The watch collection of The Tinder Swindler

Luke Benedictus

By now you’ve probably watched the Netflix documentary, The Tinder Swindler and if you haven’t, well, the clue is in the title.  Simon Leviev is purportedly a billionaire diamond dealer whose life is an international whirlwind of private jets and five-star hotels. His Instagram page is like something out of a ‘90s hip-hop video and shows the young man posing on yachts smoking oversized cigars or ensconced in the leather seats of chauffeur-driven Bentleys. He woos the women he meets on Tinder with international travel, huge bouquets of roses and nights at the Four Seasons. But all this is a calculated ruse for his real intention: an extravagant Ponzi scheme designed to fleece these victims out of tens of thousands of dollars.

Leviev’s appearance is, of course, carefully assembled to reinforce his billionaire lifestyle. His designer wardrobe is made of Gucci sweaters and Louis Vuitton loafers and his wristwear is even more ostentatious. At one point there’s a snap of some of his watches with this pictured haul including a Richard Mille RM030, an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Chronograph and five different Rolex pieces: three gold Day-Dates (one with a diamond bezel), a gold Submariner and a Daytona Rainbow.  If these watches were real (more on that later), suffice to say they would easily cost $500,000 AUD.  That Richard Mille model alone is selling for upwards of $350,000 AUD on Chrono24.

The first thing to say about Leviev’s collection is that he has deliberately chosen watches that conspicuously broadcast the size of his wallet. There’s no hidden sub-text to decode here – you don’t have to be “in the know” to clock their value at 10 yards. As watches go, each of these are shameless attention whores.

Richard Mille watches are deliberately brazen and over the top, high-roller status symbols with the volume turned up to 11. But they’re also impossible to miss due to their size, colours and frenzied details. “Richard Mille cost a Lambo,” as rapper Meek Mill once observed in Going Bad and the watches are purpose-built to communicate this fact.

But the rest of his watches are hardly wall-flowers. I’ve written before about how gold Rolex is a unrepentant emblem of wealth and status communicated in a universal language. It’s not just a timepiece, it’s a wrist-bound power move. Leviev has five of them and two are bedecked with additional jewels.

The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Chronograph may be the most subdued of the bunch. But it’s trademark integrated bracelet is still designed to pull eyeballs thanks to the lightshow that radiates from its mix of brushed and polished links.

The overt expense of these watches is, of course, the whole point for Leviev. To convince his victims of his scam, he needs his watches to be supportive props that reinforce his crazy-rich persona. A Calatrava or a Lagne dress watch, for example, would be far too discreet. They wouldn’t communicate his moneyed message at the necessary volume.

At this point, I should note, that the only time when Leviev’s watches are explicitly mentioned in The Tinder Swindler is when he gives one of his girlfriends a watch in lieu of some of the thousands  he owes her. When Pernilla takes the unnamed watch to the pawn shop, lo and behold it’s a fake.

You’d assume that all his other watches would be knock-offs, too. All of which is perfectly fitting. A watch, after all, is invariably an expression of a man’s character. Given Leviev is a serial conman who operates under an assumed name, it makes sense that his wristwear is just as fraudulent and dodgy as he is. As the old saying goes: all that glitters, is not gold.