Kees van der Spek Finds Female ‘Tinder Swindler’: ‘She’s Crazy’

Dennis met Reina through the Hinge dating app, and after that it wasn’t long before Reina visited the Netherlands. At first glance she comes across as an ambitious woman with a fat wallet. “She has a lot of companies in Holland,” Dennis explains. “She also bought me all kinds of things, like clothes, but also dinners with my children and supporters. She wanted to pay for everything.”

When Reina asks after a while if she can borrow some money from him, Dennis is not immediately concerned. His girlfriend paid a lot for it, so he sees no harm in giving her the money. “And then I got that money back within two weeks. Then she had problems with payments again, so I loaned her money again. In the end, about 6,000 euros.”

At that moment, Dennis still thinks that Reina has it all together. It is said that she owns a sailing boat company in the Netherlands, a school in Asia and has plans to open a school for Filipino children in her hometown, Athens. She also wants to start her own catering business with Dennis. Finally, she also said that she owned a jewelry company, for which she was regularly in the Netherlands. When Dennis has lent her a total of 20,000 euros at one time, he has doubts.

He makes a strange discovery through YouTube. In a video, a Danish man claims to be a victim of Reina. Like Dennis, he is said to have given her a large loan – at least 60,000 euros – after which Reina took it off. Dennis tries to contact that person by leaving a comment on the video and thus comes into contact with a Dutch man who also seems to be in a relationship with Reina at that time.

Dennis and her husband, Ray, decide to meet and find out that Reina visited them in Holland at the same time. “There’s a pattern, right?”, Kees concluded. “She meets men through dating sites and at the beginning she’s very generous, dinners and gifts, it goes on and on. But that money is then used to contact new men with whom she does the same thing.

Kees and Dennis visit her in Athens. During the trip, Dennis regularly receives calls from Reina, teasing him if he doesn’t answer her messages or transfer money. “She’s really crazy,” Kees said. When they confront her at home about her behavior, she denies everything.

Dennis and Kees know enough: especially when they talk to her landlord who also opens up about Reina’s lies. They decide to put Reina on the spot. If she continues to deny it, they will contact the school she says she belongs to. That helps, because Reina communicates with Dennis and tells him that she will pay back the loan amount. She also agrees to an exclusive interview with Kees.

(Text continues below video)

During the interview Dennis does not become much wiser. Reina admits several things under pressure, but at the same time claims that she had no choice and that she has had a ‘very intense’ life. Kees accuses her gas lighting, a form of psychological manipulation in which the perpetrator, consciously or not, aims to cause psychological distress to the victim. He agrees with Reina that she will pay Dennis back.

Once in Holland, the story continues. Kees finds out that Reina has been active as a Tinder Swindler for years (after the Netflix documentary of the same name, ed.) and is wanted for this in Dubai. She is said to have seduced six men there in early 2000. So he can only conclude that there must be ‘many more’ victims.