Two women who were conned by the 'Tinder Swindler' have slammed those who blame them for the man's crimes.
A man - who they knew as Simon Leviev, but his real name was Shimon Hayut - conned the pair and other women out of hundreds of thousands of pounds after pretending he needed their money to help him out of difficult situations.
Their ordeal is the subject of a new Netflix documentary, which drops on the streaming platform tomorrow, and Lorraine was joined by two of the women - Cecilie Fjellhoy and Pernilla Sjoholm - on her morning show today.
Speaking to the pair - who have since become great friends - she said: "You decided to come forward and tell your story, expecting something to happen to him, of course, and instead you got a torrent of abuse."
"We kind of knew it might come, but to be called a gold-digger for giving out money, like we said, we must be the worst gold-diggers in history," Cecilie replied as she explained how they had been blamed for what happened.
She then went on to explain she was over £200,000 in debt and has been declared bankrupt in the UK.
Cecilie added: "It's over £200,000 now and it's a high interest loan so it's still accumulating. I'm bankrupt here in the UK, but most of the loans are in Norway so I'm in this limbo state that I don't know how much it's going to be yet.
"It's impossible to pay it down, you want to, you don't want to be in this situation but what can you do it's too much."
Speaking about what happened before she transferred the money, she shared: "The thing is that they are very smart about it. He doesn't ask for money the first time, it's more security of the name. I know it's the same thing but when you're in it, he's asking 'I can't use my cards, like they're going to track my name, can I use your card?' So that's how they started it."
However, both women insist they haven't given up on love - despite finding it hard to trust me now.
"I think what happened was so extraordinary and it was such a weird and movie like what it was, and I didn't want to put that on other men, it's not other men's fault what he did to me," she added, "And he's taken so much from us. I didn't want him to take that part of me, that truly believes in love and I'm still trying but it's been painful."
