Arguably, there are two sorts of people. Those who are perfectly capable of resisting street vendors coercing them into buying ‘Dead Sea’ cosmetics and those who give in to the pressure, take a sample, then listen patiently to the spiel and allow themselves to be bamboozled into buying overpriced serums and moisturisers they neither need nor want, and probably cannot afford.
I am every street hawker’s nightmare. I’ll begrudgingly take the sample if I’m in the mood or when I’m low on moisturiser; but the very idea of someone standing in the street, throwing themselves at me and grovelling is an instant turn-off. I am always more interested in something which is ‘not for sale’. Discontinued perfumes too and foodstuffs which are out of stock.
Anyone who has watched the engrossing Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler will have immediately worked out on which side of the divide they belong – the sort who wouldn’t have given ‘Simon Leviev’ the time of day, or those who would have fallen for his pitch and been swindled. Spoiler alert! If you haven’t yet watched the documentary and want to, now might be a good time to stop reading.
The Tinder Swindler tells the story of Israeli born Shimon Hayut, a serial con artist who uses the alias Simon Leviev and introduces himself as the billionaire heir to a diamond fortune. Leviev lives the life of Riley at the expense of the multiple women he meets on the dating app Tinder.
A first date with Leviev would typically start at a five-star hotel and morph into a spontaneous trip on his private jet. His is a world of super yachts, designer clothes, expensive sunglasses, bodyguards, flashy cars, lavish dining and all the trappings of a world that belongs solely to the seriously rich.
The women do their ‘due diligence’ (or what passes for it) and quickly discover that the pictures on Tinder and Instagram aren’t just online gold-plating but are indeed closely aligned to the ‘Life of Leviev’. Everything seems at first to add up. But what the women don’t realise, of course, is that, very soon, they will be paying for these luxuries.
Once the groundwork has been laid and he’s reeled in the women with daily texts, bouquets and promises of “happily ever after”, the ‘emergency call’ soon follows. Disturbing and ‘bloody’ photographs of him and his bodyguard are promptly sent, along with an urgent and desperate request: I’m in trouble, says Leviev, my enemies are after me, I can’t access my millions, this is a temporary hitch – Help!
Caught up in the whirlwind of romance, and confident that he’s good for the money, the women take out loan after loan in their own names. Repeated promises that he’ll refund the money fall through. One victim took out €250,000 in loans before she finally wised up to what was happening.
If this were the plot to a movie (and not a real-life documentary) it would be too farfetched for words. One is left stunned by the scale and magnitude of the financial damage Leviev has caused (an estimated 10 million). Equally disconcerting is the extent to which he was able to dupe so many women over such a long period of time without ever being caught.
Complying with someone’s wishes for fear that they’ll leave you is the biggest red flag of all- Michela Spiteri
You’re probably reading this and thinking that you’d never have fallen for the Tinder swindler. And perhaps you’re even berating these women – silently, of course – for being so gullible. I’m not on Tinder and, indeed, find the very idea quite horrifying. I’m also allergic to men dripping designer clothes, whose idea of cool is to pose for photographs on super yachts, helicopters or up against the bonnet of a flashy car.
But that is neither here nor there. I think it is safe to say that we are all guilty, to some degree, of ignoring red flags. And speaking of heirs to fortunes and red-flags, I can’t resist a passing reference to Prince Andrew – the Duke of York and member of the British Royal family to boot. He’s not only been red-flagged but also red-carded, although he’s lucky enough to have a mother who can afford to bail him out and make the nasty smell go away.
Quite frankly, many of us will have stayed in relationships we should have left months, or even years, before. It matters little that we weren’t subjected to extortion and bankruptcy.
The main point – and this concerns women mostly – is that some of us were lumped (dumped?) with a far worse deal than emotional and financial bankruptcy. A few were even robbed of their lives.
Despite my own misgivings about dating apps, I realise that many men and women use them successfully and even go on to find lasting happiness. Still, in a world of creeps and conmen, perverts and predators, serial killers and sex maniacs, abductors and arseholes, where we scrupulously lock our cars and our homes and instal state-of-the-art home security systems, the idea of getting dressed up to go out on a date with a perfect stranger, who may turn out to be any one of those things, is perplexing at best and downright alarming at worst.
That said, the dating app wasn’t really the problem here. The bigger problem is that we have been raised in a culture that has us believe that we are destined to find our soulmate – that there’s one person ‘out there’ who will sweep us off our feet and save us from ourselves.
The bitter truth, of course, is that seeking a soulmate at any cost is actually a pretty sure way to find yourself unhappy and alone. And, yes, sometimes even with a burning hole in your bank account (or worse).
When someone asks you to do something which doesn’t sit right with you, that is a red-flag moment. You should not ignore it. Complying with someone’s wishes for fear that they’ll leave you is the biggest red flag of all. Do the leaving yourself. Run for your life.