“The Tinder scammer”: why did Simon Leviev get out of jail? We explain the reasons

Even when a woman has her own money and emotional independence, she is not safe from being a victim. Although it could have happened to people of any gender, the truth is that an average of 20 women or more became Simon Hayut’s main prey to commit the “perfect scam”, as Norwegian VG journalist Natalie Remøe calls the case. Hansen. The protagonists of the documentary Netflix “The Tinder scammer” still does not have justice, because this man is still active on social networks, and due to the strategy of lies that he traced, he may be for a long time yet.

Only a month passed before the messages of “I need money, because I am in danger” began in the conversations of Shimon Hayut (real name), and hypothetically ‘Pepito’, ‘Juanito’ or one of the many identities, such as ‘Simon Leviev ‘, he invented in front of Tinder users. Some were just friends and others alleged future wives, as the Israeli scammer promised them. He would tell them that he was in the arms industry or that he was an undercover agent for Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. It was one with the other: it created a bond of affection in which they immersed themselves to, later, ask for sums of money of 10 or 40 million dollars.

Leviev introduced himself to Norwegian Cecilie Fjellhøy as a diamond tycoon, heir to the fortune of his alleged father, Lev Leviev, the owner of LLD Diamonds. something fake On the other hand, Pernilla Sjöholm met him when ‘Leviev’ was in Stockholm and soon became a party friend to whom she even introduced her crush. During that time, the Israeli scammer spent $42,000 on his own AmEx credit card and forged bank checks. Since 2019, the complaints against him rained down in at least seven countries, such as Sweden, England, Germany and Denmark, but the police did not take action on the matter until the publication of the VG article. It is when he was imprisoned for five months and then released.

Very similar to the network marketing pyramid, which in Spain is known as Ponzi, the Tinder scammer started his conquest strategy. The plan was to seduce a young woman with enough financial income for her target, and then promise her a stable relationship, depending on the case. When the butterflies in his stomach fluttered more than ever, ‘Leviev’ invented a fictional story so that she, whoever she was, would deposit large sums of money in his account as a loan that a person in love could not refuse, knowing that who loves is in “danger” by “his enemies”. The idea was to spend one woman’s money on another victim, another on another, in different countries, and so on.

affection with affection

The women swindled by Simon Leviev have not yet obtained justice and continue to pay their million-dollar debts, since international law has a very difficult task in determining a sentence for “emotional fraud.” According to the lawyer specializing in digital law, Erick Iriarte Ahon, the most complex part of the problem that emerges from the Netflix documentary is at the moment when the victim must argue to what extent he affected her economically or psychologically when, in fact, the instrument to cheat is affection.

“He can say: ‘no, but we have a relationship, she gave me the money.’ And she will answer: ‘but he told me that he loved me and lied to me‘. doBut how do you define love?? How do you define that he really loved you or not? Those gray areas are the ones used by many ‘love’ scammers, to tell you in a way, when they play with the feeling. And it is more difficult to determine when the donation ‘for love’ happens than that, in fact, there is a scam behind it. The issue is the proof of the scam, difficult to graduate for the penalty. You have to determine that there was a clear scheme established to extract it,” says Iriarte.

“Why (Simon Leviev) was released in 5 months… Because he paid bail or good conduct, or a series of rules… The scam must be punishable, but here there is a component of the scam, because at a legal level it is clearer when they send you an email, saying that they are going to give you money, and it is less clear when they are relationships based on affection, even if they last for years. Much more now, that we are in a pandemic, where there are long-distance relationships,” adds Iriarte.

digital love

Today, the Tinder scammer continues to travel constantly so as not to be in one place for long, meets with his lawyers from time to time, and denies the version of the Norwegian magazine VG, from which the Netflix documentary is based. In a message on his Instagram account on February 9, ‘Leviev’ posted: “We are immersed in a huge legal process right now, my lawyers tell me that the best way is for you to know the truth, or fall for everything it says on the internet, we know the kind of powerful company that Netflix is, but it all ends here . No more!”.

The Instagram story accompanied a series of written threats against the brand for having released the film. Well, since shortly before the premiere, the virtual Don Juan has not had access to the dating application, since the company vetoed it since the press scandal and has urged its users to report it whenever they see a new profile with their photographs. Is it that it will continue to operate through another digital medium? I could follow his threat.

According to Brenda Álvarez, a lawyer specializing in women’s issues in Peru and a member of the NGO Justicia Verde, “the system of investigation and punishment of illicit conduct” does not conceive with a magnifying glass in hand the virtual scenario, “a space where crimes are also perpetrated”. “It is not the same to investigate a crime of kidnapping of a person in a specific place than a case where the person is contacted through a social network, falls in love with the other person, especially adolescents, and attend a place on their own ‘ will’, a vitiated will”, he adds.

“There are different criminal acts that are committed through virtual channels. On the one hand, there are acts against sexual freedom: harassment, sexual blackmail, exposure of non-consensual material. And on the other hand there is the scam. (…) I am concerned about the situations in which this type of application can serve to affect people’s sexual freedom. An element that is important and necessary is that the criminal types are specified in this regard, ”warns Álvarez.

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