Life Uncut - THE TINDER SWINDLER - Uncut with Cecilie and Pernilla

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Lifers, boy oh boy do we have a big episode for you today.We are talking to Pernilla and Cecilie from the leading Netflix documentary that has EVERYONE talking - The Tinder Swindler. If you haven't seen the Tinder Swindler yet (you naughty little scallywag - you didn't do your home work) it is the story of a romantic conman named Simon Leviev who has defrauded women out of millions of dollars.We speak to the two women who are at the forefront of the documentary, Cecilie and Pernilla were conned out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and still Simon has not been held accountable for his crimes.We also have some very important life updates that we need to talk to y'all about. It's a biggy!We hope you enjoy the chat with these two brave women, and if you have loved the podcast please be a bloody trooper and leave a review. Find us on Instagram @lifeuncutpodcast and share the love, because, WE LOVE LOVE!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura and I'm Brittany and holy dick we have an episode for you today. Holy dick? I mean it's better than pickle nickel we've updated holy dick okay well let's roll with that well i mean we've been teasing this episode for like i mean literally three days yeah i mean like maybe like a week i guess but we have the two women from tinder swindler joining us cecilia and panilla to share their story i think it feels like it's been teased for a while because we got the confirmation that the girls were going to do the interview with us that they hadn't done an interview here like that before and we were so excited but we know better than ever that until something's actually been done until something's

signed on the dotted line anything could happen so we're super excited by the prospect but we didn't want to rave too much about it until we got them and we did speak to them it is today and we're so excited to bring you this chat but we'll get into that in a hot second Laura you've been making some rounds of the neighborhood is that correct guys making friends as an adult is really really hard. It's really hard. You've got me. Why do you need another friend? Yeah. But I also need friends that have kids or more so my kids need friends. It's probably more the case, but you know, as you guys all are very aware, if you've listened to the podcast, literally over the last month, I've moved into a new neighborhood. I have new neighbors. And yes, that generally happens

when you move into a new neighborhood. We don't live on an acreage. And now I have your old neighbors. My new neighbors are your old neighbors. Yeah. So Brit's new neighbors is a lovely Russian couple they're like in their maybe 60s 70s I don't know I can't guess he's already popped over to fix some stuff for me he's an absolute legend he's like the sort of man he's the sort of neighbor that you want when you need things done well I didn't even know I needed it okay I went outside and there was one little thing that was broken right and I went outside just to look at it and within two seconds he was there he just popped up like what was that old tv show where you never you know the neighbors like Flanders no you know that really popular show this is all the youngins

are not going to know you know where he used to pop Tim the Toolman Taylor I seriously felt like we were playing a game of charades right do you know Tim the Toolman Tim the Toolman Taylor oh my god you never watched it and you never in like six years of the show you never saw the neighbor's whole face you only ever saw his eyes but he always popped up when you needed him not our Russian neighbor though you see all his face yeah he anyway he popped up he fixed some stuff well okay so I went over to our neighbor's house we took the kids we took two bottles of wine which I thought was maybe aggressive for four o'clock in the afternoon I was like do you go with one bottle or do you really like set in for an afternoon session with your neighbors or do i

take a cask so we took two bottles of wine a cheese plate how did this invitation come about did like they put a little invite in your letterbox did you put it in theirs no so matt met the neighbors on the street like when we first moved in and to be fair we live in a very it's a very community street which is weird to me because i didn't think that people these days even spoke to their neighbors like i know it's weird like i lived in an apartment building where hardly anyone knows each other prior. And then we moved into the new house and the neighbors popped over with a bunch of flowers. The ones across the street have asked us out for lunch anyway. So there's, there's like, I love you, but I don't have time for this. There's a street WhatsApp group. No,

it's amazing. There's literally a street WhatsApp group and everyone has kids. So it's kind of like, I really feel like I found my people and I was like, okay, we're going for lunch. So we rocked out with these two bottles of wine sat down and it's just, it's okay. I don't know if I'm the only person I'm sure I'm not but it's just so weird as an adult knowing that you're meeting someone and being like are we gonna be friends like is that what this is like you're interviewing someone to be your friend that's what we were doing I hope I made the cut if she's listening if she's listening how does she know who you are and like that you do the podcast no idea she had no idea I was like oh in media like I've got a podcast like and they were like oh yeah we're

not into pop culture and I was like that's cool subscribe hit my stars I'll send you the link I talk about relationships yeah no she had no idea which is kind of nice so it's the same age bracket kids are the same a little bit older kids are like seven and ten I'm giving way too much information now but yes it was just it was one of those moments where I felt like as an adult it's not that often where you get put into a situation where you actually are like okay are we going to be friends am I making a new friend right now and it's so hard being an adult is hard and making friends as an adult is hard and you know we talk about this on the podcast a lot and we get a lot of questions from you guys saying you know I need to make new friends how do I do it

which is you know we've got these groups now these meetup groups that you guys have created and so many people have made insanely good friends from that which I'm all about but you also just have to take a punt right like we had no idea whether we would connect like obviously we have kids we live in the same street that's all we knew about each other and so you have to put yourself out there you know you invite people around you go and do things that are outside your comfort zone and maybe it'll click, maybe it won't click. But it was just like this real moment where I was like, this is what adults do.

I think it's way easier to make friends when you have kids, 100%. Because you have something to, you have an excuse to meet up. And then if you click, it's great. You can say, oh, let's continue to meet up. And if you don't, you're like, we're busy forever. Because I have kids.

Sorry. Yeah, exactly. So it's like a win-win. When I look back at actually my best friend of my whole existence, we've been best friends since we were five years old, since kindergarten. You guys do the maths.

I think I'm 35 this year. let me take that back. I'm still 34. I love that like Daily Mail always reports that you're 30 and they say that I'm 37 and we're literally almost the same age. I read that you were, no, I read an article yesterday. You were 31. I meant to send it to you. Yeah. You lost a few years. About fucking time, Daily Mail. So her and I have been best friends since we were five years old and our parents obviously met because of us. Like, you know, let's have a play date with our two kids. And then because of us, they've been best friends their entire life as well. So it is definitely an intro into a friendship. So if you are looking for a new friendship and you don't

have kids, maybe that's your problem. Go have some kids, go make some friends. No, because when you have kids, all you then do is hang around and complain about your kids. It was a joke. Don't do it. Okay. Speaking of making friends though, Britt, I heard that you also made some friends this week. I made a friend. It was pretty funny. So I was on the Gold Coast. It was like my last night on the Gold Coast. And I was out with my sister and a couple of friends. We're having some drains we're in burley and uh the burley pavilion you know that really cool big i don't know i'm not cool and i'm not from queensland but it was like all at the path do you know what yeah it's like icebergs it's like their version of our icebergs i guess anyway having a great time having a few

drinks very sober and this girl walks up to me she's on a mission she's with a friend and she comes up to me and she's obviously very intoxicated she's like all right i've been looking at you across the room for a very long time and i just had to come up i wasn't gonna do it but i had to come up and say hello and I love the podcast and I was like oh thank you so much like I absolutely love hearing that she's like honestly I cannot tell you she was going on and on and I was like the best compliment ever and I was like this is brilliant and then her friend goes why don't you tell her what you wanted to tell her I was like oh no in my head I thought I was like what and she looked at a friend you know when your friend's throwing you under the bus she looked at a friend

she's like don't you dare and her friend's like just tell her just tell her tell her what you were googling and I was like hang on what were you what what were you googling I was like tell me and she was beside herself she was like please don't like Sarah please please please don't do this to me and I said just tell me and she wouldn't tell me so the friend pulls up google shows it to me and it said is Brittany Hockley bi she showed me and the girl nearly died and I absolutely lost it and she's like okay secrets out I'm bi I was really hoping it's just like I was really hoping there might be some article that said you're into women that I might have a chance anyway I absolutely lost it she's like I

just thought you just make me feel so comfortable all the time and I was like I want to make you feel comfortable too yeah she's like you make me feel so like loved and comfortable and not alone and I said look I'm never gonna go down on you but I will continue to make you feel comfortable on the podcast can we just say like for every person who's ever come up and introduced themselves or said that they love the podcast it is like we're such losers it is the best thing to happen to us. It makes me so happy. I like have a little spring in my step as I leave that meeting. But guys, we wanted to, before we get into the interview today with Cecilia and Penilla, we wanted to give you guys a bit of a setup or like understanding if you haven't watched the

