About Ayleen
In many ways Ayleen Charlotte Koeleman is a young woman like so many others — ambitious, with a zest for life and… looking for love. She fell head over heels for a a handsome, cosmopolitan, and seemingly successful young man from abroad. Someone who, in hindsight, had very different intentions than Ayleen. Her story, which ended with a broken heart, a gigantic debt and determination for revenge, is the story of so many other young women, which was told in the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler. The documentary made waves around the world and changed Ayleen’s life almost overnight.
In The Tinder Swindler, Ayleen reveals how she ended up entangled in the web of lies created by whom she believed to be her boyfriend, Simon. For well over a year, through a strategy he refined by trying out the same lies on other women simultaneously, she was made to believe both their lives were in danger, and built up a eye-watering debt along the way. When she discovered the deception, she chose to turn the tables and took revenge by selling his expensive collection of designer brand clothes.
Ayleen felt she had to make a radical choice between victimhood or becoming a beacon of female empowerment for herself and others. After what became four years of misery, Ayleen decided not only to tell her story, but chose to make radical changes in her own life. She quit her job in high-end fashion retail, started to write down her story in what will soon be her first book and is inspiring young women around the world through media appearances, her appearance in Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talks being one of her personal highlights. Her experiences prompted Ayleen to make her life-long entrepreneurial dreams come true, as she is now launching her own wine label and lifestyle brand.