4/5 stars “Don’t you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty?” purrs Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 classic Gentlemen Prefer Blondes . “You might not marry a girl just because she’s pretty. But, my goodness, doesn’t it help?” “It’s true,” concedes Cecilie Fjellhøy, one of dozens of women who have fallen foul of the elaborate scams of Simon Leviev, also known as The Tinder Swindler. Fjellhøy met Leviev on Tinder in 2018 and was swept off her feet by the handsome, sophisticated and apparently enormously successful young man. He invited her for coffee at his five-star London hotel, where he asked Fjellhøy to join him on a business trip to Bulgaria that same day. Once in Sofia, Leviev told her that he worked in the diamond industry and was the son of Lev Leviev, the so-called “King of Diamonds”. His job took him all over the world making multimillion-dollar deals, but it could also be extremely dangerous, forcing him to travel everywhere with a personal bodyguard. For mild-mannered Fjellhøy, smooth-talking, sensitive Leviev was the Prince Charming she had been searching for. Before long, she would discover that everything he had told her was a lie, but not before he had cheated her out of US$250,000 in loans and credit card debt that she had no way of repaying. Taking its lead from an exposé in VG , a Norwegian newspaper, Felicity Morris’ riveting documentary unfolds like every young single person’s worst nightmare; it lays out how a simple hook-up on Tinder, the dating app which boasts 75 million active users worldwide, can put even the most cautious and clear-headed women in the path of a sociopathic con man. Unlike earlier documentaries exposing online chicanery, like 2010’s Catfish , The Tinder Swindler lays bare a rolling, all-consuming grift involving fast cars, luxury brands and exotic locations that was real, tangible and, as a result, an all too-effective tool of seduction and deception. As each new thread is tugged and another embarrassed and financially crippled victim comes forward to share her story, Morris’ film becomes ever more engrossing and unbelievable, exposing a US$10 million international charade and building to a conclusion that proves cathartic for some, yet infuriating for others. Perhaps Netflix’s most effective audience retention tool yet, The Tinder Swindler is sure to scare anyone who watches it off their dating apps for life, and into the safe, soothing arms of their sofas at home. The Tinder Swindler is streaming on Netflix. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook