The Tinder Swindler Review

2022 | TV-MA | 1h 54m

It’s interesting how a swipe on your phone can change your life. You could end up finding the person you’re supposed to be with. A lot of the time with online dating, however, it’s easy to get fooled by a person’s online persona. Meeting them in real life can bring your fantasies tumbling down. The online dating experience for a large majority of people has been a mixed bag, and some have had a better experience than others.

The thing with “The Tinder Swindler” is yes, it’s thrilling and shocking in the way it unfolds, but it constantly challenges your preconceived notions about romance and dating. There’s also the question of would you have been fooled by Simon? I trust Google to fact-check, and apps to deliver me food, and transport me around. I think more than anything, it’s the extent of how unknown these scenarios can be, as three unassuming women in the documentary find out.

The first of the three is a serial dater, very honest about her minor addiction to Tinder. Cecilie Fjellhoy has been on the lookout for her prince charming since watching Disney movies when she was little. These movies informed her romantic fantasies and taste in men. She mentions “Beauty and the Beast” in particular, the story of Belle and how she saves an enchanted Prince who was cursed. When she came across Simon’s profile on Tinder, he was everything her fantasies promised. Good-looking, certainly rich, and well-traveled. She thought it’d be interesting to meet a person who was living a very different life than what she had ever experienced.

A little led on by the romantic instincts that told her he was the one, Cecilie still choose to be fairly cautious. However, everywhere she looked, Simon was apparently well put-together. Google informed her that he was the heir of a diamond business owner, and his Instagram featured him attending business meetings all over the world. The private jets and the fancy hotels and the love-bombing certainly didn’t help. She was living out her dreams of being a Disney princess. “What happened to me felt like a movie”, she aptly puts.

All good things must come to an end, and for Cecilie, the end to her fairytale came rather sooner than later. While Simon was visiting her in Oslo, her hometown, he told her that his wealth was quite sought after. It had put him in a perilous position and his “enemies” were out to get him. Not being safe in London, where the couple originally met, he had to fly out to an entirely different country. By this time, Cecelie completely trusts him to try and work a long-distance relationship. She’s had but a taste of what life with him is going to be like, and she isn’t going to let her prince slip past her that easily.

In comes Pernilla Sjolhom, who was similarly wooed by Simon’s charms. I mean who wouldn’t like a guy who has traveled around the world and is hardworking. He ticked all the boxes she would have wanted in a man. Moreover, to win her trust and quell any suspicions she might have had about the whole thing being too good to be true, he paid for her ticket to meet him in Amsterdam via private jet. Granted, there wasn’t a romantic connection between the two, Pernilla still came to consider him a good friend over the course of a lavish vacation in the summer. Simon pretended to be a man of limitless wealth, but as we come to find out that’s hardly the case.

At this point in the documentary, it starts becoming clear to the viewer how the whole operation functioned. Simon tells Cecilie that his security team has decided it best to cut off his financial resources to lure his enemies away from his scent. What begins as a harmless favor devolves into financial ruin for her. From giving him her credit cards to taking out loans for him, Cecilie does everything to keep Simon afloat. She does not know of course, that she is being swindled out of her money to finance Simon’s vacation with Pernilla, his next victim.

In the coming weeks, Simon goes back on the promises of paying Cecilie back, who eventually has to come clean to the authorities. Learning the true nature of her star-crossed lover lands her in a psychiatric hospital. In her conviction to bring him to justice, she contacts Norway’s VG newspaper, whose journalists scour through the evidence. Their hunt for the elusive Simon Leviev, or should I say Shimon Hayut, leads them to Pernilla. By this time, she has also transferred a fair chunk of her money to Simon.

The documentary picks up momentum and you sort of get very involved in the true face behind this con-man. What the team ends up discovering is that Shimon Hayut is a convicted fraud who has since wised up. Now using Tinder as his playground, he has duped women out of millions of dollars. Both Pernilla and Cecilie are successful in bringing Simon’s true face into the light. As the story breaks out, his face is plastered all over the internet, bringing an end to the con-man’s reign.

There isn’t a happy ending to the documentary. Although one woman does end up swindling the Tinder Swindler, the money she reclaims by selling his clothes hardly makes up for her financial deficit. It’s almost unreal how easily Simon managed to give the authorities the run-around. Despite being responsible for thieving women out of their money and in some cases, their sanity, he ended up serving a nominal sentence.

The Tinder Swindler manages to keep you engrossed throughout its length, and the format is interesting as well. The whole thing is well represented through reenactments and a deep dives into the emails, WhatsApp conversations, and voice messages between the women and Simon. Ultimately, the doc paints technology as a double-edged sword, but when the con runs so deep and when the authorities are so clueless, is it really justified to put the brunt of the blame on technology?