‘Tinder Swindler’ victim Pernilla Sjöholm suffers legal setback

One of Simon Leviev’s victims featured in Netflix’s “The Tinder Swindler” has suffered a setback in her legal battle to hold a bank who paid him her money accountable.

Pernilla Sjöholm, 35, was in court in Amsterdam on Monday for her lawsuit against ING, the bank that wired payments on her behalf to Leviev, 31.

She claims Leviev – whose real name is Shimon Hayut – was already on fraud watch lists at the time, and therefore the bank should never have authorized her payments to him.

However, the judge ruled in favor of the bank, and now Sjöholm wants to go to trial in front of a different judge.

“I transferred all that money in 2018, the year that ING received a mega fine because the bank did not do enough against money laundering,” she told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. We think ING could have done more to protect us, because we transferred our money to a scammer who was already on fraud lists.”

Sjöholm went in front of a judge who also handled the case of Ayleen Charlotte – another victim of the “Tinder Swindler” – against ING in August 2021. That judge had ruled against Charlotte in favor of ING.

According to De Telegraaf, Sjöholm’s lawyer Herman Loonstein asked to challenge the judge, and it was decided that Sjöholm would fly back to Sweden on Tuesday. The outlet reports that another judge will hear the case at a later date. 

“I’d rather fly back to Amsterdam at another time and then get a fair trial,” said Sjöholm, who was supported in court by Charlotte and Cecilie Fjellhøy, another fellow victim from the Netflix doc.

ING insists it has done nothing wrong, a spokesperson told De Telegraaf, adding that the bank was happy to go to trial at a later date.

Sjöholm previously told fans of the Netflix hit: “It could happen to you, too.”

“It could happen to anyone who has empathy. Those are the ones that they [grifters] target,” she told Page Six of being conned by Leviev. “Someone, for example, who doesn’t have empathy, he [Leviev] has a disorder. He doesn’t feel empathy. So for a person like me and Cecilie … [we] have a lot of empathy for other people. We are very easy targets.”

Sjöholm met the Israeli conman — who was posing as the son of a wealthy diamond merchant — after matching with him on Tinder in Stockholm in 2018.

They developed a platonic relationship and partied all over Europe before Leviev contacted Sjöholm claiming he was in danger from “enemies” and desperately needed cash.

Months later, Sjöholm found out that Leviev had conned her and other women out of thousands of dollars he used to fund his extravagant lifestyle. He’d also previously served two years in jail in Finland after being convicted of defrauding several women there.

She previously admitted to Page Six that she gets why some who watch the documentary don’t understand how she and the other women fell for Leviev’s outlandish tales of violence, threats and attempted kidnappings.

“My first thought would be like, ‘Oh my God, if you’re that stupid, just blame yourself.’ And I’m really embarrassed to say this,’” she said. “But this is how I used to be thinking before, and [I’m] now realizing that it really can happen to anyone.”

Sjöholm, Fjellhøy and Charlotte – who all want Leviev to serve more time – have set up a GoFundMe page to help with their crippling debts after numerous offers of help from viewers.

Leviev has denied the various allegations made against him in the Netflix doc. He currently lives as a free man in Israel and is dating Israeli model Kate Konlin.