A documentary that is not boring and feels like an actual movie? Netflix always got it. Now they came up with the story of a professional con in the crime romance documentary movie, The Tinder Swindler.
Directed by Felicity Morris, The Tinder Swindler was first released on February 2, 2022, on Netflix. It runs for around 114 minutes.
With Kristoffer Kumar as the cinematographer and Julian Hart as the editor, this movie follows the story of an Israeli con artist called Simon Leviev. He used to turn to the dating app Tinder to find women and manipulate their feelings to give him a large amount of money, which he uses to support his lavish lifestyle. His method is by using a Ponzi scheme, scam one woman to attract another woman, and the cycle goes on.
All of the records that are involved in this movie are real and based on the story of the victims, as well as from the news outlet. The movie heavily took the resource from Norwegian news media named VG, which reported and subsequently contributed to arrest him, in the feature with the title The Tinder Swindler as well.
Netflix has successfully made this documentary film into something that people actually want to see, made it as if it is an actual entertaining movie. It also can serve as a warning for people who are now really into Tinder or other dating applications, to be more careful with people whom they meet in the internet.
Considering how it relates with people nowadays, no wonder that The Tinder Swindler explodes and becomes popular. The movie reached 45.8 million hours views across the globe in the first week of its release. It also became the top 10 most watched in 92 countries.
Obviously, people love this show. IMDB gives this movie 7.4 out of 10 scores, while Rotten Tomatoes impressively gives it 95% critics’ review and 82% audience score.
So, what is actually the movie about and how is the ending? Read more to find out, but we have to warn you that it will be full of *major spoilers*.
The Tinder Swindler: What Is It About?
The Tinder Swindler follows the story of the con artist Shimon Yehuda Hayut who has scammed so many women all over the world. The Times of Israel reported that in 2017, Shimon Hayut tried to avoid trial for various fraud-related charges, and flew to Europe. For the next couple of years, he traveled around Scandinavian countries and legally changed his name into Simon Leviev, posing himself as the son of Russian-Israel billionare Lev Leviev, the the owner of the giant diamond company.
He met women on Tinder and ran a Ponzi scheme. He tried to woo women by giving them expensive gifts, luxurious dinners, and flied with private jet to many countries, partying every night, with the money that he got from the previous women. He later will ask to borrow money from the women to pay for his lavish lifestyle and to buy luxurious gifts to the next women. He told the women that he borrows the money for security reason from his enemies. And the cycle keeps going on.
The Tinder Swindler: Ending Explained
At the end of the documentary The Tinder Swindler, we can see that from the help of big news media outlet to publicize Simon Leviev’s case, a woman who is also his victim became aware of him as a con artist and helped them to arrest Simon. She then trapped him and finally he got caught.
He was charged for faking his passport with a fake name David Sharon. He, however, wasn’t charged for the fraud. He was sentenced 15 months in jail, but only served five months. The women whom he has been fraud still have to pay for the debts they took for Simon until this day.
Simon refused to be part of the documentary, and even threat that he will sue Netflix (Enola Holmes) for defamation. It is currently reported that his bodyguard will sue Netflix as well.
Simon now lives his normal life as a business advisor, has a Russian model as his girlfriend, and still lives a glamorous life. It is still unclear how he gets the money, but there is no proof that he’s involved in fraud cases again, since he has been banned on Tinder.
Tinder officially stated, “We have conducted internal investigations and can confirm Simon Leviev is no longer active on Tinder under any of his known aliases”.
