If there are two things that have captured the cultural zeitgeist, it’s elaborate tales of scammers and dating app horror stories (just ask West Elm Caleb). Netflix’s new documentary The Tinder Swindler gives you both by delving into the life and exploits of serial conman Shimon Hayut, better known as Simon Leviev.
According to the show, which was made by the same team behind 2020’s Don’t Fuck With Cats, Hayut was able to scam women out of approximately $10 million during his time on the dating apps. To start with, he’d pretend to be the child of Lev Leviev, an Israeli billionaire involved in the diamond industry, and woo his marks with trips on private planes and stays in lavish hotels. (In an ironic turn of events, Leviev’s actual son, Zevulun, was arrested as part of a crackdown on a diamond smuggling operation in 2018.) Eventually, the other shoe would drop, and he would begin asking the women for money to support him while he was purportedly in danger.
The Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang spent six months covering Hayut, specifically reporting on a victim named Cecilie Schrøder Fjellhøy. Fjellhøy said they met in January 2018 in London, where Hayut was accompanied by a bodyguard and other entourage members. He later told her that he was receiving threats from competitors in the diamond industry, and asked if she would open a credit card in her account but under his name, which she did. He later sent her a video that purportedly showed his bodyguard being attacked, and asked her to wire him money. She went into debt of nearly $500,000 trying to help him.
Hayut eventually sent her a falsified document claiming to have repaid the owed money. They made plans to meet in Oslo, but he abruptly canceled and asked for more money, leading her to finally cut ties with him.
It turned out that in 2015, Hayut had been convicted of fraud against three Finnish women, and had a history of pulling similar cons on people.Per Verdens Gang, he had been charged with “theft, forgery, and fraud” in his home country of Israel back in 2011, but traveled to Europe instead of showing up for his trial. A January 2022 update from VG said that he was arrested by police in Athens, Greece in 2019 and extradited for trial in Israel. He later served just five months of a 15-month sentence and was released for “good behavior.”
According to Netflix, Hayut was caught after another woman he’d been involved with saw the Verdens Gang article and gave his information to law enforcement in Greece. For good measure, she also apparently sold some of his designer clothing and kept the money instead of giving it to him, the swindler thus becoming the swindlee.
Hayut was apparently banned from Tinder, and several other internet dating services like Match.com and OkCupid have done the same. In the wake of the documentary’s release, Hayut posted on Instagram that he “will share [his] side of the story in the next few days when I have sorted out the best and most respectful way to tell it, both to the involved parties and myself.” He has since deleted his account.
Netflix is considering adapting The Tinder Swindler into a feature film, although it’s the kind of wild story that hardly needs any additional dramatization. Until then, you can always get your scammer fix with their new limited series on Anna Delvey.