Madeline
Just from the name, The Tinder Swindler, it is pretty clear what this movie is about. From the moment the movie starts, it can be expected that there is someone who is using Tinder to find victims to swindle. The surprising part is not this, but how he does it and to what extent. This is not your typical petty crook, this is the Tinder Swindler.
Premise of The Tinder Swindler
The documentary starts with a pretty girl from Norway who meets a wealthy man, Simon, on Tinder. On the first date he falls for her so hard that he invites her on a trip he is taking that night. He sends a Rolls Royce for her to pack her things and take her to a private jet and when they land, they spend a romantic night together in a luxury hotel. From there they are zero to one hundred and is the most loving boyfriend ever. He is attentive and buys her nice things. He is always sending the sweetest messages. He is the perfect guy. This is every girl’s dream, right?
The problem is that he is busy with work and not always around and his business in the diamond industry is dangerous. There are lots of his enemies in the blood diamond world after him. To protect himself from these enemies and continue to travel for work to make money, he needs credit cards that are not under his name. As his girlfriend and someone who trusts him, she gives him credit cards and cash as he asks. When he writes her a check back, the bank will not clear it, leaving her over $250,000 in debt. And this is only where the story begins. We then meet the girl who the Tinder Swindler was partially spending this cash on.
The Depth of the Crimes
As the documentary gets further and further into Simon’s life and who he is, we learn that he comes from a poor family and has set up this Ponzi scheme where he gets a girl to fall in love with him making him extra attractive by having insane amounts of wealth. Meanwhile, he is using credit cards and cash from previous girls to convince these girls he is worth money. Once they trust him, he does the same to them.
But this does not stop at girls on Tinder, he also surrounds himself with people who do favors for him. He convinces hundreds if not thousands of people to trust him and benefit from his greed, all the while he is using them to either convince people to give him money or to give him money as a trusted person.
The purpose of the documentary is to put his face and his name out there. To inform the public of this crook. And to make sure no one else is taken advantage by him and, if possible, land him back in jail or have him pay these women back in some way. Because he is a small time crook, the authorities are not actively on the search for him. And he is now back in Israel, working on the same scheme on new girls.
Final Thoughts
The title of this documentary is a bit misleading. Tinder is not the problem here. There is all kinds of ways someone like this would be able to attract new victims into their web. Proven by his ability to attract “friends” of all ages and all genders, Tinder was only a tool he used to find vulnerable women who could quickly trust him. This documentary has caused me to look around and not trust anyone with or without wealth.
