix…
‘The Tinder Swindler’ release date
The Tinder Swindler is a one-off documentary that launches globally on Netflix on Wednesday February 2 2022.
Is there a trailer for ‘The Tinder Swindler’?
Yes The Tinder Swindler trailer on Netflix is here below. It gives a great flavour of what to expect in the documentary.
What happens in ‘The Tinder Swindler’
Slick documentary The Tinder Swindler features three of Simon Leviev’s victims, Cecilie Fjellhoy, Ayleen Charlotte and Pernilla Sjoholm, who were all taken in by Leviev and conned out of thousands.
Cecilie, now 34, was swept off her feet when she met Leviev on Tinder while living in London. He claimed he was CEO of a diamond company and lived a lifestyle of fancy restaurants, fast cars and luxury holidays. The two fell in love and, within weeks, Leviev asked Cecilie to move in with him. But everything changed when Leviev rang Cecilie from Amsterdam claiming he was being threatened over a diamond deal worth millions. He said he couldn’t use his credit cards in case his enemies tracked him down and killed him. Fearing for her boyfriend’s life Cecilie agreed to temporarily lend him hers.
Within weeks, however, Cecilie had racked up debts of $250,000, as Leviev asked for more and more cash. He promised to pay her back but, unknown to Cecilie, he was actually secretly using her cash to fund a luxury European tour with a Russian model he was dating. At her wits’ end and with her creditors on her back, Cecilie eventually discovered from her bank that Leviev was a professional fraudster with multiple different names, and that everything he’d told her had been a lie. He wasn’t a diamond mogul, but an ordinary guy from Israel, who started as a small-time crook in his teens. He’d even been in jail in Finland for defrauding three women there.
Meanwhile, the same time as Leviev was dating Cecilie, he was also wooing Ayleen Charlotte and Pernilla Sjoholm, and ended up using exactly the same tricks on them to con them out of their cash, even down to the threats on his life.
But this film follows their extraordinary and at times terrifying stories, and how they teamed up to use the media and their own hard graft to orchestrate a dangerous global plot in order to get Leviev arrested for his crimes.
'The Making Of A Swindler' podcast
Accompanying The Tinder Swindler on Netflix is 'The Making Of A Swindler' podcast, which has three episodes. This original investigative podcast is hosted by the film’s director and producer, Felicity Morris and Bernadette Higgins. This new companion audio mini-series released by Netflix will be published within the feed of its popular documentary podcast, You Can’t Make This Up. Produced by RAW, the same team that made the film, the podcast digs deeper into the life and methods of the infamous Tinder Swindler, with each episode exposing more of his lies and the people who actively – or unwittingly – supported him. You'll learn about the mistakes he made, and the lessons he learned, going all the way back to his childhood. Here's more on each episode below...
Episode 1: The Theatre of the Con
In the course of the film, we learn about the entourage that surrounds Simon wherever he goes. Who are these people? Are they in on the scam? Or are they as much victims of his lies as the women he swindles? In this episode, we learn more about the identity of Peter, his bodyguard. And Avichay, his supposed “business partner” and childhood friend. Plus we hear directly from Jamal, Simon’s driver in London who still feels deeply guilty for his involvement three years later.
Episode 2: Who is the Real Simon?
It’s clear that Simon is a criminal mastermind. But that level of skill requires practice, and a certain amount of pathology. In this episode, Felicity and Bernie try to understand the mind – and the methods – of the swindler. They meet with a forensic psychologist who specialises in con artists, to better understand the psychology behind what is known as “the love con”. Then they travel back to Finland, where Simon was convicted in 2015 and spent time in jail. But far from learning his lesson, he clearly learned from his earlier mistakes.
Episode 3: The Rabbi’s Son
Before he was travelling around Europe pretending to be a millionaire playboy, Simon was Shimon, the son of an Orthodox rabbi from a small town near Tel Aviv. His father was a well respected member of the community, the chief rabbi of El Al Airlines for 15 years, with religious connections around the world. In this episode, Felicity talks to an Israeli police officer who has been on Simon's tail since 2011, and describes his earliest cons, when he was working as a babysitter. And then we meet Rabbi Badush from Brooklyn, whose chilling story will make you wonder if the apple didn’t fall very far from the tree.
