[Originally posted on LinkedIn, February 7 2022]
Everybody is talking about the new and highly rated Netflix documentary “The Tinder Swindler”. The film is about Shimon Hayut, a conman who posed on the dating app Tinder as a wealthy jet setter and diamond trader named Simon Leviev. Using his Tinder profile, he managed to meet women in Europe, take them to expensive dates, make them care about him, and eventually ask them to lend him huge amounts of money to help him out in a made-up crisis. He never paid back, but instead used their money to finance his expensive lifestyle. In the end, some of his victims took action by informing the press and by teaming up to help the police catch him and take him to court for fraud.
The film has been described as a true-crime documentary that is “jaw-dropping” , “astonishing and full of compassion for his female victims”. There is no doubt that the film is entertaining. It also succeeds in giving voice to the victims and in taking the viewer on their journey from joy to suffering to resilience. But is the Tinder Swindler’s Million Dollar scam really so surprising? In my view, there is a bigger story behind the story that nobody talks about – neither the documentary itself nor the numerous media commentators. Yes, on the surface level, it may be “shocking” that Hayut was able to use a fake identity to “seduce [his victims] with travel by private jet, luxury hotels and expensive dinners.” But what was so seductive about his lifestyle, and why did all the hotels and restaurants never suspected fraud? There is a larger social and cultural context that may explain what was really going on.
Wealth and high status are attractive. Numerous studies have shown that the display of wealth and high social status makes men more attractive, especially for long-term dating. All of Hayut’s victims were initially attracted to his lifestyle, including his private jet, his diamond business, and his expensive outfit. Showing off success unapologetically conveys confidence and makes men more likeable. This explains the popularity of womanizers like Dan Bilzerian – a poker-playing social media influencer who is equally known for his legal troubles and questionable wealth claims. But the attractiveness of displaying status and success goes beyond dating. For example, studies show that being well-dressed gets you better treatment by airlines and restaurants. In fact, many mafia bosses were known for dressing well, which gave them more legitimacy when meeting with business leaders and politicians. This may also explain why hotels and restaurants always welcomed Hayut and never suspected any fraud.
We are used to faking our identity. When first seeing Hayut’s Tinder profile, one of the victims – a serial dater and self-proclaimed “Tinder expert” – “checked” on Google if Hayut (aka Simon) was a real person. But why did her little Google check not lead to any suspicion? Perhaps what she was truly “checking” was if Hayut’s profile and communication “made sense” and if it matched her imagination of a successful and likeable man for the long-term who she could fall in love with. Hayut was a master in producing and manipulating so-called “honest signals” about his qualities – by creating a coherent, believable character: successful and charming, interested in true love, but also vulnerable and in need of help. The deeper truth is that especially social media is allowing us to “build virtual characters” in line with what we think makes us likeable and attractive on the “social market”. We accept that these characters do not resemble who we really are. Hayut simply took this principle to a new level.
Our lifestyles are mostly based on debt. Hayut was able to maintain his lifestyle mainly because he was financing it through loans taken out by the women he met through Tinder. The film convincingly shows how not being able to pay off loans can generate a lot of anxiety and financially ruin people. In fact, Hayut’s victims are still paying off their loans because he never returned the money he borrowed from them. They recently launched a GoFundMe campaign to financially recover from the fraud. But the more fundamental question is: Why did nobody – neither the victims nor the creditors – sufficiently check what these loans will be used for? And why was each of the victims able to accumulate up to $250,000 in loans in a short amount of time without proper security? Maybe this points to a much larger problem – our dependence on debt as an unquestioned foundation of our lifestyles. Not long ago, this dependence contributed to a global financial crisis. Hayut simply exploited the system in highly unethical ways. But without easy access to loans he would have never been able to do it.
We don't question where wealth comes from. One of Hayut’s claims to fame was that he inherited a diamond dealership from his father, a Russian oligarch. It is revealing that none of his victims had any issue with that, even though it is well-known that the diamond business is highly unethical and that the Russian oligarchy is entangled with organized crime. In fact, one of the victims mentions in the interview that she initially saw him as yet “another diamond guy”, because her previous lover was in the same business. This perspective is symptomatic for yet another fundamental problem. In a society that celebrates individual accumulation of wealth as an achievement, we often fail to ask if this money was earned in legitimate ways. For example, we are ok with money earned from financial speculation. We accept inflated top manager salaries. We applaud entrepreneurs for running successful businesses, even if they are unethical or damaging to communities and the environment. In a world where we don’t question the legitimacy of someone’s business and wealth, a scam like Hayut’s is more likely to succeed.
There is no measure for money in high society. The film also shows how a high society lifestyle can be disconnected from the reality of most people in the world. Hayut was able to “seduce [his victims] with travel by private jet, luxury hotels and expensive dinners.” partly because the women he approached had no serious issue with the amount of money he spent. In the life he portrayed to the women he dated, spending $5,000 on a hotel night was not outrageous. In fact, one of his dating partners remarked how beautiful one of these – overpriced – rooms was. The same woman was only mildly surprised when she learned that Hayut maxed out her new credit card in a few days - probably financing flights and parties he invited other women to. To put things into perspective, for the amount of $250,000, which one of the victims transferred to Hayut within a few weeks, around 250 rural Indian households could sustain a living for an entire year. Such a scam is therefore thinkable only in an economic and social context in which spending enormous amounts of money on luxury goods is acceptable or even desirable.
All this suggests that the story of "The Tinder Swindler” is much more than a crime drama about a fraudster and the suffering of his victims. It is also a story about how certain segments of our society work and what makes such scams possible in the first place. In my view, the documentary missed an opportunity to tell this larger story. But there is no doubt that the film makes us ask some important questions that go way beyond the story of "The Tinder Swindler".
* Photo source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/30/demand-for-private-jets-soars-as-rich-travellers-try-to-avoid-mosh-pit