S'pore-based TikToker Found Guilty of Raping Woman He Met on Tinder

A TikToker and former scriptwriter-actor with local YouTube comedy channel Wah!Banana was convicted by the High Court on March 21 for raping a woman he met on the dating app Tinder.

- Selina Lum

Lev Panfilov, a Singapore permanent resident originally from Russia, was found guilty of two counts of rape, one count of sexual assault by penetration, and one count of outrage of modesty.

The 28-year-old will be sentenced at a later date.

The assault took place on Jan 12, 2021, in his bedroom after he took the woman back to the flat he shared with flatmates to work on her script.

The woman, who was then 30 years old, had worked as an actress and model and was trying to branch out into comedy writing.

She and Panfilov presented different accounts of the incident.

During the trial, which began in May 2023, she was cross-examined for an "unprecedented" 13 days, according to the prosecution's written submissions.

The two matched on Tinder and later moved their chat to WhatsApp before arranging to meet in person at a restaurant in Robertson Quay.

She testified that his Tinder profile stated that he was either a writer or scriptwriter and that she had hoped to get some advice on script-writing from him.

She also said she had gone on YouTube to verify his claim that he worked for the Wah!Banana channel.