Netflix documentary about flim-flammer Gilbert Chikli gives Israeli ex the last word

‘The Masked Scammer’ brings Shirly Chikli — an aspiring DJ and single mom of four — to the screen to tell her side of a story that saw her former husband con the rich and famous

By Jessica Steinberg

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18 December 2022, 3:10 am

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Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center

In 2015 and 2016, infamous Franco-Israel scammer Gilbert Chikli conned dozens of company presidents and CEOs out of millions of dollars by impersonating French defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and asking them for money over the phone.

Now Chikli’s story is on Netflix. “The Masked Scammer,” a gripping documentary that tells the story of the former Ashdod-dwelling charmer, is currently the number 10 most-watched film on Netflix in Israel.

Chikli is serving a 11-year prison sentence after being convicted by a French court in 2020 for costing companies around the world $1.8 billion in just over two years. At the time, he lived openly in Israel, but was later captured and extradited to France.

The linchpin of the captivating film is Chikli’s ex-wife, Shirli Chikli, who tells her story for the first time, though the drama has played out in the media for years.

“The first mission was to convince Shirli to come on board,” said Oren Rosenfeld, the Israeli producer hired by the UK production company that worked with Netflix France to create the film.

“The Masked Scammer” is the latest in a trend of true crime documentaries, said Rosenfeld, and like “The Tinder Swindler,” about a man who duped women into thinking he was the son of diamond tycoon Lev Leviev, it puts Israel on the map, albeit not in “the most positive way,” he added.

“It’s harder now to sell stories about Israel or Israelis as the heroes,” he said. “But this sells.”

For Rosenfeld, who recently won Emmys for “Inside the Battle for Jerusalem,” about the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah, the challenge in “The Masked Scammer” was finding and convincing Shirli Chikli to tell her side of the story.

“She got many offers and didn’t want to talk and I took it on as a mission to get it done,” said Rosenfeld. “It’s about building trust and friendship and a relationship.”

Rosenfeld slowly got to know Chikli and her life now in Israel as a single mother to four young daughters, her tanning salon and her ultimate passion, which is to work full-time as a DJ.

The documentary doesn’t explicitly discuss the couple’s marital status — they recently got divorced — or their four daughters. Neither does the Israeli-born Shirli Chikli rip her ex-husband to shreds.

“Her life isn’t easy,” said Rosenfeld. “He fooled her, big time. She’s not innocent, but she’s a down-to-earth person and she’s hurt from all this.”

She met Gilbert Chikli by chance in Israel in the early 2000s, as he was running away from the French police who were on the hunt for him following an earlier set of scams.

In this March 28, 2016 file photo, Gilbert Chikli, 50, and his wife Shirly Chikli, 31, pose for a photo at their home in Ashdod, Israel. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty, File)

She’s honest in the documentary about her hunt for a rich husband, but the pair — there’s a 19-year age difference — seem happy at their wedding and in their Ashdod mansion as they created a family, shown through video footage and stills.

Shirli Chikli calls her ex-husband “an angel who only wanted to do good things for her,” though she’d been warned that the police were after him.

The production keeps the French side of the story going with stills and very frank interviews with Chikli’s first female partner in love and scams, a French woman also named Shirli. There are also interviews with his brother and friends, all of whom attest to Chikli’s strong desire to escape the poverty of his childhood.

Scammer Gilbert Chikli impersonated France’s then-Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian with a silicone mask (‘The Masked Scammer’ screen grab)

Chikli ran his most audacious scam from Israel, impersonating Le Drian with a silicone mask and videocalls to the rich and powerful with a story of French nationals trapped in Mali, a need for privacy and a quick infusion of cash.

Chikli famously hit up spiritual leader and prince Aga Khan for more than 20 million euros. But it was a call to a Paris executive, Sophie Grenier, who at the time was the financial director of France’s chamber of commerce and industry, that ultimately brought the scammer down.

Grenier brought in the police after becoming suspicious of certain details and spelling errors in Chikli’s forged documents.

Producer Oren Rosenfeld’s most recent Netflix film is ‘The Masked Scammer’ about French-Israeli con-man Gilbert Chikli (Courtesy Oren Rosenfeld)

Chikli fled for Ukraine and was arrested in Kyiv, from where he was extradited to France. He remains in a French jail.

As for Shirli Chikli, the Netflix documentary has freed her, said Rosenfeld. It gave her a certain amount of fame that she plans on seizing to help build her DJing career.

Her divorce from Gilbert Chikli was finalized last month.

“Her sense of victimhood continues,” said Rosenfeld. “But she’s getting a bit of closure out of this.”