The Times Magazine 13A further week or so passes, along with more
and more demands from Leviev for wired cash- $250,000 all told (“More, probably,” she’ll tell
me) – before Cecilie Fjellhoy begins to wonder
if everything is quite as Leviev claims. The
money he keeps promising to transfer into
her account in repayment never appears.
Eventually, at his bidding, Fjellhoy flies back
to Amsterdam where Leviev – suddenly cold
towards her – gives her a cheque for $500,000.
Fjellhoy returns to London, discovers that the
cheque cannot be cashed, and begins to truly
understand that she has been had.
What Simon Leviev was in fact doing in
the time he claimed to be in hiding from his
enemies is setting up a friendship with another
Tinder user, Pernilla Sjoholm, a saleswoman
from Stockholm, one which, while not romantic
(“A little short for my taste, but easy to talk
to,” Sjoholm says of her first impressions
of Leviev), was every bit as intense as the
relationship Fjellhoy believed herself to be in.
After matching with Leviev, Sjoholm was
flown from Stockholm to Amsterdam for
coffee and an introductory chat, felt a non-
sexual yet nevertheless profound connection
with him and entered into a constant exchange
of texts, voice notes and FaceTime calls with
him. She felt gratified and supported when he
flew last minute to Stockholm to take her out
for a drink because she was having a bad day,
stood amused (if a little bored) on the sidelines
of champagne-fuelled nights in nightclubs
in Mykonos, which led to after-parties in
$5,000-a-night hotels – all of which was
funded by Cecilie Fjellhoy’s mounting debts.
This was how Simon Leviev – or rather,
Shimon Huyut, an Israeli citizen previously
convicted and imprisoned for fraud against
three Finnish women in 2015 – operated. He
worked over one woman after another after
another, meeting them on Tinder, dazzling
them with intense, instant emotional connection,
reassuring them with the impression of
intoxicating wealth, then ripping them off,
so he might dazzle then rip off the next.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re
thinking: great yarn, but really – silly women!
How could they have fallen for that? He’s so
obviously a wrong ’un! You’re thinking, my
sympathy is pretty limited, TBH – that could
never happen to me. I’m too smart, not nearly
as easily impressed by the faux trappings of
wealth. Or, it’s something to do with them
being Scandinavian, probably: his sleaziness
got lost in translation. Or, maybe it’s because
they’re beautiful, so not used to the world
treating them unkindly, not alert to the red
flags less lovely women might pick up on. Or,
it’s because they’re the Instagram generation,
so caught up in the appearance of things,
they’re oblivious to how things actually are.
I know you’re thinking this, because, when
Norwegian newspaper VG published Fjellhoy
and Sjoholm’s story – having worked with them
to expose Leviev, because the authorities to
which they reported him proved only interested
in pursuing Fjellhoy for the money she
now owed – that’s exactly how the internet
responded, and because every time I tell
anyone who hasn’t yet seen the film about
these two Tinder swindler victims, that’s what
they say. Not, “Poor them,” but, “Daft them.”
I thought it too – at least, watching the
early part of the documentary. “Who gets
on a private jet with someone just hours after
swiping right on them?” I tutted. But then
I met Cecilie Fjellhoy and Pernilla Sjoholm.
Cecilie Fjellhoy is now 33, as bright-eyed
and clear-skinned and pretty as she seems on
screen. She tells me she was the golden girl of
her family, before this happened, the one who
never put a foot wrong (“Education, good job,
apartment in Oslo...”).
She’s funny, sweary, smart, both very sweet
and very raw, still obviously shattered by the
shame her experience inflicted on her – the
shame of the scam, the shame of feeling
heartbroken nonetheless at the demise of
the “relationship”, the shame of being taken
apart in court by the banks to whom she owed
money, all of whom were out to prove she’d
been in on Leviev’s scam.
She laughs when the Netflix PR tells her
she needn’t answer any question of mine she’s
uncomfortable with and says none of them
could compare to the ones put to her by the
banks’ lawyers: “They’re evil. Trying to make
what happened my fault.” She is capable of
laughing at the more incredulous aspects of
her story, and seems eternally, persistently,
almost preposterously romantic. “I love love.
I think I have been in love and I know I can
do it again. He’s taken away enough of me;
he’s not going to take away that.”
But she also makes casual reference to
how she became suicidal in the aftermath of
Leviev’s exposure, spent time on a psychiatric
ward and is now officially bankrupt. She
understands why people respond to her story
with disbelief, she says; once, she might have
done the same. “Thinking about maybe, more
Nigeria scams, those kind of things, I’d be
thinking, ‘OK, you should know that if a
doctor in Afghanistan is reaching out to you
and his picture is gorgeous...’ But now I’ve
become much more soft because I understand
how the human brain works, and these people
are good. Take out a big fishing net, you know,
and there are some people that will say no,
and there are some people that will say yes.”
We meet in the lobby of the Charlotte
Street Hotel in central London, the sort of
venue in which Leviev might have entertained
Fjellhoy. In a ghastly coincidence, “It’s been
four years since I met him now. January 14.
We matched and met on January 14.”
So, I ask, why does Fjellhoy think shein London with some friends, she receives a
text from Leviev which reads only, “Blood.” A
second reads, “Peter, hurt,” and is followed by
a picture of the security guard’s battered head.
Fjellhoy freaks out. Leviev then sends
confusing video messages, apparently from an
ambulance, explaining “they” had wanted to kill
him, but Peter saved him – the two are now
safe. The following morning, she receives voice
notes from Leviev explaining that his security
team have forbidden him from using his credit
cards because his “enemies” will use them to
trace his location. So he needs to use her cards
temporarily. “It wasn’t even a question,” Fjellhoy
says. She signs over a platinum card to him,
which he maxes out, then demands she
increase her limit and flies to Amsterdam with
$25,000 in cash... All of which Fjellhoy does,
taking out a loan for the cash, lying on credit
card application forms for the rest.
Leviev and Cecilie
Fjellhoy in 2018.
Above: Leviev on his
way to New York, 2020