Tinder Swindler. I mean, we did give you that homework and we gave you plenty of notice, but we wanted to give you a bit of an idea about what happens, the rundown on it, and then kind of what has progressed even since we've spoken to Cecilia and Penilla. We interviewed them last week, but there have been some developments in the story since the documentary came out. and also since we interviewed them basically for anybody if you haven't seen the tinder swindler it's a story about a man named simon levive it's not his real name his real name is shimon hayut and he is an israeli con man who has spent time in prison one for being a con artist but also for forging passports now the two women who were interviewing cecilia and panilla they are at the

forefront of this documentary the tinder swindler and they tell their story about how they were swindled literally out of hundreds and thousands of dollars because of Simon. So Simon feigned that he is the son of a diamond billionaire, a company called LLD Diamonds. The whole thing was a setup. And when Brit first told me about this documentary, my initial response was like, how on earth, like how on earth could anyone believe such a fantastical light? Like how could you even pretend to be a billionaire unless you have the money to front the lifestyle to pretend to be a billionaire, but he had so many other women on the go. He had so much money that he had taken from these women up to what they think is an estimated $10 million. So he was living the

lifestyle of a billionaire. And he was telling Cecilia and Penilla that he was in so much danger that some diamond deals had gone badly, that people were after him and that he couldn't use his credit cards because he was being tracked. And what he actually did is he got Cecilia, who was his girlfriend at the time one of many girlfriends and she was completely unaware of this he got her to open up her own credit cards which he would then use as his credit cards because he was telling her that his were being tracked now this is the start of such a truly harrowing story of how she was romantically conned but that's just the tip of the iceberg there's so much more to this story and as the web of lies starts to unfold you start to see how these different women are

interconnected and where their stories actually cross over. It really is a catfish story on steroids. It's catfishing on a whole nother level. It's like, I didn't realize that the deception to this level could exist, that people could go to this much trouble. And when I say this much trouble, I mean, you'd have to watch the documentary if you haven't watched it. But one thing that I really wanted to talk about before we get in, and it is one thing that the women do speak about, Penilla and Cecilia, and they talk a lot about victim shaming and the fall out of going public with their story and trying to make people aware of it. And they speak, you know, we spoke off camera as well, off microphone. And there are a lot of people, a lot of victims

that didn't want to put themselves out there because they were actually legitimately scared of their life. There were death threats from Simon. He had threatened their family and their friends. He knew where they lived. He would make threatening phone calls. So I 100% understand why people wouldn't want to put themselves in that position any further yeah and I think that that was something that wasn't communicated that clearly on the documentary is that Cecilia and Penilla were legitimately afraid for their lives and I guess it comes back to this idea of the person that they thought he was this person who they had known for years or for months or however long I think Cecilia's story was a little bit shorter Penilla had was Simon's best friend for

over a year they didn't know this man the whole life that he had created was completely fabricated So they didn't know what he was actually capable of. And he was threatening to hurt their family. He was threatening to kill them. He was telling them that, hey, he had like a hit out on their head. Can you imagine the amount of fear that you would be living in from that? I mean, Penilla had to get protection. She had to speak to policing and witness protection and things like that.

It would be, I can't even imagine how scared you would be thinking that this person, especially because you see in the documentary, you see him switch. The second that he realizes that he's caught out and it's done, you see a whole different person a very angry aggressive gaslighting threatening person and once you realize that this person you have no idea who you are you don't know what they're capable of and they're literally calling your house saying I know where you live I'm going to kill you as if you're not going to be petrified and and what they said and it really got to me it doesn't matter so they've received a lot of love and a lot of support around the world since coming out with their story

conversely they have received a lot of hate and as well like a lot of people saying you're so stupid you deserve it how could you give up your money you barely know him but at the end of the day they are victims in this story and victim shaming is a real problem and victim shaming has to stop so you can have your opinion 100 but I implore you to keep an open mind and maybe your opinion like you Laura will slightly change after watching the documentary totally and I think the one thing that I found was so viscerally obvious to me in interviewing Cecilia and Penilla and I had never I've never experienced this in interviewing anyone before. We've always had such an easy rapport with people that we've interviewed, but I could feel their defensiveness. And the reason

why I could feel their defensiveness is because they have been conditioned to hate media because they just don't know how a story is going to spin. I mean, like we know what that's like. We know what it's like to do an interview and then to see the article come out the next day. And all the things you said have been twisted in a way that isn't actually truthful to the storyline and I feel so sorry for these women that they have not only experienced what they've experienced but then they've had to go through the absolute circus that is the media not just in Australia but throughout the world this docuseries has had over 10 million downloads it's one of the biggest trending Netflix series in the world at the moment and they're not people

who have been media trained and they've just been churned through and so not only have they gone through this traumatic experience but now they're having to deal with the judgment that follows from that. And I just can't even imagine what that would be like for them. These women were with who they thought were their penguin. They were with someone they were moving in with. Well, they were. They were in a relationship. Now, the relationship wasn't real, but it was real to them. They didn't know that. So, of course, when their partner of a year has someone out with a hit on their head and says, right now, in this second, I need this money or I'm dead, you're going to give them money. And I don't care what anyone says. If you're in that situation and your partner

says it's life or death, you're going to give them money. Yeah. And I think that the other thing about this, like the last part that I think is really important to keep perspective on is that this isn't just one man who was a con man. This was an organized Ponzi scheme. There were so many people who were actually employed and involved in this scam, which when it's an organized operation like this, and there's so many levels to the deceit, it's actually a job. It's someone's job to set out and do this. Simon is just doing his job well. Do you know what I mean? Like you stand no chance he's doing it the best he's the best in the business he's the best in the business and if you are a victim to this like it's not one person who's deceived you it is a full organization that

has deceived you and I think when you had that perspective it's much easier to understand how these women were taken down and not only how they were taken down but how it wasn't just ten thousand dollars how it was literally hundreds of thousands of dollars and it's plummeted these women into so much debt there is a GoFundMe page for them which is helping them claw back some of the money but the other part that we talk about in this interview is that it's so much more than just money and I think that that's one thing that we get really hung up on but the other side to this is the fact that these women had a sexual relationship with someone who they didn't know who he was and they've given consent but they've given consent to someone who isn't the person that

they thought he was either and it's just there's so many layers to this which are truly traumatic and I think that like I said going back to the defensiveness that came through a little bit from Cecilia and Penilla. Like I can't imagine what it would be like going through this situation and then having to defend why it happened to you at the same time. It has come out that he has swindled men as well in businesses around Europe. This has been going on for a very, very long time and no one was safe. Totally. And if anything, we should be celebrating the bravery of these women coming out and sharing their story and in doing so protecting so many other women from experiencing the same thing. But Laura, I feel like we could talk about this forever. This whole episode could have just

you and me voicing our opinions on it but we will get into that interview in just a hot second we do have some other things to get to first though we have accidentally unfiltered but first brit there is something that you wanted to talk about and that you are well kind of ready to talk about i don't know how you want to approach this and i don't know how you want to i want to move to alaska i would like to set everything on fire and just leave the floor is lava uh no yeah guys i do want to give you an update if you've been following along I mean my life for a little while if you're in the Facebook discussion group if you read any other news articles you'll see that there has been some speculation for a little while about my relationship with Jordan

I've kept very quiet about that for a multitude of reasons but it is time to give you guys a little update I don't really know where to start so I'm just going to start Jordan and I he came back for a really short period over the summer. He doesn't live here. He lives overseas. And I think a lot of people forget that because I constantly get questions about why aren't you posting with Jordan? Why aren't there stories with Jordan? Firstly, Jordan does not live in Australia. He's here for like a total of seven weeks max a year throughout the year. And this year was no different. He also is a very private person. So I've told you that before and he did come on the podcast and there were times that, you know, he was really happy to be featured in

Instagrams and he would feature me. At the end of the day, he's very, very private. You only need to go on his Instagram to see that. He hates social media. He really hates it. So he came back for the summer and we did spend a really nice, quiet summer together. We didn't post about each other. I mean, we did. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll see a couple of stories here and there, but we just spent a really nice time together. And then it was hard because there are a lot of quote unquote reports that we had broken up a long time ago that some horrible things were written by people that were claiming to be reporters and they absolutely aren't and that was really tough to know that we were here being together and just because we hadn't put an

Instagram up people were making up stories so that's one thing that we were battling and also I guess at that time you guys were figuring out your shit it wasn't like it was smooth easy sailing like you know you were together but you were sorting out what does moving forward look like when there is no clear path for how you're going to be together yeah we had some big life decisions that we're making which was also why we were just keeping to ourselves because we didn't know what the future looked like for us and uh yeah so we did that and then uh you might have seen probably about two weeks ago now some of you might have seen I dropped him to the airport he was going back for the next year of travel and you know we said goodbyes but we actually said goodbye

for good I'm just gonna stop for a second because I'm upset it's okay you're allowed to be upset honey you're doing so you're doing great sweet you're doing great I know how hard this is for you to talk about and something that I wanted to like something I wanted to kind of say to everyone who's listening to this because I'm crying as well yeah I'm crying because you're crying I know how much we share of our lives with you guys. And like, you are so welcome into our lives and we love sharing it with you. We love that we have this community. We love that you guys are so supportive of us, but it's really hard to see Brit go through something that's been really, really difficult over the last two weeks. And for people to demand that she tell them where

her relationship status is at, especially when Brit didn't know where her relationship status was at. And I guess the thing with us is we share so much of our lives, but we don't share it necessarily in real time because we still have to figure out how the fuck we feel about things you know even like me when I had my miscarriage I shared that several weeks to several months afterwards once I'd compartmentalized it I'd worked through that junk by myself I was able to set some boundaries up and I could formulate how I felt about it so then I could tell you how I felt about it and I guess in this instance like Britt's breakup officially happened two weeks ago And she hasn't worked through how she feels about it yet, but because there has been so

much reporting happening, we obviously want to share with you and tell you what's happening. We want you to have that authenticity and transparency. But I think at the same time, Britt needs the space and the privacy to really recover before she's able to speak about something. Cause this is not like she's fucking heartbroken. Yeah. It's been a really tough little while for me. And what Laura said is right.

Like we're very open with you. if there's something we're not talking about it's for a reason like there is a reason we are deciding not to share something with you and obviously the time will come where we will share it but for me I can't even explain how hard the last couple of weeks has been like I have not there's been days I didn't get out of bed there's been days I couldn't stop crying the girls would walk in and say hello and I just start crying this and I think the reason is I really really want to reiterate this there is not a story here there is nothing that has happened it is it is literally the most beautiful and amicable breakup it was just two people that you know we

thought we're each other's penguins we loved each other nothing happened no one's done the wrong thing it's purely we're at a point of life where we couldn't physically be together his career and he's in the prime of his career like he has so so much to go and so many years left and he's only going to do amazing things he can't be here his job every week around the is a different city literally every week of the year he's in a different city my crew is here and I'm doing a lot and I can't travel with him this year so we just had to decide what the future looks like and we decided to just be really supportive of each other and go our separate ways and we're still very very close like we absolutely adore each other we respect each other more than anything

and we're still friends yeah we still talk but it is over we had to make that really hard decision and I think that it's almost harder you almost in a weird way wish you could hate the person because I feel like it's easier to get over. And I know that's a crazy thing and people probably will disagree with me. I would rather hate him. I would rather be like, cause then you forget him and you move on.

But when you love someone and it's purely was just a distance thing in a, you know, I want the best for you. You want the best for me. And that means not being together anymore. That makes it so much harder. But we know at the end of the day that this is right for us at this time.

I guess with that, like with distance, it makes it so hard to close the chapter. It makes it so hard to actually be accepting of like the finality of it all because you're like but the only thing stopping us from being great is this that we can't physically be together and I think like the big part of this and the part that's like so fucking hard is that Brit your career is so important to you and you don't want to sacrifice your career to be in a relationship and that is what would have to happen if there was no meeting in the middle because

unfortunately like you can't be a professional sports person and just decide where you're going to be you got to follow the tour around and that's not where your life is no and he was so supportive of each other that he would never ask me to give up my career and I would never ask him it's just one of those things and this is where we are and maybe who knows in a different lifetime it might have worked out but for now we just have to accept that I guess we thought we're each other's penguins like you guys followed along I've been really open about that he came on the podcast and said the same thing we really truly believed that we found each other and the hardest thing is to accept that it's not but I will be okay and um maybe down the track we'll talk about it more

but for now but for now like I'm so fine guys like okay she says that as she's crying no no it's like we just wanted to feel look we just want to fill you in because honestly it's been pretty shitty actually the people that have been hassling me for information from just random people some listeners news reporters and I understand people want to know but like Laura said at the very beginning you just got to give some people some space people are real people and they're going through things in real time so anyway um I am back on the market but also I think like for anybody who's going through a breakup or anybody who's been through a hard breakup like there are so many feelings of disappointment there's feelings of failure

there's feelings of like I can't believe this is happening when it's not where you expect that your life is going to be and there's feelings of having to like realign your identity and figure out well who am I again now that I'm on my own it's a new chapter again like I'm now reassessing what I thought my future was and I thought it was planned out it's completely different now and I'm back to a place that I hadn't been in for a long time and I'm relearning and I'm re-trying to train my mind that it's okay that things change. And just because I thought something was going to be one way, it's okay that it's going another. And one of the big things that we said from the very beginning of doing this podcast is that some of the best things in life can come out of

the worst situations. So run at me. Run at me. It's the year of Brittany Huxley, ladies and gentlemen. You thought last year was. Watch out. It's coming. Anyway, guys, enough of the sad stuff. it is time for our favorite part of every episode which is accidentally unfiltered and i'm gonna go first while brit collects herself hey you need to equally collect yourself okay here we go one night i went out and hit the piss pretty hard i'm talking vodka tequila and wine you name it i did it anyway my worst nightmare okay mine too now i have three glasses of wine i've got to hang over Anyway, I had been checking this guy out all night and we ended up going home together.

He was super sexy and we had an amazing night. The next morning I woke up in my bed and without a second thought, I let out the loudest, most rank fart I have ever done in my entire life. Not only that, it was like a grog fart, which we all know what it was. I rolled over to find this guy I met the previous evening in my bed. You can imagine the fucking horror. I just for a second thought I was in the safety and comfort of my own home. Completely even forgot that I had gone home with him.

Needless to say, he very shortly left and we never saw each other again. The absolute monstrosity of the sound woke him up from his sleep. So how do you forget that someone else is in your bed? Well, I think if you've had a real bender, you could. I once, okay, this is, oh God, I probably shouldn't share this, but I once went home with a guy. I went home with a guy at uni. We were dating.

we'd been dating each other for quite a while and he lived on campus at uni and I went back to his apartment which I'd been done a hundred times I went back to his apartment and he had rearranged the apartment so his bed was on the other side of the room like things were not where they usually were so I don't do this anymore and highly don't recommend it I obviously drank too much in my uni days but I would like not remember parts of the night before like I had drunk way too much and I woke up in his bed, but facing a different wall to where I would normally face. So you didn't know where you were. So I had no fucking idea where I was. And literally for about 30 seconds, I thought I had gone home with somebody else from the uni apartment building. And so I was just laying in

bed crying because I was too scared to roll over because I didn't want to see who it was. And he was like, what are you doing? Why are you crying? And then I was like, it's just you. Needless to say that was literally the last time i saw him he dumped me after that no no doubt absolutely he was like are you serious like you don't remember coming back here and i definitely it was disgusting i often wonder if it is a level of alcohol consumption or just how your body takes it because i have friends like that they're like completely like i don't remember a thing and i always used to think they're making it up i thought that's an excuse because you don't i black out drunk i have never even in my most intoxicated i've been in my whole life i've

never forgotten something I've never not known where I was so I don't know if there's like a way your body absorbs alcohol or you receives it and you know what the weird thing for me is is like I it's not like I'm passed out I'm not talking like blackout as though like sloppy you know falling over in the gutter need someone to help you I will like have full conversations I will put myself to bed I'll have a shower I'll brush my teeth but will not remember that part of the night that's crazy for me it's white wine but anyway you learn your lessons in your youth and we certainly shouldn't do them all right i'm moving on i kept ranting for weeks to my boyfriend about how i needed to clean out my wardrobe because the mess was fucking with me i came home

from work one day and to my surprise my boyfriend had tidied my wardrobe what a keeper i hope you put a ring on that bless i was so happy that i got to avoid the shitty task later on we're watching a movie and he says to me so when i cleaned out your wardrobe i found something in a pink handbag I was so unsure of what it could have been and then it hit me like a ton of bricks I had wanted to try anal with my ex and I thought and I thought I should buy some little butt trainers so I bought two the photos on the internet made them look like mini glue sticks however to my shock when they arrived they were two massive anal dildos exceeding the circumference of my arm I'm so embarrassed.

What? How would you stick that in your arm? I mean, in your butt. That's why she didn't. I felt so shocked and embarrassed that he found these that I just panicked in the moment. I didn't know what to do. All I could think was to lie and say that I don't know what was in the pink bag

and that the bag wasn't mine. It wasn't mine. He asked me whose the bag was, and in the heat of the moment, I said my mother owned the pink bag. i convinced him that my mother owned two enormous anal dildos to this day i have never confessed we're still together he still thinks my mom has two big dildos are they called dildos if they're in it for your butt or are they called like butt plugs i'm just don't shoot the messenger i am literally well she thought this is the problem she thought she ordered these two butt plugs but

she's like something went amiss on the internet i don't know if you pressed the wrong button in the checkout but she got two big dildos i feel like if you're gonna list something like that You really need a size scale, like have a penny or something next to it. So people can see how big the butt plug is. She finished by saying, I hope I'm led to heaven, but the odds aren't looking great. Sorry, mom. Imagine if like, I mean, of all the people you could have thrown onto the bus in that moment, surely I would have gone my old flatmate or something.

The poor mother. The poor, although the only thing worse than pretending they're your mom's butt plugs is actually finding your mom's dildo. And that's a story for another Accidentally Unfiltered. It's a personal one. Oh my, please. I carry a fire. that's you're gonna have to ask mom's permission for that one let's get into the chat with penilla

and cecilia this has got to be one of the interviews i have been the most excited to do and when i did a little slippery slide into the dms of the girls from the tinder swindler cecilia and penilla i was just blown away that i got a response saying that you were actually interested in coming on and telling your story because here in Australia Laura and myself and literally the rest of the country have just been so obsessed and so enthralled and I think just so gobsmacked by your story so we are so excited to welcome both Cecilia and Penilla to Life Uncut. Ladies thank you so much for joining us today. Oh thank you thank you we're very happy to be here. It must be really difficult rehashing this conversation constantly and seeing how things are played out

and the way that people talk about this story in media as well. But there's so much to this and we want to get into kind of where you guys are at now since the Netflix documentary has come out. But before we do, for anybody who's listening to this podcast and hasn't or doesn't know your full story yet, Cecilia, we want to just start with yours because that's kind of where the documentary starts with. Can you tell us a little bit about not just how you met Simon, because obviously Tinder kind of gives that away, but what that first date was like for you and how things progressed

really quickly? Yeah, I was on Tinder as a lot of other single people some years back. And then, yeah, matched up with him and decided to go very quickly for a coffee because I could see that he was traveling a lot around. Met him at a hotel there, had a coffee, and then he wanted to spend more time with me and asked if I wanted to continue being with him when they were going on a business trip to Sofia. And then I met his entire team. That was the first date, so we went on a little trip together.

so how long from literally when you swiped and matched until you met him for that coffee are we talking like a day an hour what was the time frame oh it was a Saturday evening and then we met a Sunday morning like around 10 30 so it was a very like weird timing for a date as well like so I wasn't expecting I thought it was going to be a coffee and then I was going to continue writing my master thesis that so I brought my laptop and everything with me because I thought this would be one of those short dates you know not a private jet not a private jet it wasn't just a little trip it was a sensationally like no expenses spared bougie trip where did you end up and how did that process of when he said hey I'm going on this work trip come with me how did that all

unfold it's so interesting when you get like caught into his world you know so we met the entire team and so much going on there's so many people you know so like drivers and like three four cars where are they going and where are we going so we're going to Selfridges for lunch first So we had lunch, actually, the entire team before we went to there. So we were hanging out, all of us. So it was more like, OK, you need to go home to get your passport, need to pack so a driver can take you there. So it was really like, it's organized chaos. And you can really see that Simon was the boss because everyone was like talking to him regarding decisions and stuff like that.

And then we would drove out to the airport and then we were all waiting to board, you know. And it was like a surreal, like it was a military airport. So I've never been like at a small airport like that either. And also like you ended up getting on a private jet and this was kind of your first date was on a private jet sitting down with Simon and getting to know him more. But I guess that that's one part of the documentary that I don't think we saw so much is this idea that it wasn't just a date with him. There were so many more people that were involved in this and it was the huge and elaborate

setup that kind of gave you that reinforcement that made you go, oh, well, this is legit. this is safe if there's so many other people that were involved in it at the time? Yeah I think that's why and you could see the other there were other women there like was a female that was his private assistant I was told and you know that the other baby's mother and a little daughter so yes I know a lot of people were very scared of me and yes I was thinking about it afterwards but I think the safeness of seeing those people made me it wasn't a trafficking scheme but I felt safe just seeing other people and especially the women and we see on the plane we see a tiny little snippet where you lean in and you give Simon a kiss on the cheek obviously there's been more of

a connection that they didn't have time to portray but you obviously felt very very comfortable and very safe there and like there was something really deep there immediately did you feel like this intense connection with him straight away yeah he's very good at that and like and we had kissed before like it's just a bit mingled up in a documentary because we did kiss before and so like that little peck wasn't the first time like and we were sitting right next to each other and I'm a very like physical touch kind of girl when it comes to love language and I like that and a lot of people don't but I enjoy it you know so we did have an immediate connection but this is what he's good at you know this is what he does he makes you feel that you have that special connection

and that you're very special. When I was watching the podcast that has come out, like it's so nice to see other people, friends as well. It was like a business partner of his dad that was saying that, or like friends of his, like he makes you feel very special when you're with them. When everything in their life is so real and for you, and this is what I said to Laura when I told Laura to watch it,

anyone that has been a little bit sceptical, like how could these women fall for that? When his whole life, I mean, immediately you're at a military airport. Like people don't just have access to that. you're at a military airport you're on a private plane with all these people there would be no part of you that would ever think this can't be real this is made up there's no one in the world that could think that no but the thing is that there are so many people involved as well I mean their

entire team working against you maybe if you need one scammer or one fraudster but here we had so many people involved that did an evil Truman show around you if you haven't seen the movie Truman show but if you have you will understand what i mean it's like a theater that they do around you so you've come to learn since this whole experience that actually the people were not necessarily also being scammed or they weren't also like as in employed by simon but they were all involved in this they were all part of this whole elaborate creation i think in different aspects to it because we know that for example some of the drivers didn't actually know that he wasn't simon devive so he was involuntarily used because he's just been with him as Simon Levi so when I asked about

him I was like oh Simon's such a great guy he's one of my best clients and nicest clients you know but he didn't know. I think this is so interesting and so important and I know that with the documentary it was pretty obvious that there were some people who were involved but I don't think I really fully understood when watching it the depths of what of how many people may have been involved or the depths of the involvement and I guess when you know you hear about these stories when you hear about someone being romantically scammed a lot of people's initial reaction is like that would never happen to me or how could you let that happen to yourself but the more that I watch your documentary and the more that your story unfolded it made me realize that this could honestly happen

to anyone now Cecilia one question I did want to ask you and it was in in regards to something that happened kind of early on in your relationship with Simon where you checked tinder and you could see it showed it in the documentary you could see that he was overseas at the time he was in another country to where he said he was going to be but he had also updated his tinder profiles were there any red flags for you early on or was there anything that looking back you think I should have been more aware of this that is the main thing with the documentary that is not true now is the first time I get the question because like thank you so much for letting me respond to that I would never ever have been with someone and I would never have tinder I would never have

checked tinder if I was in a relationship with someone who does that if you're a couple with someone you don't I wouldn't have tinder you delete tinder you you don't have it so no I did not check it when we were a couple that would be a huge red flag for me uh if I were in a relationship I did it like when we just had our first date and then I was really liking him and you know how that is and you go in and check you know have they updated a picture have they which is very new of course so and then I saw that he had and then that's when I was like what's at the start he swept you up you know of course I could have been a red flag that after some days he but I just took it that I had just seen him we can all do it and then but it is what it is hindsight is a gift as

