Everyone is discussing Tinder Swindler, but who is the tinder swindler? Does he even exist? And What’s the story? Most of us have heard about the famous “Tinder Swindler” but how much truth lies beneath the surface? Is he really an evil as everybody portrays him to be? In this article, we will tell you all about the viral tinder swindler and social media scam of the century.
Tinder Swindler
Tinder Swindler (Netflix) is a true-crime documentary about a young dating scammer, Simon Leviev, who depicts himself as the son of the multimillionaire diamond dealer. Instead, he was really just a con artist named Shimon Hayut.
In the tinder swindler documentary, many females became the victim of this infamous con artist and lots of sympathies go for them. One woman describes her first date in which the conman takes her to a luxurious hotel. This romantic date was coupled up with a spontaneous trip on Leviev’s private jet, apparently. Others compared their experience with that of a horror movie.
The glamorous life of Simon Leviev
Source: Netflix
Everything in this documentary is precisely narrated that compels the viewers to go deeply into the behaviors of all the people involved. It engages the viewers and offers extreme compassion for tinder swindler’s victims.
The documentary explains that Simon Leviev would send pictures of him and his bodyguards, drenched in blood, asking his girlfriend for money because suddenly he wouldn’t be able to access all those worldly financial reserves that he owned. When the story became viral, the females faced a huge backlash from the people and they started calling them names, gold diggers, and even worse than that.
The tinder swindler story starts with finding love online to taking a revenge. Three of Leviev’s victims planned to get revenge on him and get some of their pride back.
Netflix’s documentaries are mostly under-satisfying and quite long. But tinder swindler is a documentary that is witty, vengeful, smart, and leaves the viewers wanting more. Although it doesn’t answer all the questions, it does tell you when love truly transforms into hate.
Is the tinder swindler a real guy?
The tinder swindler, known as Shimon Hayut, is an Israeli conman. He is 31-year-old fraudster claimed that he is the son of a Russian-Israeli diamond tycoon known as Lev Leviev. Lev Leviev is an entrepreneur in Israel with a net worth of $1.5 billion. This diamond tycoon has a total of five children and not a single one of them is named Simon. The son of the apparent “King of Diamonds” goes as the “Prince of Diamonds.”
Source: Netflix
The lavish lifestyle of Simon Leviev would only be maintained when he would lure the women and open up extravagant credit lines. As mentioned earlier, he would ask his girlfriends for money because he would receive several life threats. If they didn’t give him the money, he could even die. Soaked in love, his girlfriends would give him the money and once the cash was handed over to him, he would disappear.
To make his story much more real, Leviev hired a legal staff consisting of a bodyguard and a large number of assistants. Once Leviev conned a woman, he would go off to the next one. He would impress the next girl with presents and spontaneous trips, using the money he extracted from his previous girlfriend.
Hayut went to Finnish prison in 2015 but in 2017, he fled to Israel so he could save himself from any other fraudulent offense. However, in 2018, old habits kicked in and he assumed the identity of Simon Leviev and started luring tons of women on Tinder. It is said that Simon collected about $10 million from people all over the world.
Where is the Simon Leviev now?
After all the things the tinder swindler has done, he is living his life as a free man at the age of 33. In 2019, the conman was arrested again for using a fake passport in Greece and other fraudulent offenses. He was found guilty and got imprisoned for about 15 months.
He was also liable to pay NIS 150,000 (the currency of Israel) to his victims. This amount equals $43,000 or £35,000. However, Simon was released just after 5 months of serving his sentence due to a certain programme. According to this programme, the prison population had to be plummeted to a specific number because of the ongoing coronavirus.
But yet again, the tinder swindler proved his conned qualities to the world. Just when he was out of prison, he was accused of lying again. This time he wasn’t blamed for conning women. He was blamed for being a medic to receive the vaccine dose earlier than anyone else. The Times of Israel interviewed Leviev where he said: “I am not someone who waits in line or at places. With all due respect, I will not sit and wait three to four hours. I am not someone who waits and no one can say a word about it.”
Leviev has an active Instagram handle that goes by the username, simon_leviev_official. He also has a website where he advises the people on how to become a wealthy businessman and how he achieved every success “on his own”. The name of his simonlevievonline and he charges a fee in order to provide a piece of business advice.
As per the Netflix, the conman is back on Tinder and dating an Israeli model. On the contrary, Tinder has provided a statement that says, “We have conducted internal investigations and can confirm Simon Leviev is no longer active on Tinder under any of his known aliases.”
