The Tinder Swindler became Netflix’s most-watched documentary when it came out in 2022, chronicling the saga of Cecilie Fjellhøy’s whirlwind courtship with Simon Leviev, who she says stole about $250,000 from her.
Since the doc aired, people who had similar experiences reached out to Fjellhøy to commiserate, and now their stories have spawned a new Netflix documentary series, Love Con Revenge, out Sept. 5. Fjelløy believes Leviev has not received the prosecution and punishment that he deserves—he only served five months in prison in his native Israel for using a fake passport—so she is working to help other singles in similar situations get justice.
Above all, Fjellhøy wants viewers who have also lost money from dishonest romantic partners to know that they are not alone. These kinds of scams cost victims about $1.14 billion in 2023, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Over six episodes of Love Con Revenge, Fjellhøy teams up with private investigator Brianne Joseph to spotlight the cases of four men and one woman who demanded money from their partners under false pretenses. The alleged perpetrators all received a heads-up about the series and were invited to respond to the allegations, but none of them took the production team up on the offer to tell their sides of the story.
Here’s a look at the cases featured in the new docuseries and tips for viewers on how to avoid falling for romance scams themselves.
A pattern of behavior
Some of the cases featured in Love Con Revenge did not get police attention until this series was underway because authorities did not think there was enough evidence against the alleged perpetrators.
“It’s hard to convince police because they consider it a domestic dispute,” Joseph explains.
So Joseph and Fjellhøy set out to find as many victims as they could with claims against the men in question so that they could go to police with as much evidence against each of these alleged perpetrators as possible.
Since production on the series started, eight women have claimed that they were defrauded by Todd Dean, who asked for money to help fund a mental health facility in Tennessee that never opened. Dean’s ex, Jill Schardein, who is featured in the doc, gave him most of her savings.
A former assistant of Dean’s handed over bank statements to Joseph and Fjellhøy that showed money moving from the account that was supposed to be used for the proposed facility to his own checking account. Dean declared bankruptcy and sold the property for the intended center to pay off his debts. He has denied the allegations against him.
In the series, Joseph and Fjellhøy speak to an attorney who fills them in on Chris Lloyd, a former baseball player for the L.A. Dodgers who posed as an investment advisor and received more than $300,000 from multiple women in the span of a year. Among them was Lindsay Kresmery, who says in the docuseries that she lost $140,000 when he advised her to dissolve her late mother’s 401K and invest in his firm and a company that would give her a 10% payout, which never materialized.
Two months ago, in July, Lloyd was arrested on a 14-count federal indictment that he conned victims of his scams out of more than $2 million. If convicted, he could face 20 years of prison time. He denies the allegations against him.
Confronting lies
During these investigations, large parts of the alleged perpetrators’ biographies turn out to be fiction.
One victim, Shareza Jackson, who ended up almost $2 million in debt after loaning her husband money to open a cosmetic surgery center in Florida, found out that her husband Dorian Wilkerson was never a licensed medical doctor, as she says he claimed to be.
Wilkerson, who earned a Ph.D., always said he worked at Emory University Hospital, but Joseph found no record of him in the hospital’s personnel department, and the state of Georgia does not have a record of a medical license for him. Joseph also found a cease and desist order in the state of Florida that said he was practicing medicine and leading people to believe he was a medical doctor despite lacking qualifications.
While there are no legal proceedings over the money that Jackson lost from Wilkerson, the doc follows her and her daughters as they try to get some semblance of justice by confronting him and telling him off at Georgia State University, where he has taught in the math department. Wilkerson claims he only used his “Dr.” title to reflect his Ph.D.
The doc also features a divorcée in the Providence, R.I., area named Bridget Phillips, who says that Ricky Morrissey, a veteran she was dating, asked her for money so he could give it to the family and children of a deceased Army buddy named Clarence. Morrissey always said Clarence saved his life, but when Joseph visited Clarence’s family, she learned that he died via an IED explosion, and never took a bullet for Morrissey as he claimed. The family also said they never received any money from someone named Ricky Morrissey and confirmed that Clarence never had kids.
Joseph and Fjellhøy tracked down security footage of Morrissey using Phillips’ ATM card at the bank—key evidence used to prosecute him. He stood trial for three felony charges of fraud and larceny against Phillips and was found guilty on all three. He is awaiting sentencing. In the meantime, Phillips did get to confront Morrissey in person, though he tried to dodge the cameras. He did not respond to the requests for comment from the Love Con Revenge team.
Men can be victims, too
The show features one male victim, Aaron Ward, who gave around $100,000 to his now ex-girlfriend Sabrina Taylor, for what he thought were doctor’s appointments and treatments for her multiple sclerosis (MS).
But Taylor never actually had MS, according to the doc. Ward only learned this after they had broken up, when the FBI called him after they tracked down other victims of her scam. Looking back, Ward always thought it was suspicious that she wouldn’t let him attend any of her doctor’s appointments.
Taylor, who did not participate in the series, pled guilty to stealing and signed a plea agreement that required her to pay victims back over the next three years, but Ward was not among those victims. Ward asked the team at Love Con Revenge if they could get him included in the plea agreement.
Ward is outside of the five-year statute of limitations for wire fraud, since he didn’t know he was being defrauded until years later. But the Love Con Revenge team hopes Ward’s case can inspire others who suspect they’re being defrauded to seek help sooner.
How to avoid romance scams
Joseph and Fjellhøy caution viewers to be wary of suitors who “love-bomb”—pack on the romantic gestures in a fairy-tale courtship that seems too good to be true—and who ask for money early on.
“There’s always this urgency behind the need to have money,” Joseph says. “It’ll start off with really small amounts, and then the next thing you know, it’s a really big ask.”
Another red flag is constantly changing places to meet, or tries to change their partner’s personality and behavior. “They like that control, and they need that control element,” Fjellhøy explains.
Overall, Joseph advises singles to approach dating and relationships with an attitude that is “hopeful, but cautious,” and not to let their guard down too quickly. “I believe in love. I believe in love again after you’ve been hurt. And I don’t think we should necessarily be discouraged from these stories, but learn from them.”
Fjellhøy hopes that the pictures and video of the alleged scammers in the series could reach people who may be dating them now, or enable singles to avoid them. And she hopes that men and women who are experiencing what she went through will be empowered to look for resources like victim support groups. Not every scammer will be brought to justice, but she hopes to break the silence and combat the shame around the subject.
As she puts it, “There will always be someone that is sitting there with a broken heart, an empty wallet. And I really hope this show will give them some type of comfort, in the sense that they’re not alone.”
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