I say a lot of the times what you should have seen but that is maybe the one thing with the documentary where I'm like oh god no it did not happen that way I'm so glad that you had the opportunity to clear that because obviously there'd be people watching that being like come on read the signs but also so many women and it's just people in general like I mean when you love someone and when you believe them there's no reason for you to doubt the things that they're saying and also even in those instances when somebody is deceiving you I think it shows the level of empathy that somebody has it's not a bad quality to want to believe someone that you're in love with or like infatuated kind of you know I have to say you know he's a very magnetic person

to be around and you feel really special you try to give him that level of trust because he was very trusting with you as well with his store and what he was going through so it became this very weird vulnerable kind of relationship where both were opening up I have a question and Peniela I'm not sure if you ever met her as well so either one of you I have a question that I'm just so and thrilled about and I think the world is and this is the woman that played the role of his ex partner the mother to his child that came on the plane that was always there and obviously he brought her in I mean for some women on a dating app having a child and an ex-relationship is baggage and they would have said no but obviously he's used that as a way to get women

to trust him because he's like look I'm a caring dad I give all this money her role in this she was correct me if I'm wrong she actually was an ex-victim of his that helped put him away the first time how did she get to a point where she was on his team when she went from putting him in jail to then working for him because that to me is one of the biggest mysteries of tinder swindler well he did the same thing with me so like when i caught him with his lies and called him out for being this fraudster and everything he had done he tried to get me onto the scam as well wow no way he would try to get me on instead of like having me as his enemy so i think that she maybe still have been in love with him or just was being very egocentric and we're just thinking of herself

because like something me and cecilia have said all the time like if you live through something like this i would never want to put any person in our shoes and for someone to take that step to really know how it is like and to take part of the scam to try and hurt other people i just like i don't even know how this woman go to sleep at night and it's more that i had a conversation with her back in 2019 because she reached out to me and she was so upset that i had said that she was part of simon's team because she meant that she was just there for in london once you know for her daughter to meet her dad and i can understand like that's the main thing for me why were you even there and then she's come with in the podcast that she says well there were so many girls that

week and when I met him like how can I say to everyone but how can you be there with a pure heart seeing all this woman who might be conned the same way you did and be part of it you know you know you're being used for a reason you know you're there for a reason and she received so many gifts as well for her daughter that she knows I know that I saw the gifts that she received she knows they are from fraud can you imagine okay so what happens is he's found out and then he thinks okay I have two options they're either going to be my enemies or I can try and get them on my team they're going to say yes this game will be better or they say no and they're still my enemies so he just thought I'll try one last time to get her to join the team before she goes

and outs me even further the thing is that her situation I have to say can you imagine like we can judge her as much I totally but I can see it that I'm trying to have grace as well in this can you imagine she was with him and she was being scammed she got pregnant she thought that she was in a true like relationship they were living together in Finland then you get pregnant and then you realize that he was never the person you thought and that he's a scammer and you're pregnant with this so you are forever connected and it's a bit of maybe Stockholm syndrome it might be different types. I'm not excusing her, but I am trying my best, you know, to give people the grace that a lot of people are not giving me and us in this. But of course you should never

have been there. Cecilia, for you, at what point, like I feel like the documentary or maybe I had missed it. How quickly did things evolve for you in your relationship? Like how quickly was it that you were moving in together and just progressing the relationship? Because it seemed like there was so much love bombing going on from his side incredibly and I think like the thing is that it was just so nice that he was that available you know that it was this morning that's why I don't understand how he could do so many like at once because it was like morning text like midday like whatever when you calls calls across the day you know evening it was just it was like yeah love bombing to another level you know and with these voice notes of appreciation and the future you

know and and the thing is that for me my love life has always been that the guys I like don't like me and the guys that like me I don't like so it was the first time in a very very long time where I was like oh my god I really like this guy he makes me feel so good it's so much energy and I have to say like a lot of the flashiness like I didn't see it that way like I saw him as a very funny caring guy I wasn't part of this kind of I got the private jet trip and then it was done with me you got your one jet don't be greedy I got that one jet yeah love bombing to another level which I haven't experienced before and I am a person that falls very quickly like if I found my match I don't need to wait and I think you saw that that I'm a very romantic person that is

caring as well you know so you had a perfect the perfect victim experiencing the love bombing and then the I don't even know if you can describe it as toxicity but like the absolute destruction that Simon caused in this relationship. Experiencing it and then watching it back in a Netflix documentary must have been an incredibly surreal experience for you. You mentioned something before and I wanted to ask you, you mentioned that there was some things that happened in the documentary that were a little bit more for making a movie. It wasn't exactly as it had played out. Was there anything else about your story that when you watched the doco back you were like that's not how that happened or you didn't feel that it best represented

what actually happened in real life yeah I would say that's so much missed out I had for example one person or one character that would just cut off the movie that had like a huge impact with me and then also I think you had the part with the with the tinder I think you reacted to that and i reacted very strongly to where i traveled to germany because when i traveled to germany i tried to have him arrested and that is the reason why i went so an hour before the flight is leaving i'm getting a call from the police that says we're not going to be able to do the arrest now and there i make the decision that it's better i go anyway maybe they can sort it out by tomorrow while i'm there i'm still having this like high trust that they are going to take him so i spent

two weeks with him sitting with police officers in like I don't think like four or five countries and just trying and working like full time just to try and have him arrested and why do you think they didn't want to arrest him Peniela like do you think they didn't feel like it was as big of a case as you guys were telling them it was or what do you think the pushback was there is a lot of reasons I think I think he did it very smart he separated all his cases in different type of countries in the eu in the european union and as the law works in the european union is that for example if sweden makes the international arrest warrant for him then all the other countries are allowed to bring their cases to that country that means you have to find a prosecutor

in one of these countries that want to touch these cases because it's quite complicated there is a lot like we normally say if it would have been tax money they would have found him five minutes ago so it's not about they have known where he was the entire time like they knew where he was they knew that he was gonna go on that plane so the second he went on the plane they just they could do it but the law is quite interesting sometimes and it is a question that me and Cecilia asked so many times and I think the entire world is asking right how come he can still be out there I mean he was also not just he is so smart and the way he did it that it was spread out across the EU but also the debt was under somebody else's name the debt

in the case for you, Cecilia, the credit cards were in your name. What point was it when you had handed over these credit cards that had your name in it and he was racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt? What point was it where you started to realize maybe this money is not going to come back in? Maybe he is not going to pay me or something is really wrong here. It's just difficult because he was making transactions that didn't come in, but he was always having a reason or when you call the police and I was talking when you were calling the banks kind of they were like confirming whatever he was saying for example he was always making very large transactions like half a million pounds was necessarily to make that was kind of

and then yeah so I was still like thinking that something would come in and he was instilling that fear and that pressure so it's kind of like when you're in that situation he was either are you going to stop or is he going to die kind of so I see a lot of people saying like making the memes like oh if my boyfriend asked me for money I would just let him die and I was like well if you're in that situation you really think your boyfriend is going to die if you don't help him that's a very not a good relationship to be in he is very cunning in that aspect you know it's the emotional and the manipulation that if you don't help something is going to go wrong which you can laugh about yes my enemies and stuff but that was true at the time so I think my first

thing was like when I got the check and I called the bank and they said they couldn't cash the check but then I talked to them and I called Simon and he was like and that's how you heard when he becomes really mad that call LLD diamonds like they will confirm and I was like that would be very do you understand how this guy is he's asking like that if the bank is calling LLD diamonds they will confirm anyways so and then I asked like why didn't why didn't you cash and they said well the sum is too large like we don't we don't post so and I said so the check is all good and they said yes the check is fine there's nothing wrong with the check so I was so scared for half an hour but this was kind of late in the game as well I have to say this was not at the

start it was when I was starting to become really desperate to get in money because I had creditors after me so that extra pressure of him pressuring you they're pressuring you trying to fix this you know so he saved himself for a couple more extra weeks with that because I was like oh the check is real and then I got to know the banks don't check if the check is genuine when they get a check they don't check if it's genuine no they don't do that you would think banks did that right no well I would have believed the bank as well if the bank told me that no the check's good I would have believed that yeah and it was the same with my transactions like they confirmed like all my transactions like no no no everything looks good it's just gonna take a few days i'm like

so everything is okay then like yeah so that's when i got to defraud it even more because i trusted the bank and when you come to them afterwards like hey this wasn't a correct buyer transfer and they're like oh we can see if they're real or not like there's so many out there in the world and you're like well you sort of said so you can always look back and you think okay the transfers never came in you know why didn't you act sooner and i just have to say it comes with the coercive nature and the manipulation of the con why are you still in it why are you still continuing you know but I guess also at that point you still believe that the person is the person that they've been saying they are for so long and something that we spoke about before we started

