Simon Leviev, the “Tinder scammer” accused of stealing millions from several women he met on the dating app

Tinder, the application to find a partner that was created in 2011, has been installed as one of the symbols of the digital age in which we navigate and has become part of the conversations about current love relationships.

And although its focus is on interpersonal relationships, it has also been the scene of a scandal with financial repercussions: an international scam story that made it to the news and even to the giant of the streamingNetflix.

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This month the documentary premiered on that platform The Tinder Swindler (“The Tinder Scammer”), which tells the story of three women who claim to have been cheated on by a man, Simon Leviev, whom they met through the famous dating app.

For one hour and fifty minutes, through the stories of the Norwegian citizen Cecilie Fjellhøy, the Swedish Pernilla Sjoholm and the Dutch Ayleen Charlotte, shows how this man gets into their lives after meeting them on Tinder and they end up giving sums of money that are difficult to confirm, but some estimate in the millions. Only one of them gives the scammer some $200,000.

The story is based on the report made by the Norwegian newspaper VG, published in February 2019, which tells what the three women who give their testimony in the documentary suffered.

However, despite the evidence of the deception – there are hours of videos recorded by the same scammer and long exchanges of messages on Whatsapp – and of the complaints made by the three women against Leviev, he is free and denies having robbed them.

Due to the publicity it has received for the premiere of the documentary, Tinder reported that it canceled the account that Leviev kept active in the application.

But who is Simon Leviev and what does the documentary say about his way of acting?

Cecilie Fjellhøy is one of Leviev’s victims who appears in the Netflix documentary.

From Israel to Europe

According to what was published in various media, including VG in Norway and The Times of IsraelLeviev’s original name is Shimon Yehuda Hayu, born in Tel Aviv in 1990 and belonging to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family.

Leviev’s first encounter with the law occurred in 2011.

At that moment was accused of fraud for stealing and cashing checks from people he had worked for.

Before being arrested by Israeli police, he escaped across the Jordanian border on a false passport and fled to Europe. However, in Israel he was sentenced in absentia to spend 15 months in prison.

For several years there was no trace of his activities, until in 2015 he was captured in Finland for the crime of fraud, after a complaint by three women. There he was sentenced to three years in prison..

In 2017, he returned to Israel. There he legally changed his name: he stopped being called Shimon Yehuda Hayu to adopt the name of Simon Leviev with which he would become known internationally and left the country again.

Pernilla Sjoholmy considered Leviev a good friend despite not being romantically involved with him.

There began the stage that forms the plot of the Netflix documentary and is narrated in the VG article: he dedicated himself to contacting women on Tinder and supposedly asking them for money to finance his life of luxury and excess.

On the app he introduced himself as Simon Levievson of a famous millionaire who made his fortune thanks to the sale of diamonds.

“What happened next was almost like walking into the movie ‘The Truman Show’, where he shows that he has a bodyguard and that he actually flies on a private jet,” the documentary’s director, Felicity Morris, explained to the newspaper. Guardian.

Both elements, with which he tries to impress the women he knows and build his image as the son of an important billionaire who needs to be constantly guarded because the “enemies” have him in their sights, feed the lies that Leviev repeats with every victim he meets through the app.

According to what the three women narrated, some time after meeting them on Tinder and beginning a relationship –that was not always sentimental-, Leviev began to ask them for money because he had “security” problems.

The women, for different reasons, began to lend him considerable sums with the promise that he would repay them once he managed to control the security threats that had his life in jeopardy.

Of course, after a short time the man disappeared and left the women with almost unpayable debts or with their savings accounts totally empty.

When Norwegian Fjellhøy realized that she had been the victim of a scam, she decided to take her story to the press.

Life after the report

Once the report detailing Leviev’s actions was published in the Norwegian newspaper VG and replicated by other media in Europe, in October 2019, Leviev tried to flee to Greece with a false passport.

After his capture he was sent to Israel.

However, when he landed in Athens he was captured and extradited to Israel, where he was sentenced to 15 months in prison and a fine close to $50,000 to compensate their victims.

In an interview with local media, Leviev always denied having stolen money from the women who accused him. After five months of being in prison, due to the coronavirus pandemic, he was released.

“Maybe they didn’t like being in a relationship with me, or they don’t like the way I act. Maybe I broke their hearts during the process,” she said in an interview with Israeli channel 12.

“I never took a dollar out of them; these women had fun in my company, they traveled and saw the world with my money, ”she added.

Although he is free under Israeli justice, there are fraud proceedings against him in the UK, Norway and the Netherlands.

As a result of the publication of the documentary, Leviev closed his Instagram account, but before leaving a final message: “I will share my version of the story in the coming days when I have resolved what is the best and most respectful way to tell it, both for the parties involved as for me”.

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Source: Elcomercio