"THE TINDER SWINDLER":

Based on the oral testimonies of three women, this feature film reconstructs how a man who
claimed to be named Simon Leviev and the heir to a diamond magnate swindled these women
by asking them for large sums of money that they lent him and he never returned. What makes
this whole story more appealing is how they came across him: through a Tinder match.

As they swiped their fingers on their cell phone screens, they stumbled upon the profile of a
handsome young man, whose photos revealed a life of luxury in various and diverse locations
around the world. Furthermore, the profile had a link leading to Simon's Instagram account,
where his character as a wealthy heir was reinforced through other photos and the large
number of accounts following him. Cecilie, Pernilla, and Ayleen, in different ways, felt seduced
by what they saw on social media. But their fascination continued and was reinforced when
they confirmed that Simon Leviev's lifestyle, staying in luxury hotels, dining in expensive
restaurants, and attending VIP parties, was real. Of course, later they would discover that what
sustained that façade was a kind of chain of swindled creditors—like themselves—to whom he
asked for money under the pretext that his family's enemies were threatening them with
death, making it difficult to access their ample bank accounts. "I'll pay you back tomorrow, my
love," were his words—worth noting that the relationship with Pernilla was not romantic but
rather friendly.

Although brief and bland, this summary of the documentary allows us to delve into three
issues that I would like to reflect on throughout the text. However, I do not promise to answer
them, but rather to raise them and put them on the table. We will now focus on emotional
scams, romance victims, and mysteries of love. Join me, although I cannot guarantee that I
won't disappoint you.

**Emotional Scams: Adjusting the Pencil**

By definition, scams involve sums of money intertwined with deceit, lies, and ill intentions.
They become artifacts with rich potential to delve into the interconnections, crosses, and
pairings between the material and the intimate, between those two spheres that we like to
think of as separate. From a more disinterested perspective, which tends to condemn how
money stains relationships, we could emphasize in the case of the Tinder swindler the harm he
did to these women while playing with their feelings. From this perspective, we could
understand the response of one of the protagonists of this story when asked if she still used
Tinder. She didn't hesitate to confirm it and explained that she was still open to finding love. It
would seem that the debts she incurred to lend money to her boyfriend—because she
considered him as such—were not enough to end her desire to fall in love and be reciprocated.

This image that what really matters are feelings and not money contrasts with another that,
with cynical malice, would say that, ultimately, what matters is money. Putting the emphasis
not so much on emotions but on the deficits in the victims' bank accounts, with an arrogant
smile, one would point out the brilliance of the verse he used to defraud them. The balance
tipped towards the economic is glimpsed at the moment when the third victim—appearing in
order of appearance in the documentary—takes her boyfriend's designer clothes to sell them
and recover some of the money he owed her.

A key point of this story is that the scam is both emotional and economic. In fact, such a
separation is spurious, nonsensical. To scam, one must deceive, and in that very deceit Simon
Leviev deployed a profile of a millionaire who, in addition to being rich, was sensitive, who
listened to them, sent them messages all the time from different places—like the private plane
he was traveling on. Hence, there were moments when I wondered if this type of scam is
comparable to other white lies like shaving off a few years on a Tinder profile or photoshopping
a picture to look better. Ultimately, who has never hidden something about themselves to
please potential partners? Or, on the contrary, exaggerated their feats—even presenting
themselves as total losers—to make their avatar more attractive? In erotic circuits, we always
provide information that is not necessarily so accurate. Wouldn't that thing we call "chamuyo"
in Argentina be an act of scam?

However, when the materialistic breeze grabs us and places us back, we cannot pretend that
any deceptive figure is the same. That someone shaves off two or three years or says they are a
couple of centimeters taller is not the same as the thousands of euros that Simon Leviev took
for granted he had and that translated into the debts these women face with their banks.
Numbers can lie, yes. But not all lies are of equal magnitude.

Hence, more than an emotional scam, I think Tinder's case could be classified as a plain scam.
A contraption that intertwines the emotional and the economic. And that, for the victims, is
not minor.

**Victims of Romance: Disney's Pedagogy**

One of these women, Cecilie, explained that, seeing Simon's lifestyle and believing him to be a
descendant of Leviev, she thought she was living in a Disney story. Like those ladies, sometimes
princesses, she found her prince charming: handsome, charming, heir. Hence, Cecilie can be
seen as a victim of more than just the Tinder swindler: her victimizer was also Disney and its
pedagogy of romantic love.

Perhaps that's why on social media, Cecilie and the other women have been pointed at as
fools. In a cry of "Friend, wake up," it was pointed out how could a person accept to travel to
Bulgaria on a private plane with someone you just met on Tinder. It would seem that it is not
difficult for many people to quickly realize that there was a big olfactory problem with these
women: "How could they not smell anything fishy?" would be a valid question.
Anyway, that criticism towards the victims of the swindler underestimates, or at least neglects,
the power that some cultural messages have had—and still have—on how love is and should
be. In the case of heterosexual women, this touches a very deep nerve. Perhaps this explains
why the best works reflecting on this issue come from women—mostly feminists—who
decided to analyze the phenomenon. With the concern of deconstructing the love mandates
that are sustained in movies, novels, advertisements, and a plethora of other discourses, these
criticisms point out the damages caused by patriarchal ways of narrating romances.

Disney's love pedagogy, then, constructs women as subjects who, in a passive place, wait to be
reached by Cupid's arrows and thus run into the arms of their conquerors, men who in turn
meet certain requirements. This way of constructing love stories also produces, at the same
time, models of masculinity a little difficult to attain by flesh-and-blood men. As most men do
not resemble those ideals in movies, it seems that it is easier to swipe their finger on the
screen and move on to another profile. Perhaps, with luck, Simon Leviev appeared there.
Amidst all the swiping, suddenly came Simon Leviev, the closest thing to a Disney prince that
Cecilie found.

While Disney's pedagogy of love has its concrete effects on the love stories of many women,
this does not mean that there are not many people dealing with their love problems in ways
that are