The Tinder Swindler is a Netflix Crime Documentary and is currently one of the most streamed shows from the time it was released on February 2nd, 2022. It depicts the story of an eligible, charismatic bachelor who stole the hearts of his matches on Tinder and later conned them into giving large sums of money that he used to finance his extravagant life and the next rendezvous.
This may sound like fiction, but these are events that occurred from 2015 to 2019 when the women who had become victims of this charade finally realized what was going on. The bachelor in the documentary is famously known as Simon Leviev, who poses as the son of the Israeli billionaire and diamond mogul Lev Leviev, and was CEO of LLD diamonds from the years 2017-2019
Simon Leviev, whose real name is Shimon Yehuda Hayut was born in Israel in 1990 in the mostly ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, located in central Israel, not far from Tel Aviv, to a Haredi family. Simon’s father is Rabbi Yohanan Hayut, the rabbi of the Israeli airline El Al, and he has been accused of aiding his son in his cons by introducing him as Simon Leviev and defrauding one person out of possibly hundreds of thousands of shekels.
He started his life of crime as early as his teen years. In the year 2011, he was charged with theft, fraud, and forgery of documents. He stole a checkbook from a home where he worked as a gardener and wrote himself a 250,000 NIS check to buy a Porsche. Then he sold the Porsche and used the money to take a flight course. Furthermore, he had cashed stolen checks belonging to one family he’d babysat for and another for whom he’d worked as a handyman. It is also said he scammed a family in New York for $42000 in 2008. He was to be put on trial in 2011, but instead fled the country. He initially fled to Cyprus, but came back to Israel after a month. When he realized the authorities were still after him, Hayut paid 10,000 NIS for a fake passport and used it to escape to Jordan and then to Europe, where his romantic money-siphoning scheme began.
He settled in Finland and there defrauded three women and was sentenced to 2 years in prison. He then returned to Israel in 2017 to face his charges but fled the country again, which led to his extravagant life of spending at the expense of unsuspecting women, as depicted in the Netflix documentary, where he would meet women on Tinder and develop a relationship that escalated quickly over the course of a few months, then ask to borrow increasingly large sums in their names to avoid being tracked by his dangerous "enemies" in the business world.
Furthermore, he was then arrested in Greece in July 2019 with the help of Ayleen Charlotte, Interpol, and Israeli police and was extradited to Israel for his crimes. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison in December of that same year on four fraud charges and was fined $43,289. However, he was released in 2020, five months later on good behavior. The victims are still paying their debt, which is said to be about 10 million. In the Netflix documentary, The Tinder Swindler, focuses on the vicious conman's Tinder exploits, detailing the tricks he relied on to convince dates like Cecilie Fjellhøy to give him an estimated £185,000; Ayleen Charlotte gifted him £103,000; and Pernilla Sjöholm reportedly loaned him more than £25,000. The victims have created a go fund to help them raise the money to pay it off. Furthermore, when the women’s story was published, another woman also claimed that she was swindled out of £74, 000 and a Slovakian private jet firm that said he owed £730,000 in unpaid fees.
Currently, he is a free man living in Tel Aviv, He regularly shares pictures of his extravagant lifestyle with his 100,000 Instagram followers and an unverified TikTok account under his name with over 19,000 followers. After the release of the documentary, he took his Instagram account private, but not before saying that he would soon tell his side of the story.
The 31-year-old, is currently dating a vogue model, Kate Konlin. He has also been allegedly banned from the Tinder sites under all his known aliases. Furthermore, the man has a website known as Simon Leviev Business Advice, where he provides advice for people on business and personal matters.
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