Netflix premiered this month a documentary that has left more than one shocked: The Tinder scammer. This audiovisual production tells the case of Simon Leviev, a man who appeared on the dating app Tinder as a young tycoon who lived in luxury, traveled in private planes and stayed in the most expensive hotels, however, this was thanks to the thousands of dollars that he withheld from his victims.
The tragedy for these women began after making a ” match ” with Leviev in the application, excited to find a movie star, however, they ended up in debt, pointed out by Internet users and disappointed.
The ‘modus operandi’ of the approximately 30-year-old man was as follows: he exchanged messages with a woman on Tinder and scheduled the first meeting between the two, in which he strove to impress with renowned dinners and expensive Michelin-starred restaurants.
This first date used to be interrupted by a supposed and sudden business trip in some European city that he had to attend in the next few hours and to which he invited his new conquest. The women accepted the invitation and were more surprised by the private plane and the hotels that the man put at their disposal.
His victims agree that from the first date the man was charming and talked to them about love, a life together and plans for the future; In addition, he listened to them, was interested in their lives and every morning he sent loving messages of greeting and kept in touch throughout the day to end with a farewell every night.
It was also common for the man to make trips in his private plane to visit his conquest for at least a few hours and thus consolidate the romance that grew day after day, but, suddenly, everything got complicated in this love story.
One day, the man sent them photos of his bloodied and wounded driver, assuring that powerful and dangerous enemies wanted to kill him and he had to hide from those people to stay safe, however, for this he could not use his credit cards because his whereabouts would be tracked, so he required the help of his girlfriend on duty.
To help him, he asked his victim to request an extension of his credit card at the bank, which they quickly agreed to, but once the card reached its limit, he asked him to request an extension of the limit and thus managed to spend thousands of dollars. Dollars.
In the midst of his work to hide from those who supposedly wanted to harm him, the man managed to travel to visit his girlfriend and staged a novel scene to give his version more credibility. His phone rang and someone warned him that they were about to catch him , so he turned off the lights in the house, threw himself on the ground with the girl until his driver entered for him and took him out the back door.
One of the victims of this man and who told his story in the documentary ‘The Tinder scammer is Cecillie Fjelhorn, a woman from Norway who was living in London at the time. She says that after all the trips, dinners and romantic dates, in which Leviev told her details of millionaire businesses that he was supposed to close, he swindled her out of about $250,000.
He also explains that after meeting him, he Googled information about him and was able to find that Simon Leviev was the heir to Lev Leviev , a renowned diamond tycoon, so his entire story was plausible.
Once everything got complicated and the man began to ask her for help for the supposed attack she was suffering, she acquired debts for more than 100 thousand dollars and when she explained that she no longer had a way to get more money, Leviev sent her a proof of a transfer for $250,000, a figure even higher than what she had lent him, which gave him peace of mind, if only for a few hours.
When Cecillie tried to withdraw the money that Leviev had transferred to her, she realized that it had not been credited. For this situation, the young scammer had a new explanation and assured him that it must be a mistake or an intervention by his enemies to squeeze him financially and thus force him to appear.
The Norwegian, suffocated by debts, decided to tell everything to two investigators fromAmerican Express , who asked her for photos of her boyfriend and, upon seeing him, immediately identified him. They explained to Cecillie that she had been scammed and that the man had similar complaints in other European countries.
Another of the victims is Pernilla Sjoholm , also from Norway, from whom he took more than 100,000 dollars in the same way and to whom the scammer also gave him a chuque for twice the amount he owed but lacked funds. In addition, he gave her a fancy watch that turned out to be fake.
Sjoholm turned to the press to publicize his case and the journalists, following the man’s leads, made their way to Israel, where they discovered that his birth name was Shimon Hayut , however he had changed it to Simon Leviev in the past. In addition, he had complaints for minor scams in that country and a conviction in Finland for swindling three women, for which he had to pay two years in prison.
Once the journalistic note with the scammer’s face came to light, his girlfriend at the time, a Dutch woman identified as Ayleen Charlotte , was able to realize that she was also a victim, since until then they had been together for more than a year and she He had given up much of his savings.
After discovering that what the man was actually doing to support his lavish lifestyle was financing his expenses with his new girlfriend with money taken from his old one, Leviev was arrested by Interpol in Greece . The man was sentenced to 15 months in prison but for good behavior he only paid five.
When asked about the women he had scammed, the man said that they were heartbroken women and that they had decided for themselves what to do with his money. Regarding the name change, he assured that he could be called whatever he wanted and that having chosen the surname of a millionaire family was a coincidence.
The authorities estimate that the deceived women were more than twenty and that the scams exceed 10 million dollars. Despite this, Leviev was seen on Tinder again until the Netflix documentary came to light, thanks to which he was restricted from using the application.