Conman Simon Leviev has scammed over $10 million out of unsuspecting victims, and Netflix's The Tinder Swindler shares the experiences of three of these women: Cecilie Fjellhoy, Pernilla Sjoholm, and Ayleen Charlotte. These women all met Simon on the Tinder dating app where he pretended to be the son of a billionaire, Lev Leviev, before gradually requesting to borrow more and more money that he never intended to pay back. Cecilie Fjellhoy took out multiple loans to finance his requests and ended up acquiring more than $250,000 in debt.
The Tinder Swindler's Cecilie was truly in love with who she believed Simon to be, and was blindsided when she learned it was all a lie. Simon had been using her money to pay for excursions with other women, and, in turn, used theirs to support his outings with Cecilie. Although her efforts to share her story with journalists eventually led to Simon's arrest, he never faced charges for what he put them through in the Netflix documentary. While Simon currently enjoys life as a free man in Israel, Cecilie still has to live with what happened to her.
Cecilie now works to ensure that what she went through in The Tinder Swindler does not happen to anyone else. Her experiences were emotionally and mentally traumatizing, causing her to check herself into a psychiatric facility for a brief time because she had become suicidal, but neither the police nor the banks seemed to care. In an interview (via GQ), Cecilie lamented that "there's so much that is wrong" with the way society treats fraud victims. She has since founded a nonprofit organization called Action: Reaction to support those affected by fraud. Cecilie and Pernilla have expressed hope that spreading the word about what they went through can lead to legislation protecting future victims suffering from similar situations.
As devastating as it has been for Cecilie in the aftermath of the Tinder Swindler's con, the lack of help from police and the banks has been the worst part. She told ELLE that she's the only victim who has been a defendant in court. Four banks have taken her to court, and her fear of creditors in Norway have made her unable to return to her home country: "You experience true anxiety and panic attacks from checking your emails and letters because you never wanted to be [in this situation] and scared of debt collectors." Yet, one of the banks she'd taken out a loan with has proven to be an exception to this rule and written off her debt entirely. An employee from the bank also appeared as a witness in one of her court cases, later expressing to her his confusion over why other banks refuse to be forgiving. He explained that banks "have insurance for these kinds of situations."
Netflix's The Tinder Swindler reveals that Cecilie has remained on the Tinder app. She has not lost hope of meeting her true love and finding happiness despite everything she has gone through and has also maintained a close friendship with Pernilla. They regularly appear in each other's social media, and are working together to help prevent what they've suffered from happening to anyone else.