Tinder swindler’s Instagram account
Now you know all about the notorious tinder swindler and his real story of how he conned tons of women just to maintain his lavish lifestyle. However, another thing that the Netflix true-crime documentary shows are a number of screenshots taken from the Instagram account of Simon Leviev which was active at that time and it belonged to the conman himself.
We have couple of pictures from the tinder swindler Instagram account when his account was still active. On one hand, he was conning women and, on the other, he was keeping his lifestyle tip-top. Whichever picture you see, you will see a gentleman dressed in a designer suit either on a private jet or a five-star hotel or restaurant. The Instagram account of this tinder swindler is filled with pictures of him traveling all around the world. Take a good look at what he looks like.
Source: Instagram
Simon Leviev was on Instagram with a username@simon_leviev_official and the profile picture was of Simon Leviev himself. This account showed various times during the true-crime documentary on Netflix. The account had about 125k followers and it gained about 25k followers since the documentary aired. According to Netflix, Simon Leviev owned this Instagram account and used it to plop out cash. This is Leviev’s Instagram feed:
Source: Instagram
When the account was active, Leviev continuously switched it from public to private and then public again. When the documentary aired on 2nd February 2022 (Wednesday), this account switched to the public for a short period of time.
However, during this time, the most recent pictures of Simon Leviev got filled with hateful comments. He couldn’t handle the hate and switched his account to private. Simon may have hated the comments but he loved the fame.
After some time, he switched his account back to the public but this time he limited the number of comments. He also removed all those comments that implied that he was the tinder swindler or has any kind of relationship with the tinder swindler.
Before Simon limited or removed the comments on his pictures, the backlash he received was nothing compared to any other hostile response. It was absolute chaos! From “homeless king” to “pathetic little fraud”, people came at him from all angles. Some even said that bad karma would strike him soon.
Source: Instagram
Some other comments went even further and said “horrible human being” or “shame on you” while there were some exceptions who wanted to know how he did what he did. We never got to know why someone would ask that kind of question. But, anything is possible with the tinder swindler.
Source: Instagram
The account of the tinder swindler has been taken down. Simon Leviev came back with another Instagram account mentioning that the previous one got hacked. However, the new one was also confiscated after a short while.
Latest news on the victims of Simon Leviev
In the Netflix documentary, the Tinder Swindler, the story of three female victims came up on the surface to take revenge from Simon. The three females are: Ayleen Charlotte, Pernilla Sjoholm, and Cecilie Fjellhøy.
All these women fell under the attractiveness and the loving behavior of Simon Leviev. All these women have been asked to send Simon money because his life was dependent on it. The three women had not only lost thousands of dollars but also faced a dent in their pride and self-respect.
However, the documentary demonstrated how far the three women went to get justice and imprison the tinder swindler. They worked with various law enforcement services and journalists to catch Simon Leviev aka Shimon Hayut. The three females just wanted to get some of their self-respect back and to save other women from the harmful shadow of Leviev.
However, the end of the documentary showed that the three women are still paying off debts that they took to help Simon. Sjoholm said in an interview that she had gone bankrupt and started living with her mother.
At the start of this month, all three victims created a page known as GoFundMe to raise £600,000 which is equal to the amount of $811,206. So far, they have raised over £115,000 which is equal to the amount of $155,000. Some people are quite generous and donated about £2,000 while some donations were quite on the lower side, about £5. However, something is better than nothing, isn’t it?
The description of the fundraiser goes as, “The past few days have been a whirlwind, and we three (Ayleen, Pernilla, and Cecilie) have been completely shocked and floored by the flood of compassion and support from everyone. All we want is our lives back”.
More power to these three women and all the other females who have been the victim of the Simon Liviev.
Conclusion
Tinder swindler is a documentary on Netflix that shows how online dating on social media can go extremely wrong. Tinder is an online dating platform where two people meet for better or worse. However, Simon used it for the worst. He not only conned women to maintain his over-the-top lifestyle but also wandered around the streets without any kind of guilt.
However, the three women decided to speak against this infamous man, so they can help other women to become his victim.
Right now, these women are working with journalists to capture Leviev who is currently living life as a free man. Now, we need to see how long he can continue to live his life this way.
Sources:
Krcmic.com
Krcmic.cz
Justfreetools.com
Objevit.com
Onlineandweb.com
