The Tinder Swindler doesn’t have a storybook ending. Shimon Hayut, aka Simon Leviev, who scammed millions of dollars out of women he met through the dating app Tinder, was freed early from his Israeli prison sentence while his victims were still paying off their (many, many) debts. But after devouring the two-hour scammer documentary, there’s one moment that’s intensely satisfying: when Ayleen Charlotte, one of Leviev’s victims, swindles the Tinder Swindler himself. 

In an iconic scene in the second half of the film, we see Charlotte explaining the moment she realized she was being scammed and deciding to play along — while also selling off Leviev’s designer clothes piece by piece. Needless to say, the Tinder Swindler’s cult following is praising Charlotte for exacting the revenge we were all craving.

“May she live long and prosper,” wrote one Twitter user. “The Tinder Swindler was playing checkers and she was playing chess... ,” wrote another. The Tab even wrote an homage to her, with author Harrison Brocklehurst saying that Charlotte “has a camp flair” and that he’d “come out to her,” urging her to work with Don’t F**k With Cats’ Baudi Moovan on an investigation. 

Charlotte first learned her boyfriend was a scammer from a newspaper article that included testimony from fellow victims Cecilie Fjellhøy and Pernilla Sjoholm, who were the main subjects of The Tinder Swindler. After chatting with Sjoholm, she realized she had been scammed to the tune of $140,000 — but still needed a plan to get her money back. “Suddenly, I realized I was in a quite powerful position,” she says in the documentary. 

Pretending to remain a loyal girlfriend, Charlotte decides to meet up with Leviev one last time, but not for romance: She takes three suitcases of Leviev’s designer clothes under the guise of selling them on his behalf. Instead, Charlotte keeps the profits for herself — estimated, in the film, at over $10,000. In fact, during her interview for the documentary, she receives a bid on one of Leviev’s items. “Of course, it wasn’t in line with everything that I gave him,” she says, chuckling, “but it felt like a little bit of payback.”

Charlotte then orchestrates the ultimate payback: his arrest. After leaving Leviev, she figures out a flight he’s boarding under a fake passport; Interpol is waiting to arrest him when he lands. “He never believed that I was capable of doing this,” she says. “He knows now. Hi, Simon!”

So what is our unexpected hero up to now? The Tinder Swindler director Felicity Morris has since revealed that it was actually quite difficult for Charlotte to tell her story. “[She] felt so unempowered throughout this whole thing. She was really, really reluctant to speak to us, to go on camera. She felt so ashamed,” Morris says. But Morris and her producer Bernadette Higgins encouraged her to come forward, and she eventually agreed to an anonymous interview — then a public one. 

“We were just thrilled when she did her little ‘Hi, Simon!’ ” Morris says. “We just felt like, ‘Go, Ayleen! You should feel really pleased and proud of yourself.’ She's a badass, and he underestimated her.”

Morris also said that Charlotte has kept “a lot” of Leviev’s designer clothes, so all those shots of ironing and steaming feature his actual garments. Since the documentary came out, Charlotte revealed another item of Leviev’s she kept (and wears): a pair of designer sunglasses. 

Now Charlotte has been keeping relatively quiet. In the documentary, she says she’s still paying off the debts she accumulated while dating Leviev; but Charlotte has since started a GoFundMe, alongside Fjellhøy and Sjoholm, to recoup some of their losses, and so far, it’s raised over $95,000. On her Instagram, she acknowledged fans for their love of the documentary, saying, “This is beyond anything! Thank you so much for your support!”