the interview and I think like we can talk about money till the cows come home and I know that that's something that people prioritize and prize as being like the biggest thing that you've lost in this but there is a bigger emotional conversation around having a relationship giving consent to someone who is completely not the person that they pretended to be and panella you experienced it on a friendship level but cecilia you experienced it in a relationship level and like when you think that there is a whole other aspect to this where you're having sex with someone who is literally not the person they said they are how do you recover from that side of things when i was put into the psychiatric ward i had to do different types of tests because

i was scared because you were thinking if this guy can do this he doesn't give a damn about you you know he could give you everything on the planet you know you were super scared just for your own physical health it's another level to it that i i feel it's like and just the emotional coercion and the manipulation that they're doing to your mind regarding that they actually care about you being a real in reality it's the total opposite that you never believed that he could do this to you and then he was never that person. Pernilla what was your time frame so when you you originally went on a date romantically but you didn't feel like there was anything there and you guys struck up what seems like a really close friendship it seems like you were a bit of a

go-to for him for a long time what was the time frame there how long were you guys friends and how long was it before he started to ask you for things so I first matched with him I think it was February 2018 and then I met him up like two weeks later so and then he didn't start defrauding me until end of November and then I found out the truth like end of January 2019 so I was with him for a year yeah pretty long time I don't know if I can use the word grooming but it's a very long manipulation I guess in your case Penilla it sort of was it sort of was like this slow grooming because he didn't ask you for anything for a long time it's almost like he had you there as a backup like I'll love bomb these other women and if that all fails and I need something I'll go

to my in inverted commas best friend yeah that's what I sort of felt like and I I actually sometimes I just have to laugh about things but I think like sometimes I think he thought I was sitting on more money that i had you're like haha sucker yeah i think so like a little bit like because it sort of feels like it was like a con on the con i don't know because like i was traveling like everywhere i did have cash and he did take my my savings but for me it was just emotional things because like sometimes i could feel like i have cheating boyfriends before that have happened to me and then i sort of can think that they could lie to me but like when you sit in there were your best friend that you trust with everything. And I genuinely thought he was my

best friend in this whole wide world. It was just, I did not see it coming. I wasn't prepared for that. And they have basically used such a long time to manipulate me. What also happened is like whilst Cecilia, you were in the depths of giving over this money to him whilst he was using your credit cards. Was this the same time that Penelope, you were able to be traveling and you were actually with Simon did these things coincide at the same time yeah so I mean like when Cecilia had this traumatic experience in Amsterdam where Peter the bodyguard comes in and they say they have a threat situation this is an emergency he needs to leave he is coming to me to like spend Easter with Jenny Stockholms this is something that's been sitting with me for a long time that

I want to know about anyone that hasn't seen it I'm just going to quickly fill you in but when the asking for the money starts it's because his enemies are after him it's because he's in grave danger and he actually sends you video footage and photos from a hospital with his bodyguard where he's injured they're bleeding they've been cut did they actually do that to each other did they actually cut each other so that they could go to the hospital so they could take a photo no it actually happened I have seen him in a club and he is a cocky asshole so I think to be honest they had been out partying and basically got into a fight in the club that's what I think honestly happen because I talked to the producer and I think it happened like with me it actually

happened that night with me and then he reused it because he wasn't in Copenhagen at the time so like when he started using it and stuff so it actually did happen but I agree with Pernilla instead of being enemies they were just being fucking cocky you think he was just that good that he would just seize the situation he's like oh cool we've gotten into a fight let's what can we do with this let's turn this into something yeah it's so amazing how he did that on that night with me you know those boys knows yeah baby we're in a war hope you know i would never have asked you for anything if it wasn't serious and all that shit and all the cards and stuff and i was like yes yes this is real this is real i shouldn't laugh and i'm not laughing it's a defense mechanism

we have we have to laugh sometimes at ourselves because we have been brainwashed and we're not brainwashed it before we're not in it and i think it is a defense mechanism is cecilia using sometimes we have to do it's not that we don't take it serious but we have to do that just to be able to be normal humans sometimes as well panilla when you were traveling with simon you were also traveling with simon's girlfriend which is a completely other woman separate to cecilia another woman who was involved in this and not involved in that she was you know part of the scheme or part of the fraud but she maybe was even defrauded herself did you have more of a relationship or more of a friendship with this other woman with with Simon's other girlfriend

since you had had this time traveling together more than what we saw in the documentary yeah absolutely and to be honest like when everything went down it was her that I care the most about because we had like a genuine friendship and we could be on the phone and texts and things like that as well so no i felt really really bad for her and when i found out the truth and everything and the things i have to understand like i mean for example like in mykonos i was already there and i just said why don't you come here like i am in mykonos so it's not like he's been taking me on these like trips and stuff because he was my friend i don't want to have my friends like pay out my whole charade and i did have my own money back then so i didn't

really need him to pay anything for me I guess I just have so much curiosity around this other woman who in your mind he was in a committed relationship and whether or not she had also been scammed out of money at the same time that is something that she have to answer on I mean I know what she have told me but I know she have not went in there with a bad intention or nothing like she's a sweet girl but I think she have to answer that to be honest I don't want to answer on her behalf i think she's very properly brainwashed like i i haven't had the same as her but like it has gone some years so i had some very contact with her after everything came out because i was like you want to like reach out a hand to you you know but she's properly brainwashed

i think there are some more people that are falling even further down than us but what he and this other fraud girl did towards me and her when we were in rome that is on a whole other level that was a spectacle i went to meet up with him and his girlfriend in rome and then he also had one of his assistants there she and simon did a charade they basically went to do like hidden meetings she did explain how she'd been working for the company for so many years but now she only works with him she could tell everything about the company she could tell everything about the family she genuinely had a linkedin profile that said she worked for led diamonds and then she was also connected with all these people so in some way or another

she managed to get all these people and all the diamonds on her LinkedIn as well but I think it also goes to show how many layers to this deception that there is going back to this victim blaming mentality when people who were trapped and taken down by someone who is literally a professional con man it's something that can truly happen to anyone and I really hope that like when somebody listens to this podcast when they watch this documentary when they see that you are both completely normal wonderful women who have just been absolutely taken advantage of by someone who approached the relationships that he created with you with intent to do harm yeah i think that is the most like hurtful part that someone generally have done this so many people to have went in

there just to destroy your your life that is like the very low point in life when you realize that and you also have to understand that this is their full-time job this is like a running company they're very good at their job did you guys ever see him again after it unraveled and you had these fights was there ever a time that you came in contact with him again did you try to did you ever want some form of closure i know you obviously wanted your money back but we've just spoken about there's so much more to this so much more emotionally and soul crushing did you want to see him did you want that closure try to like call me and we did have a conversation in the end of the night and that's when he tried to get me on board into the scams and I just refused to and I was just totally

heartbroken and then after I wouldn't agree on that he started to threaten me and then he just said well I gave you one option and now I have already paid a price on your head so you can count your days to live so thank you and bye basically so I mean I was scared for my life I mean like this man I mean I have talked to other women that have been in contact with him like he even threatens to kill their children to silence them they did not show that did they no there is a lot that you haven't seen you have seen our stories and what happened to us and it was too much to fit into the movie the movie's still one hour one hour 50 and there's a lot that haven't been unfold what happened and what he have done but i mean sometimes i can get like when people

oh you're the king so i was like this is not a normal human i mean this is a man that would threatened to kill children and you and women and basically destroys people's lives so no because he drags in because like with the threat against me and he said like we know you we know your friends and family so when you put in the we as well you're wondering who else is out there like you get really really scared of it so I reached out to him just one time in 2020 because I saw that he was you know had this lavish life and I hadn't had my closure because I just blocked him. I wasn't able to. And you have that effect, you know, he's never going to listen to you. So I wrote to him and then he just said that my lies made him a superstar, that he's doing great in

