5 lessons to take away from The Tinder Scammer
Miscellaneous / / February 16, 2022
This story will teach you to recognize gigolos and discourage the desire to help others at the expense of yourself.
The other day, the Network blew up the documentary "Swindler from Tinder" from the creators of "Hands off the cats! Hunt for an Internet Killer (2019). The film was released on February 2 and soon topped the Netflix ratings thanks to word of mouth.
It is about the Israeli fraudster Simon Leviev, who successfully pretended to be the son of a billionaire. The man met girls on Tinder and very convincingly lied to them that he was the heir to the diamond empire and that he had dangerous enemies.
The victims believed Leviev: the swindler dressed in branded clothes, treated the ladies in expensive restaurants and took them on luxury trips on private jets and yachts at his own expense. Only now other girls paid for all this splendor, having lent a large sum to the “heir”.
Story fraud Leviev ended sadly for all the participants, except for the criminal himself. He was assigned only 15 months in prison, of which he served only five. And when he was released, he launched courses on doing business.
But the main characters of the film - Cecilia Fjellhoy, Pernilla Sjoholm and Eileen Charlotte - are still paying off their debts. And they are just a few of Simon's victims: he swindled about $10 million from people around the world.
Such an outcome seems unfair, and women who have become victims of a swindler are sincerely sorry. But still from this semi-fantastic story in the spirit of "Catch Me If You Can» you can extract something useful.
1. Under the mask of the prince, gigolos and abusers often hide
At the beginning of the film, Cecilia Fjellhoy talks about her love for Disney cartoons. And this is a perfect illustration of why the heroines of most fairy tales are a bad role model. After all, the young and handsome sons of the oligarchs are unlikely to be enough for everyone who considers himself a real princess and is waiting for a knight in a Gucci sweater.
My first memories of love are Disney fairy tales. <...> You get used to the idea that the prince will come and save you. I think everyone deep down hopes that magic will happen to her.
Cecilia Feillhoy
In fact, there is nothing wrong with being a child at heart or believing in miracles. But gigolos and emotional manipulators are very fond of using this. AND romantic natures, convinced that the prince will burst into their lives on a white horse and solve all their problems, will have a hard time in the real world.
Simon skillfully played the role of such a “prince”: he was caring and generous, courting beautifully. But he created the illusion of a fairy tale with money from other people's accounts. And this is a good reason to idealize your partner less in the early stages of a relationship.
For example, here revelations a girl whom Levaev could not deceive: where the romantic Cecilia saw self-confidence, a more practical person saw arrogance and show off.
2. Altruism can be inappropriate and even dangerous
The same applies to people with cravings for self-sacrifice. Cecilia recalls with great fondness the cartoon "Beauty and the Beast", in which young Belle agrees to live in the monster's castle and at the end saves the beast from evil spells.
I remember the whole Beauty and the Beast by heart, I know all the songs. I adore Belle, she is just like me: a girl who dreams of happiness. She meets Him, and then she saves in a way, and He saves her, and they start life anew.
Cecilia Fjellhoy
One day, Simon sent her a picture of his bodyguard with a bloody head and asked for permission to use Cecilia's bank card while "enemies" were hunting for him. And the woman did, in fact, the same thing that her favorite heroine did: she saved her boyfriend. It was not in her mind to refuse him.
A good impulse ended deplorably for Cecilia - thousands of loans in nine different banks and nervous breakdown. And there was no danger at all: with the money of Fjellhoy, the swindler simply traveled in the company of other girls.
Needless to say, excessive kindness and responsiveness often lead to problems. No wonder scammers pretend to be volunteers or representatives of charitable foundations. Or they put pressure on the pity of the victim with stories about terrible diseases and other terrible circumstances - of course, fictional ones.
3. Taking a loan for another person is a bad idea
Even if you've known each other for a long time. Even if it seems to you that you are very close. When taking out loans for other people, remember that the obligations for payments will fall on your shoulders. After all, the bank does not care who exactly the loan was intended for.
You can understand the girls from the film: Simon has created for himself the image of "the owner of factories, newspapers, steamships." They could not even imagine that the offspring of the oligarch would not return the money lent to him.
But if you look at the situation soberly, it becomes clear that the head of an international company would never turn to his girlfriend for financial help. A real millionaire - if there were such people on Tinder - is full of lawyers and assistants who, in the event of an emergency, will provide him with cash, housing and security.
4. Credit fraud is hard to punish
It can hardly fit in my head that Simon almost did not suffer punishment for his atrocities, because, it would seem, his girls are victims in this situation. However, from the point of view of the law, they would be considered victims if the money was stolen without their knowledge and participation.
But in fact, Cecilia, Pernilla and other ladies themselves helped the criminal to rob themselves. And to present Leviev can only be a forgery of documents. And just remember how acute the issue of telephone fraud is in our country and how often the perpetrators are found (let's face it: almost never). And there are problems with the evidence base for such crimes all over the world.
5. Tinder itself is not dangerous. But people - yes
The temptation to see the moral of this whole story in the need to bypass dating apps is very strong. But everything is much more complicated. After all, many successfully find a mate on Tinder or other dating platforms without getting into thousands of debts. Yes, and to see the source of evil only in dating services is unreasonable: scammers perfectly exist outside the Internet.
Thus, the trickster Stephen Glass once made his career in journalism, inventing dozens of reports. And the Russian swindler Anna Sorokina, aka Anna Delvi, without a penny for her soul, pretended to be a millionaire. Moreover, she fooled the heads of people who knew her well in reality. By the way, about her on Netflix not so long ago released great art series.
Often victims of online dating are shamed for being careless (although victimblaming - this is very bad), but this is clearly not the case. Both Cecilia and Pernilla followed the basic rules when meeting online: they went on dates with Leviev in crowded places and even googled information about him before meeting.
But Simon's advantage was that he spared no time to communicate with the girls, gave them gifts, surrounded them with care, and even thought out a "legend" about his belonging to a real company.
The tragedy of the victims of the Tinder scammer is not that they tried to find a boyfriend in some wrong way, but that they were simply unlucky. It's just that scammers, including professional ones, can be found everywhere: both on the Internet and in life.
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