Anna Delvey, Elizabeth Holmes, Simon Leviev: hustlers and manipulators are at the center of several audiovisual productions this year. As viewers, we tend to believe we are safe from these sometimes shameless scams, committed by unscrupulous characters. But are we really?
Posted yesterday at 11:00 a.m.
Real-life scam stories are all the rage on digital platforms. Since the beginning of the year, Netflix subscribers have been able to watch The Tinder Scammerdocumentary on the manipulations of Simon Leviev, an Israeli who met women on Tinder, showered them with luxury and then extracted money from them. Netflix also offers Anna’s Invention, which tells the story of Anna Delvey, née Sorokin, a Russian who posed as a wealthy German heiress and defrauded young New Yorkers from high society. On Disney+, the series The Dropout chronicles the downfall of another woman—Elizabeth Holmes—who convinced many people to invest millions of dollars in revolutionary blood-testing technology…that never worked.
The characters of Anna Delvey, Elizabeth Holmes and Simon Leviev are all different, the frauds they committed are also different, but they still have points in common, underlines the author, speaker and psychotherapist Isabelle Nazare-Aga.
They are in search of prestige, wealth, fame, and they seem to have no qualms about using others to achieve their ends.
“The process of the scam is a perverse game with a single player, summarizes Isabelle Nazare-Aga, author of the book The manipulators are among us. The other members are just pawns on the chessboard. »
Isabelle Nazare-Aga also notes in the three characters an “extremely large” ego, which is reminiscent of narcissistic pathology.
Psychologist and psycho-legal expert, Hubert Van Gijseghem points out that there is no robot portrait to describe these manipulators and scammers, but that in the DSM (a work of classification of mental disorders), they are mainly known as narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder.
PHOTO BETH DUBBER, PROVIDED BY HULU
Amanda Seyfried plays the character inspired by Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout.
“They are great manipulators who are in search of power, pleasure, money, sexuality, and who have a total lack of empathy”, explains Hubert Van Gijseghem, who also notes in them a feeling of grandiosity. While the antisocial is ready for anything — including coercion and aggression — the narcissist uses more charm and seduction to achieve his goals, he says.
Finally, Isabelle Nazare-Aga points out that the three characters — Anna Delvey, Elizabeth Holmes and Simon Leviev — all have glibness. “They have an unusual force of persuasion, which is not based on logic and rationality, but rather on the dream”, she summarizes. Note that Elizabeth Holmes had the wish to change the world, nothing less.
Sheltered ?
As a psychotherapist, Isabelle Nazare-Aga has accompanied several victims of manipulators. And often, she notes, these people feel rage towards themselves. They feel guilty for having fallen into the trap, for having believed the people who manipulated them.
However, Isabelle Nazare-Aga and Hubert Van Gijseghem agree on one point: no one is really safe.
“Any normal person is likely to be fooled, because we all live with a certain insecurity, a certain feeling of incompleteness, explains Hubert Van Gijseghem. We are fascinated by these beings who seem so sure of themselves, who walk around with this air of superiority, and who have this charm that we cannot resist because we like to rub shoulders with someone who has the air so superior, so complete. »
PHOTO PROVIDED BY NETFLIX
Simon Leviev
“In general, when we want to believe in it, it’s because we hope to change something in our life, continues Isabelle Nazare-Aga. And that is completely human. »
Scammers don’t just use words to convince; they also manage to be supported by the facts, underlines Isabelle Nazare-Aga, who thinks of Simon Leviev, who was going to pick up his victims in a limousine. “The scammer has his legend and he does not budge. »
Unfortunately, narcissistic or antisocial personality disorders remain difficult, if not impossible, to treat.
“The people we are talking about do not feel that they have any faults and even less feel that they need help, sums up Hubert Van Gijseghem. And when they fail – which is still often the case – they never doubt themselves. It’s always the fault of this or that other fool. »