Tinder Swindler – the name that has been on the lips of every single person out there. But, who is the tinder swindler? Does he even exist? What’s the story? Most of us have heard about the famous “Tinder Swindler” but how much truth lies beneath the surface? Is he as evil as everyone portrays him to be? In this article, we will tell you all about the infamous tinder swindler and why it is the prime topic of everyone’s discussions nowadays.

Overview of the Tinder Swindler

Tinder Swindler (Netflix) is a true-crime documentary of 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 this documentary, many females became the victim of this notorious con artist and lots of sympathies go for them. One woman describes her first date in which the conman takes her to a five-star 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.

Source: Instagram

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 illustrates 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 public, the females faced an immense amount of backlash from the people and they started calling them names, gold diggers, and even worse than that. The story of the tinder swindler started with finding love online to a story of wanting 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 smart, witty, vengeful, and leaves the viewers wanting more. Although it doesn’t answer all the questions, it does tell you when love truly transforms into hate.

Who is the tinder swindler? Is the tinder swindler real?

The tinder swindler is basically an Israeli conman who goes by the name of Simon Leviev, whereas his real name is Shimon Hayut. This 31-year-old fraudster claimed that he is the son of a Russian-Israeli diamond tycoon known as Lev Leviev. Apparently, Lev Leviev is an entrepreneur in Israel who has a net worth of $1.5 billion. This diamond tycoon has a total of five children and surprise, surprise! Not a single one of them is named Simon. The son of the apparent “King of Diamonds” goes as the “Prince of Diamonds.”

Source: Instagram

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 legit, the tinder swindler 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.

Simon Leviev is very real and he is currently known as Shimon Hayut. Hayut is already a convicted con artist who got imprisoned in Finnish Jail for about two years because he conned several women to fulfill his materialistic glamour such as funding his private jets, love for Ferraris, and experiencing luxurious holidays.

Hayut went to Finnish prison in 2015 but in 2017, he fled to Israel so that he could dodge 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 tinder swindler 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.

In the meantime, 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 Leviev 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.”

Currently, Simon 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 website’s name is simonlevievonline and he charges a fee in order to provide a piece of business advice.

According to 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.”

Inside the tinder swindler’s Instagram account

By now, you know all about the infamous tinder swindler and the tinder swindler 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 taken a couple of pictures from the Instagram account of the tinder swindler 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 handle @simon_leviev_official and the profile picture was of Simon Leviev himself. This account popped up 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. Leviev’s Instagram feed used to look like this:

Source: Instagram

When the account was active, Leviev continuously switched it from public to private and then public again. When the documentary aired on 2^nd 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. Simon Leviev couldn’t handle the hate and switched his account to private. Leviev may have hated the comments but he loved the fame. After a while, he switched his account back to the public but this time he limited the number of comments. Plus, 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 removed or limited 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

As of now, the account of the tinder swindler has been taken down. Simon Leviev came back with another Instagram account saying that the previous one got hacked. However, the new one was also confiscated after a short while.

What is the 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. The three females are: Cecilie Fjellhøy, Pernilla Sjoholm, and Ayleen Charlotte. All these women fell under the charm and the loving behavior of Simon Leviev. All these women have been asked to send Leviev 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, currently, the end of the documentary showed that the three women are still paying off debts that they took to help Simon Leviev. Sjoholm said in an interview that she had gone bankrupt and started living with her mother.

At the start of this month, the three women created a page known as GoFundMe to raise £600,000 which is equal to the amount of $811,206. Currently, 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. But, it is as they say, 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 women and all the other females who have been the victim of the tinder swindler.

Final takeaways

Tinder swindler is a documentary on Netflix that shows how online dating can go extremely wrong. Tinder is an online dating platform where two people meet for better or worse. But Simon Leviev 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, there are three women who decided to speak against this notorious man and help other women from getting under his shadow. As of now, these women are working with journalists to capture Simon Leviev who is currently living his life as a free man. Let’s see how long he continues to live his life this way.