The Tinder Swindler

The Tinder Swindler

Posing as a wealthy, jet-setting diamond mogul, an Israeli conman wooed women online then conned them out of millions of dollars. Now some victims plan for payback.

  • Released: 2022-02-02
  • Runtime: 114 minutes
  • Genre: Crime, Documentaries
  • Stars: Cecilie Fjellhøy, Shimon Yehuda Hayut, Pernilla Sjöholm, Ayleen Charlotte, Kristoffer Kumar, Erlend Ofte Arntsen, Natalie Remøe Hansen, Josh King Madrid (JetSet)
  • Director: Felicity Morris
 Comments
  • petersjoelen - 28 February 2024
    no accountability for women
    This documentary is fascinating, not because it is that good, but because it gives us a glimpse into the psyche of women and mainly what drives them instinctively when it comes to choosing a partner.

    We all know that women rely much more on emotion than on rational thinking, and our conman Simon managed to exploit that to the full, an emotional rollercoaster ride full of mystery and danger, a rich guy with an exceptional lifestyle and even his own bodyguard.

    Cecilia shows at the beginning how she actually lives in a fantasy world in which she is ridiculously critical when it comes to choosing a partner (more than 1200 matches but still no relationship) and in which the beauty and the beast fairy tale is a kind of benchmark for her in her subconscious. .

    You can actually say that this woman does not want to marry him, but purely based on the lifestyle that he can offer her.

    Then the tone of the documentary itself, because that also says a lot about the state of our society today.

    In all its subjectivity, this film does not dare or want to point out to the girls involved their own responsibilities for their stupid choices and decisions.

    This is evident in the conversations with the women themselves, but also in the decision of the documentary makers not to allow any family members or friends to speak who could possibly be critical of the irresponsibly stupid and sometimes even potentially dangerous behavior of the women.

    How is it possible that women can make such irresponsible choices but no one is there to point out how stupidly they have behaved?

    Even afterwards there is not a word of criticism to be found, no self-reflection, no sense of reality, not even by the makers of this documentary themselves, nothing, they are not held accountable at all and can simply continue as if nothing had happened.

    No doubt there will be plenty of simps ready to help them get out of debt so why change your behavior?
  • jkramerdesigner - 23 October 2022
    confused
    This documentary leaves a really big question mark, I understand the man is a con artist but I would like to understand how he has managed to sustain a living that clearly needs to be coming from somewhere else other than conning woman... he doesn't seem charming or intelligent.. I would have wished for more of an insight.. who is the child?

    It felt the journalists from VG just had sticky fingers.. what were they even trying to achieve? The story has to be bigger than the story of these three woman.

    Why can't this man be prosecuted? Why the victims can't be compensated?as a viewer I would like to know much more.
  • vostf - 16 August 2022
    Lame exploitative documentary about an important issue
    Maybe it is exactly the treatment Netflix imposed, or it is what the director understood she was commissioned to put together. Anyway, no matter who's to blame for this sensationalist pedestrian true crime TV-movie, you get the worst of Reality TV-oriented 'creative' focus.

    This is terrifying: if you simply watch this as a time-filer, getting half-bored by the sluggish chronological narrative and half-dumbfounded by the grotesque lavish details of the scam those girls are jumping up for, you are forcefully driven to feel like any other member of a Real-TV show audience.

    In short you are being conned as a viewer to just laugh at the stupid cast and feel good because "you are so much clever than those laggards." Most TV networks went for these low jabs and Netflix initially came up with an alternative creative positioning that would let you chose substantial content and expect some edge and some talent to package it. Now Netflix is just rushing to cater for the lowest common denominator: if it is not in the long tail that addresses a specific audience, a specific market, it has to be produced just like any other trash TV. Except you have to pay a subscription for it.

    Initially I got bored by the overlong exposé of Cecilie's enthusiastic Tinder encounter. She naively exposed herself as so gullible, so vain, so shallow that it was a pain and I lost any interest in the story I might have had to start with. Later on I finished watching it and it gets more interesting as it basically sticks to the Norwegian journalists' investigation. But it was still a very bad documentary that does not do justice neither to the investigative work nor to the victims who are just interviewed "paparazzi-style" like sensationalistic fodder.

    Thuis choosing a female director and delivering this is a disgrace, a real betrayal of whatever lessons people should learn from the only real work here, the original investigative journalism.

    I cannot blame people for being very harsh on the girls because this is precisely the purpose of the one and only narrative focus here. After I stopped to think about this mess I realized that these girls showed a lot of courage to come forward and denounce this Tinder prickish coward. Sure their courage is acknowledged somewhere near the end but give me a break, it is just mentioned after 90min. Of an exploitative exposition that only results in actually shaming the victims.

    If you think a minute about it, don't you think that many men have been and are still being scammed by Russian dolls or other sugar daddy dreams for instance? Do you think any of these men would come forward to come to terms with the ordeal and to prevent other naive males to get trapped? Frankly, no. These men would rather die with their wounded self-esteem than confess to having been fooled for being too naive about the amount of luck they can have on a single day. Worse, some would find grievance in knowing that they won't be the last ones to fall prey to a gross scheme.

    Men brag about their wins (be it poker, stocks, crypto currencies...) and stay mum about their losses. Women have a better ability to open up and look up for closure.
  • nillbass - 6 June 2022
    This is simply bad.
    You know what is good in a documentary?

    Some interesting and very very unimaginable happening. Some different characters you almost don't believe they existed.

    This documentary here does not have it. It is about a random and ordinary guy, and a random and most ordinary girls, which only seeing them in this documentary you see they are the typical people that need to be deluded, deceived and everything those type of guys do.

    When you see it comming you just can not be envolved, you see and cringe from it, it is so terrible it hurts your intelligence, you lose your hope of a better and more smart society.