Israel and that I'm the fraud and good luck and that I criminal charges against me in Greece. So this guy is just, it's no talking to him. It's no point of asking him anything. How do you even begin to recover or begin to like create safety for yourself when you are literally afraid for your life when something like this happens well I got a hidden identity from the police uh here in Sweden and then I basically left the country I left my house I was scared even to see my friends my family I mean I left the country and just like I wasn't here I was like faking my Instagram where I was like changing dates and times and things because I was so scared and that's what he does to most of his victims you know they're not as strong as

pernilla in the end that she's actually doing going out and fighting the same with me you know like you get death threats and what do you do most people would never ever take that chance but i think some of us are just like i just got that feeling like after being initially scared that i can imagine that he's done this to a lot of people i was thinking and it stops now but this is how he silenced them and me and cecilia just decided like it's not gonna i mean like i was scared but my fighting spirit never left that he was not going to get away with this but of course I didn't want him like to find me because you don't know him anymore what is he capable of and his team you know because they're it's just not him and I think that's so important before you

realize he could never have done this by himself Cecilia like I know you were so instrumental in the start in like breaking this story bringing some justice to wanting like public to know who this person is. When you are so frightened for your life, when there is so much riding on this and knowing that he has access to your friends and to your family, where do you get that strength from? Like, what is it in you that makes you go, this is not okay. I need to make this as public as possible. It seems like such an incredible step for someone to take who's in your position. Yeah. I think I spent maybe a couple of weeks being fearful, you know, and just like, what should I do and then contacting police and they didn't care I think it was more the feeling of

not being taken seriously and knowing that he's still out there and that they're not going to do anything no one wants to go to media with this type of story if they don't really have to it's almost like oh you chose it and I was like well what do you do in this situation I wish I got justice from the system that the police just did their job but they wouldn't do it so what do you do and I was privileged enough of having a family that was really supporting my mom was like my rock and as long as you have some type of safety then you can find the strength to do it i don't think what people understand sometimes like what me and cecilia have done i mean like we basically forced them to do this in english i was so when they contacted me about this norwegian

girl i was like this is not just one norwegian girl i mean like i've seen him spend millions a million that maybe covers half a month of his spendings i mean like if he's a fraud and he have done this that means they have an entire team they have done so much and we need to warn people so i think what we want to we want to warn people we wanted to help people so this doesn't happen to anyone else it means it's still they just decided we don't care if we're getting dragged because if we're going to cover our faces it's not going to have the same impact so let's just go there hit us over with a bus do whatever you want but you have to also do the piece in english if you don't do it in english like i'm not even going to be there i'm not gonna do it and i can

just remember me in sicilian london is sitting in her room and just sending an email in this to every news outlet we can find and just like hi do you want to write about this can you share this as long as you show his face like everywhere we've been shocked by the response from journalists and stuff that are just eating up these guys what he's saying or what he's posting and i'm just like it's such a double standard there that i'm like it's so weird i mean we have seen the double standard in media and we have seen what you both of you have received in the comment section on social media and people's commentary around your story but I think for the most part most people who have seen your story understand the bravery that it takes that you have shared this and in

doing so you have protected so many other women to falling victim to his fraud and his face Simon's face is the most recognized face in the whole world at the moment because of this Netflix documentary let me just show you one thing right now on that this is so we're in Bondi Beach in Australia Sydney Australia oh my god I've seen this yes so I was walking down the street today I'm going to show you guys this poster is everywhere all over Sydney and over the east okay can you see it yeah yeah it's so awesome it's amazing it just says fuck the tinder swindler I had my Australian friends sending it to me so I was dying when I saw it I was like this is so Bonnie. I love Bondi Beach right now. For both of you, Cecilia, Penilla, like going through this

experience and having your trust in someone completely crushed in the most, just the most unbelievable way. How do you then, like, where are you guys at now in terms of like dating, your ability to trust people, even just making new friends? How has this impacted you in how you make and maintain your relationships I can say that like we talked about before you can have good periods and bad periods I can find sometimes when I'm in a bad period can be if someone does something nice towards me I can sometimes think that they have like an evil hidden agenda behind it but in the good times I mean like me and Cecilia we also have like so much fun together I mean like we can't mistrust an entire world like then the world wouldn't be so nice to live in I

mean like it's not like we don't trust people but maybe when we're having bad periods he's just taken so much from us you know and when it comes to relationships and stuff like i don't want to live my life being bitter and not trusting people because then my entire life would be ruined so but of course this has had a huge effect and we've gone through a lot in the years after so it hasn't been easy forming those deep relationships but i hope with this and finally like closing a bit of a chapter that i don't need to speak like that you can actually properly heal and form yeah those relationships that you want to and i think we also don't want to be a victim our entire life i mean like we went through a trauma we still have effects from the trauma and really bad things happen to us

but it doesn't say who we are as a person i mean we're still best friends we want to go out and just just have fun and laugh about things sometimes as well so it's not like we sit home and cry every day I mean we still have fun it's amazing you absolutely can't let it define you and I'm glad that you are not and before we let you go one last question that I think everyone wants to know are you both still on tinder and or are you in love have you met anyone I am not on any dating app and I think I've been on tinder my entire life like four months but I'm the famous tinder woman okay i'm the tinder expert so of course i i'm still on tinder but i'm not like using it i haven't even had time to say the least so i i just think it's more fascinating just to see if some of

the men that i've matched up with are recognizing me i think that's even more funnier and see how awkward they're writing hi i see that you're the girl from the tinder spindler very sorry it happened to you tinder should be sponsoring you guys actually maybe we'll get them to sponsor this ep thank you please cecilia and panilla thank you so much for joining us you're both incredible women that i i'm just so grateful you came on here to tell your story today and i wish you nothing but the absolute best in life oh thank you so much thank you for having us as such cool questions it was a very different one so it was really cool guys we would normally get into our suck and sweet but there were and i mentioned it in the beginning of this episode there have been

some development since we actually spoke to Cecilia and Pernilla in regards to Simon he's come out with his own statement around the Netflix series firstly he has said that the Netflix series is completely fabricated that he is not a fraud star and I just think like anybody who's watched that Netflix series anyone who's spoken to Cecilia and Pernilla are going to believe their story also bro you've been in jail twice you've been in jail twice like literally you have been criminally charged for this Simon ended up serving five months of his almost two-year sentence which was off the back of him forging passports so that happened and that was all linked into the time that Cecilia and Penilla were being scammed he hasn't been held to accountability yet for the

amount of money that he scammed out of these women and I think that that is one of the huge and biggest tragedies of this but something that I wanted to talk about quickly before we summed up everything is this idea about Netflix and with this huge mass consumption of the girl's story of the women's story who have been conned is the infamacy that comes with the Netflix series. So Simon's face and Simon's name is one of the most well-known and easily recognisable face in the world at the moment. But he's also started to become and be able to earn an income off this.

He has just signed a manager in the United States. He wants to go to Hollywood. He wants to go to Hollywood. He wants to start a dating show. He also is now- Why? I mean, I'm sorry. That is the last show in history I'd be going on.

Imagine if you took dating advice from a con man. like but people going this is the crazy this is the crazy thing i have no doubt it's so cooked success is going to come to him in some fucked up roundabout way because we're obsessed with these people but he's he's a horrible human that was sending death threats to people and we're going to celebrate him and give him a platform and that's the thing that i think is just so toxic and i know that that's one of the points of conversation that really upset cecilia and Penilla. We did ask them a little bit, actually got edited out of the final interview because it was a bit emotional and heated. I asked Cecilia how she felt about the fact that Simon

is still on TikTok and has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok. His Instagram has been taken down by Instagram, which is a huge step because usually Instagram never deletes anything. Tinder also. And he's been deleted and blocked from opening up a Tinder, but he still has TikTok and he also is now charging for cameos. And it must be just so infuriating on so many levels. Firstly, the fact that he is a con man, he's still perpetuating even to the media that he's living this high life. And Cecilia and Penilla don't believe that he's still a millionaire or billionaire. Cecilia and Penilla actually think that even the way he's perpetuating himself to media now is a scam. So the media have been scammed by his lies as well, because we're all

buying into the fact that he's still living this luxurious and luscious high life whereas really where would he be getting his income from and that was the question that Cecilia posed but also how can somebody who is literally a criminal who is infamous for doing so much hurt and so much damage to these women be able to earn an income through a company in a platform like Cameo and I just think that for Cameo to platform him for any social media to be able to say yep come here and it glorifies what he's done it kind of says look what you can get away with look what you can achieve if you do this to other people I just think it's truly inconscionable well he also wants to start and like I mean look this is going to be some direct competition he

