“Inventing Anna” Vs. “Tinder Swindler”: Could It Happen To You?!

If you have been paying attention to the newest and latest added onto Netflix, then you have heard of “Tinder Swindler” and “Inventing Anna”. These two true crime series have recently been put up on Netflix and had started up a conversation about how and why these things happen. Not just that, but they look at the victims of these people, and either slam on them or feel for them.

The documentary “Tinder Swindler” is about the exploits of Shimon Hayut, also known as Simon Leviev. The scammer reportedly took $10 million from women he met on dating apps. The series focuses on allegations against Hayutm where he is accused of courting women on dating apps under false pretenses, pretending to be in danger, taking money, and then completely disappearing.

Hayut followed a pattern -- he would match with women on Tinder, take them on an expensive, extravagant first date, and slowly build their relationship while he traveled and continue to date other women. Hayut would confide in them that he was worried a nebulous group of his “enemies” was just around the corner. Eventually, he would send a photo of his bleeding bodyguard, allegedly injured by these enemies, to incite further concern. Once that groundwork had been laid, he would urgently message each “girlfriend” to say that his credit card could not be used for security reasons and ask her to open a new one under her name for him to use. From there, he was off to the races.

According to Netflix, Hayut was never charged for what he did to Cecilie Fjellhøy, Pernilla Sjöholm, and Ayleen Charlotte, the three women featured in the docuseries. This was because his actions took place in different countries, making it harder for him to be prosecuted. 

“Inventing Anna” on the other hand, starts with a warning: “This whole story is completely true. Except for all that parts that are totally made up.”

In 2018, New York Magazine broke the internet with journalist Jessica Pressler’s story about an alleged German heiress who was accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from banks, financial institutions, and her friends from the years 2013 to 2017. Turns out, "Anna Sorokin" was a Russian-born, German-raised scam queen who somehow fooled New York’s super-rich and powerful to bow down to her to the tune of more than $275,000.

Both these series beg the question: why and how were either of these con artists so believable?

It isn’t excessive gullibility or stupidity that led people to be duped by fraudsters. Rather, all humans are primed by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to not only trust people but to especially think well of those who present as being exceptionally wealthy, saysProfessor Joe Forgas, a social psychologist at UNSW. It still might be hard to believe that people in Sorokin’s circle would willingly hand over their money to someone they hardly knew, yet psychologists have watched participants hand over their money to strangers for many years across hundreds of experiments, also known as “building investments”.

Anna Sorokin was so believable because her requests were often accompanied by elaborate explanations and justifications; because of the human instinct to trust, more people believed her than not. As much as we, as an audience, love to say that we would have been able to see right through her lies, it is more likely that you would just go along with it just to avoid awkward confrontation.

Differently to those that fell for the stories Sorokin wove for her peers, Hayut’s victims met a different fate. Comments from the public have been scorning those who were scammed, acting like they should’ve known better. But would have they really? Much of the social media discourse surrounding “The Tinder Swindler” seems to dismiss the serious fraud Hayut committed and instead mocks and blames the women whose lives he messed with. The media has pinned the victims as predators because they were attracted to his wealth over who he really was. Romance scams are particularly damaging because victims don’t just lose money, they also lose a relationship they were led to believe was real.

People get cheated on, get led on, and even get scammed while they’re in trusting relationships. Why are we still victim-blaming when people who are doing the wrong get little to no repercussions? Hayut is out and free after 15 months of scamming women and committing different forms of fraud, all while his victims are still paying off debts that he made.

Neither Sorokin nor Hayut fit the narrow narrative we have of scammers being hooded people sitting in a dark room behind a computer, tapping away at codes. Instead, they led people to believe they had all the money in the world to go on eye-wateringly expensive shopping sprees and holidays when the truth was that neither of them had a penny to their names. They are believable because they are people just like us -- people with whom we build relationships, and people we are led to love and care about. These two shows have given us two different perspectives on the scamming world and its various victims. The reason these things happen is that we are led to trust people, and it is not our fault when people take advantage of us.