Modern technology has brought modern solutions to those who wish to find love easier, right on their phones. Tinder is a popular dating app where you can find single people in your area and chat with them. Some encounters on the app can be life changing, others can just be a funny story to tell your friends. However, for the women that were victims of Simon Leviev, the app led to something much darker.

The Netflix documentary “The Tinder Swindler” tells the stories from several women about their accounts of meeting and falling in love with Leviev. The first woman, Cecilie Fjellhøy, started off the movie by sharing what was seemingly the perfect romance. She shaped Leviev to be the ideal man you could only find in fictional romance books. He claimed to come from money passed down from his father. The wealth came from a family a diamond company, and he was known as “the king of diamonds.”

Fjellhøy was mesmerized by the fancy gifts, traveling in private jets and his persona as a loving man and involved father, co-parenting with his ex-wife. Leviev even asked Fjellhøy to move in with him. Yet, all good things must come to an end. 

Her dream turned into a nightmare when Leviev sent her a picture of him and his bodyguard bloodied, claiming that people were after him and he could no longer get access to his money. He asked Fjellhøy to connect their accounts so he could use the money so as to not be tracked, he also requested her to open multiple accounts. Thus, began her downfall into debt as he never paid her back. Fjellhøy wasn’t the only victim to this move. Another woman who was not romantically involved with Leviev, Pernilla Sjöholm, had also fallen for his lies.

Later, the women find out what Leviev had been doing: scamming them of money. When they caught onto this, Leviev threatened them to keep them from reporting him. After this discovery, Fjellhøy decided to get her revenge and reached out to VG, one of Norway’s largest newspapers. She wanted to know who he was and get her story out. The journalists searched all over, even visiting his mother in Israel, and learned about how he had already been imprisoned once in Finland for scamming women. Leviev used multiple names and frequently scammed women out of money. They confirmed with police that he was actually named Shimon Hayut, a 31-year old Israeli man.

Later on, they find Sjöholm and join forces, catching him when he has a meal with her. A photographer captures his photo in order to spread the truth of Leviev and his scams all over the internet.

The final story in the movie follows Ayleen Charlotte, who saw an article about Leviev where he was called “the Tinder swindler.” She confronts him and he denies he did anything wrong, so Charlotte pretends to believe him and decides she is going to “swindle the Tinder swindler.” Charlotte tricks him into giving her his clothes, which she takes and begins selling them online and keeps the money for herself. Leviev catches on and threatens her. Charlotte finds out where his location is after he gets on a flight and is able to track his location, sending the police where he finally was arrested. He was sentenced to 15 months in Israel, but was released after five months and is back on the streets.

Throughout the movie, I felt for these women and how they were tricked. But in the end, they had me cheering them on as they took their revenge. Leviev getting exposed all over the internet and on the news for his scamming must have given the women—and everyone watching—satisfaction. But, even though the truth was out, he did not spend much time in prison and is out in the world once again. The documentary highlights these unbelievable stories and shows that not everything people show us are as they seem. 

People like Leviev are still out there, but something tells us that women, like the three featured in this documentary, will make sure they get the justice they deserve.

I came into this movie fully blind, not knowing what the whole story was about. This documentary had a lot of great aspects, starting off the story with just how these women were tricked into this false fantasy. It builds up to the climax when we reach their revenge. This documentary is definitely a must, this story will have you at the edge of your seat the entire time and won’t disappoint. Grab a snack and get tucked in for a whole rollercoaster of emotions, because I definitely recommend any true crime lovers to watch this!