The three victims in Netflix’s Tinder Swindler documentary have accrued more than £100,000 in donations since launching their GoFundMe page.
Cecilie Fjellhøy, Pernilla Sjoholm and Ayleen Charlotte were the victims of romance fraud at the hands of Simon Leviev - whose real name is Shimon Hayut - and opened up about their experiences in the TV show.
They all lost thousands of pounds to the pretend playboy, who, alongside his team of professional con artists, has swindled countless women to fund his luxury lifestyle.
The girls set up the fundraiser in an attempt to get their “lives back”. In a statement on the page the trio said: “We three (Ayleen, Pernilla and Cecilie) have been completely shocked and floored by the flood of compassion and support from everyone. The sheer love is more than we ever expected, and we appreciate you all so much.”
Norwegian Fjellhøy was a student living in London when she met Hayut, and was whisked off her feet by the scammer.
Charlotte met him on Tinder and ended up loaning him £103,000; it was only when she read a newspaper article branding him a conman, who ‘seduced and swindled young women for millions’, that she understood who he really was.
Stockholm-based Sjoholm had been on various trips to visit Hayut - who called himself the Prince of Diamonds - but after being contacted by journalists from VG, she turned him in to the police.
Before targeting the women in the documentary, he spent two years in a Finnish prison for defrauding multiple women, and after he was released in 2017, he went back to Israel, before fleeing the country for Europe to avoid being arrested.
However, he was eventually caught for using a fake passport in Greece in 2019, and was extradited to Israel and sentenced to fifteen months in prison for theft, fraud, and forgery of documents.
These were all charges from 2011, and unrelated to the accusations made against him in the Netflix documentary.
Hayut was then released after just five months on good behaviour.
In response to the three women bravely sharing their ordeal, they were inundated with support from viewers, messages of goodwill and cash donations.
At the time of writing, the fundraiser has reached £114,755.
The women wrote: “We realise there are a thousand other worthy causes to donate to, and remain forever grateful if you choose to donate to this one. All we want are our lives back.”
