THE Tinder Swindler is a story that looks at the risks of online dating and charms of honeyed manipulator. Consistently thrilling, Netflix’s latest true crime documentary explains a story of three woman who went looking for their ideal partners on a dating app, but ended up falling for a con man that causing them to lose millions of dollars. The movie portrayed an intense emotional and financial damage the victims went through.
This documentary is about Simon Leviev, who uses the dating app Tinder to lure women into his life by pretending to be wealthy. Instead, he just stole their money. The movie focuses on the story of three of his victims – Cecilie Fjellhøy, Pernilla Sjöholm, and Ayleen Charlotte.
The film begins with Cecilie, a serial dater who called herself a “Tinder expert”. She was swept off her feet by the handsome young man, and after being invited by Leviev for a coffee at his five-star hotel, she eventually joined him on a ‘business trip’ to Bulgaria the same day.
Over the next month, he took her to fancy dinners and seduced her into falling in love with him. Then one day, he sent her pictures saying he was in trouble and was unable to access his finances, and since she was so in love with him, he blindly trusted him and end up losing her money. Then there is Pernilla who became friends with Simon and spent the summer with him until he used the same trick against her.
It was soon revealed Simon lured other women into similar situations and tricked them as well.
It is also a story of revenge, as Leviev’s victims work to get their him arrested and their money back.
The documentary takes an interesting approach as the Norwegian-based VG newspaper begins looking for Simon. This documentary managed to focus on the seriousness of dating scams and how emotional manipulation can influence people.
However, the film’s ending leaves plenty of questions unanswered as – despite getting arrested and convicted – Simon only served one-third of his sentence and is currently free. It is definitely a must-watch film as it managed to perfectly describe Simon’s professional psychotic ways of tricking woman and does a good job of warning people to think twice before matching anyone on dating apps.
The Tinder Swindler is currently streaming on Netflix.
DIRECTOR: Felicity Morris
CAST: Kristoffer Kumar, Cecilie Fjellhøy, Pernilla Sjöholm
E-VALUE: 9
ACTING: 10
PLOT: 10