also wants to start a dating podcast as well like a relationship podcast it's beyond me what advice people are going to get from him because there's no part of him that is there's nothing that is true but I mean it's irrelevant it's irrelevant how or what he does it the fact is like he should not be able to earn an income or become famous because of what he's done to these women. And truly, I think that that is the one dark side of Netflix documentaries is that people who are criminals, who are deeply flawed, almost become immortalized because we're obsessed with the story. Well, the thing I don't understand too is, so he's just come out yesterday or the day before and said, I'm not the Tinder swindler. I was just a single person that was trying to date. I didn't

do any of the above. This is literally what he's saying. But when he made his reappearance on Instagram for the first time and TikTok after the documentary, he was posting photos with the hashtag, you paid for this. So pick your lane, Simon. What's it going to be? You're either going to claim and gloat that you did this, hashtag you paid for this, or you're going to say it's not me and you're going to deny it. But I think he's just completely playing the media like he's played every single person. It's horrible that he's making money. And anyone quickly that doesn't know what Cameo is, it's just an account where people pay for personalized videos of famous people essentially. And he's making, he's charging around $500 for a personal video and up to $1,500

for business videos. This is literally just of him recording himself for a couple of minutes and sending it to someone they're paying for it. So it's absolutely despicable. And one thing I did find really- Let's all lobby Cameo to get him off the side. Totally. It pisses me off. But this is the thing. There is no company or person in the world right now that doesn't know who he is and what he has done. So for a company to turn a blind eye to that and let him do what he's doing and make money from it is very, very disappointing in my eyes. I mean, it's one thing, isn't it? Like, yes, he has these platforms. Is anybody buying, is anybody buying the cameos? We don't know. A hundred percent they are. But they would be. Yeah. Last thing I wanted to add was just for

anyone that is still thinking that these women are crazy and silly women to have done that. The Guardian reported that last year, 2021, one year alone, romantic cons added up to $1 billion. dollars one billion dollars so it's not just these women that are being scammed this is a real real problem 2021 12 months a billion dollars just in romantic scams so just think about that next time you're trying to judge someone especially these women but also on that it just shows the depth of empathy that some people have and also how powerful wanting to be loved is how powerful wanting to be in a relationship wanting someone to care about you and putting all of your love and energy and belief in somebody like that is powerful shit. And I don't think that we can

exactly like you said earlier with the whole Grace Tame thing, like blaming somebody for being the victim of someone else's cruelty is truly, truly awful. Well, at the end of the day, people are giving them a hard time for literally being trusting people and believing that they were in a relationship. But anyway, we hope you guys loved that. We hope you learned something from listening to these women. I know we absolutely did. There were definitely some eye opening moments and I'm really grateful they came on the pod let's finish up the episode with our highlight now low light our suck and now sweet of the week I'm gonna go first my suck broke up with Jordan moving on sweet lol Kano cute my sweet I'm like and everything is on fire and I want to put my

life in the bin but yay let's talk about my sweet now my coffee was nice fuck everything my sweet fuck the world uh no my sweet would be it's been a really tough couple of weeks so I'm really gonna have to dig deep here oh Laura help me out I mean you live in a beautiful new apartment you've got an amazing my sweet my sweet I um you have a great co-host yeah all of the above my sweet is I had so much satisfaction from building this new mansion kennel for Delilah I really went above and beyond to build her a little home and it was really hard to build this kennel on my own from physically like trying to hold up these panels like I didn't have enough hands trying to hold up these panels use screwdrivers put things in here and there it kept falling over

it was very difficult I didn't want to give up because I was like I'm going to do this like I'm going to be this independent woman don't need no man you know all that kind of stuff and I nailed it and the satisfaction I was like oh yeah I was like is it sad how much satisfaction I have absolutely not I think anybody listening to this who's like ever assembled a flat pack piece of furniture all by themselves without the help of a man it was like at the end they were like yeah yeah i'm a i'm i've got this you go okay i can do this all on my own so i can completely relate to that what's yours my suck for the week is that we didn't pay our gas bill and yesterday our gas was turned off which meant i've had two cold showers now and my children everything had to be marked

just don't turn my electricity off can i just add that i'm pretty sure we had this discussion multiple times i did tell you it was going to happen we did i also thought that they gave you a bit longer like it's only been a couple weeks you just give me a month how much free gas do you want i mean you still have to pay for it you just pay for it retrospectively but yeah energy australia they were fucking on it literally from the second we moved in they were like you don't live here pay your gas pay your new gas fuck you we turn your gas off you got cameras in the house just a bit of a buffer would have been nice do you know what like a month adulting is so hard like people underestimate how hard it is to be an adult and when you literally every person listening

to this podcast is doing it though but that's what i mean but like it's the things that you think about and this is what i really realized since you know i've been on my own for so long in terms of living on my own doing life even with Jordan for the last year like god that was still my own the whole time like he didn't he lived in another country but I never really realized how much I relied on like my dad or the father thing or your parents for the things that you don't realize like moving home you don't just pick your furniture up and put it in you got to cancel everything all the electricity all the gas all the internet then you've got to call up then you've got to redirect it then you got to make sure it's on in time it's like you have to do so

much stuff I'm like just let me live like I've got my bed just let me live here it's the admin it's the life admin look I mean I weaponize you still can't do I weaponize some incompetence I thought Matt was gonna do it because I found that shit too hard and he didn't do it and then no one did it and so now we have no gas which we have to work out today but anyway and my sweet for the week is just I like Lola is almost walking and she had kind of come out the other side of a really tricky phase I don't know if I really spoke about it but she went through this phase Lola sucked for a while man it was so hard she just went through this phase of screaming about everything and I just felt so beat down.

And I know that everyone sees her on Instagram and says like, she's the happiest baby. She truly wasn't for a little while there. She was happy or she was screaming. She only had two settings and it was like pretty soul crushing. Zero to a hundred real quick. Yeah, it was like she was smiling or she was screaming

and that was it. There was no chill. There was no in between. And I just think maybe she was having a growth spurt. There was some weird changes, baby leaps or something happening. And now we're on the other side and I'm really enjoying being around her again and I know that sounds horrible but there was

like a period there where I was like wow well I'm gonna have to get up and do this parenting thing today and I just don't have it in me but of course you're not going to enjoy and it's not that it's your child it's not that you don't enjoy your child of course you're not going to enjoy being around and we'll just say something of course you're not going to enjoy being around something that incessantly is screaming at the top of their lungs you can call her a child I know I know something I know but like I mean anything it was to say it was like a dog howling for six hours you don't want to be around a child that is screaming and it's not just that it was screaming for like an hour or half an hour like she was going through a really hard time it would be

hours on end so I don't think you need to feel bad for saying I need to step out for a bit of fresh air yeah and I think every mom goes through it like these periods where you think I'm loving my time with my kids like my kids are incredible and then you have times where you're like this is really challenging and I'm not as much as I love my children I'm not enjoying their time as much as what I normally would because they are going through a difficult leap emotions are bigger than their bodies things are just a bit more challenging and you kind of work through it so I mean I knew it was a phase I knew we would get through to the other side but the phase was really hard and I was feeling really really just emotionally beat down and the

unrelentingness of parenting sometimes just creeps up on you yeah and there were times that Laura would walk in and I was like how are you and she would just cry too then we just sit we would just both sit there and cry and we're like this is so fucking funny in a not funny way like we shouldn't be laughing but we would cry laugh because we were just both at like our wits end but can I just say something Britt I know that this has been in a lot of ways a hard episode for you and I know that you aren't ready to talk about the full scope of things or like you know just even it doesn't come easily to talk about heartbreak when you're actually going through the heartbreak I'm so fucking proud of you for how you've had big things happening in your life and you have still showed

up to the podcast you have still put on you know put on some makeup fucking put on your pants and like sometimes there was no pants or no makeup but just cracked on with it you know and as much as like I know how hard that was and I don't think you give yourself enough credit for just how how well you have managed to put things together when everything else has been going to shit and I'm super proud of you thank you love because I do not feel like I've had it together but here we are fake news I pretended to be okay I am at night also yeah she's an actress anyway guys if you have loved the episode please jump on leave us a review if you're a scallywag and you've been listening for so long and haven't left one yet where you at if you have an accidentally unfiltered

story for us or you want to join the podcast group we have our instagram which is life uncut podcast and we also have the facebook community so if you're an adult and you want to make adult friends you can jump on there it's called life uncut discussion group on facebook and that is it from us tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your friends and share the love because We love love! I just had a testy pop.