The Tinder Swindler: Who is Simon Leviev? The Protagonist Of The Hit Netflix Documentary?
The Tinder Swindler is the name of the new Netflix documentary, which premiered on February 2 and has managed to position itself in the Top 10 of the streaming platform in a few days. This production tells the true story of three women, Cecilie Fjellhøy, Pernilla Sjöholm and Ayleen Charlotte, who fell into the hands of a man in his 30s named Simon Leviev, a resident of Israel with the surname of the renowned diamond world tycoon. Lev Leviev, of the LDD Diamonds company.
Although they all believed they had had a romantic relationship with Leviev, he only deceived them to obtain large sums of money and live a life of luxury, of course without returning a single peso. Although he was captured by Interpol in Greece and was sentenced to 15 months in prison, these were reduced to five for his good behavior.
Who is Simon Leviev, The Protagonist of The Tinder Swindler?
Simon Leviev’s real name is Shimon Hayut and he was born in Bnei Brak, a city east of Tel Aviv that was ultra-Orthodox, even his father is the rabbi of El Al. His history began in adolescence. When he was 20 years old, he took several checks to a family, then to the family of a businessman. He used all this to buy luxury cars and take flying lessons in Haifa.
At the same time, he traveled to Finland where his goal was Tinder dates, since he knew women with a good economic situation whom he scammed with lies and false promises. Because of this, he was arrested in 2015 and spent two years in prison. He was later extradited to Israel but escaped.
It was then that he met the first protagonist of the documentary, Cecilie Fjellhøy, by then he had changed his last name to make believe that he had a family relationship with the diamond tycoon. When he owed $250,000 to the banks, Fjellhøy approached a Norwegian newspaper, the VG. Several journalists were the ones who managed to discover the thief with the information provided by the woman.
This did not stop there, because as the news became known, another woman appeared, Ayleen Charlotte, who had been dating Simon for several months and who was an important part of the young man going to jail for having a false passport. Simon Leviev was convicted of the crimes committed in 2011, but not for the dating app victim fraud. He was sentenced to 15 months, however he only served five. Currently, he is free.
