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Simon Leviev aka 'Shimon Hayut' (born in 1990) is an Israeli businessman, entrepreneur, and fraudster from Bnei Brak, Israel. He is famous in the country for his Tinder app fraud. Apart from this, he also serves the position of a businessman and entrepreneur. According to the reports, Simon's real birth name is Shimon Yehuda Hayut. He used to fraud with women by pretending that he was the heir of the Leviev family.
In 2015, he served 2 years in Finnish prison after swindling three women, and upon his 2017 release, he went back to Israel and changed his legal name from Shimon Hayut to Simon Leviev, using the surname Leviev to pretend he was related to Lev Avnerovich Leviev, an Israeli businessman known as "The King of Diamonds".
Hayut followed a pattern: He would match with a woman on Tinder, take her on a costly and impressive first date, and slowly build their relationship while flying around the world and secretly dating other women. His accusers claim that, at a certain point, Hayut would confide in them that he was worried a nebulous group of his “enemies” was just around the corner. Eventually, he would send a photo of his bleeding bodyguard, allegedly injured by these enemies, to incite further concern. Once that groundwork had been laid, he would urgently message each “girlfriend” to say that his credit card could not be used for security reasons and ask her to open a new one under her name for him to use. From there, he was off to the races.
Eventually, one of Hayut’s long-term girlfriends, Ayleen Koeleman, saw the VG piece and turned the tables on him. After the story went viral, Hayut had to take a break from jet-setting and lay low. He turned to Koeleman, the only woman who seemed to trust him, for help — but she was way ahead of him. Koeleman eventually convinced him that she could sell his designer-brand clothes to make some cash and simply kept the money, swindling the Tinder Swindler herself. After some quick detective work, she deduced that Hayut was flying to Greece and gave his flight information to the authorities. He was arrested in 2019 and sentenced to 15 months in prison for fraud in Israel soon after.
Currently 31 years old, Simon Leviev lives as a free man in Israel, according to Instagram stories shown in The Tinder Swindler. Before the documentary landed on Netflix, his account was active with nearly 100,000 followers, although it was set to private. But as the doc gained popularity in the last few days, Simon deactivated his Instagram altogether.
Before deleting the account, he wrote: "Thank you for all your support. I will share my 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. Until then, please keep an open mind and heart."
Simon Leviev has not been charged for any crimes that may have occurred outside of Israel, including the conning of Cecilie Fjellhøy, Pernilla Sjöholm, or Ayleen Charlotte, who appear in Netflix’s doc. According to The Times of Israel, he allegedly swindled an estimated 10 million dollars from victims across the continent from 2017-to 2019 alone. Cecilie, Pernilla, and Ayleen are still paying off their debts.
Now he is a business consultant and Leviev's rumored former girlfriend is thought to be Israeli model Kate Konlin - though she has since reportedly revealed that the pair have split.