“The Tinder Swindler” was released on Netflix on Feb. 2, 2022. It is a documentary about women telling their experiences with a man that they matched with on the social media app Tinder. The movie follows the lives of three women: Cecilie Fjellhoy, Pernilla Sjoholm and Ayleen Charlotte. The Tinder Swindler is a man who used multiple names to gain money from each of the women. Throughout the movie, you see the different sides of how he is able to gain not only their trust, but also their money. The Tinder Swindler’s name changed throughout his attempt to scam money from the women, but the name used throughout most of the movie is Simon Leviev, a son to the wealthy CEO of LDD Diamonds. Throughout the movie, they never mentioned his real name, just the name he used to scam the women.
The director, Felicity Morris, shows the ins and outs of how the tinder swindler was able to scam the women into giving him money. It takes you through what he did with the money he got as well as what eventually happened when the women found out about it. Throughout the movie he claims that he needs thousands of dollars to help with a diamond deal. He manipulates them into thinking he is in danger, so they feel obligated to send him the money as he promises to pay them back.
Morris does a good job at capturing all the important parts in the movie itself. You can understand all the parts to the documentary as the women are explaining what they went through during the time that they were being scammed. The way the movie was directed is interesting because this took place in several different cities and countries, and you can put yourself in the country to imagine what it was like there while it was happening. At the start of the documentary, you hear the three sides to what happened. They are broken up into thirds, each woman having a key part to the storyline.
The main idea of this movie is that the three women wanted to swindle the Tinder Swindler. The women wanted to get back at Leviev for all the stuff that he put them through. Toward the end of the documentary, it starts to get filled with action because they finally start to take revenge. I would recommend this documentary to an audience who likes action mixed with true crime.
