The Tinder Swindler

Director: Felicity Morris
Year Released: 2022
Rating: 2.0

For years, Israeli-born Shimon Yehuda Hayut - who goes by "Simon Leviev" to claim he's related to wealthy businessman Lev Avnerovich Leviev - has been using the dating app Tinder and conning women into taking out massive loans to pay for his extravagant lifestyle in what turns out to be a multi-national Ponzi scheme.  The documentary really wants to assert that these women who got "fooled" are "victims" - and it really gets defensive in this regard - but the truth is that the thing that drew them to "matching" with Leviev is the fact that they felt they could live in this fantasy world he constructed to fuel their own egos and essentially "brag" on social media.  That is the only explanation for how they were able to mentally get past the umpteen red flags this guy throws out ... oh, and by the way, he's currently out of jail and still pulling off the same cons.  One of the women who got suckered says she's still on Tinder because she's "looking for love" ... I hate to break it to her, but that's probably not the move.