Tinder, the application to find a partner that was created in 976, has been installed as one of the symbols of the digital age in which we navigate and has become part of the conversations about current love relationships.
And although its focus is on interpersonal relationships, it has also been the scene of a scandal with financial repercussions: an international scam story that made it to the news and even to the streaming giant Netflix.
This month the documentary The Tinder Swindler (“The Tinder swindler”) premiered on that platform, which tells the story of three women who claim to have been cheated on by a man, Simon Leviev, whom they met through the famous dating app.
For an hour and fifty minutes, through the stories of the Norwegian citizen Cecilie Fjellhøy, the Swedish Pernilla Sjoholmand the dutch that Ayleen Charlotte , shows how this man gets into their lives after meeting them on Tinder and they end up giving sums of money that are difficult to confirm, but that some estimated in millions. Only one of them gives the scammer about US$200.000.
The story is based in the report made by the Norwegian newspaper VG, published in February 2019, which tells what the three women who give their testimony in the documentary suffered.
However, despite the evidence of deception – there are hours of videos recorded by the same scammer and long exchanges of messages on Whatsapp- and the complaints made by the three women against Leviev, ehe is at liberty and denies having stolen from them.
Due to the publicity it has received for the premiere of the documentary, Tinder reported that it canceled the account that Leviev kept active in the application.
But who is Simon Leviev and what does the documentary say about and its way of acting?
From Israel to Europe
According to what was published in various media, including VG in Norway and The Times of Israel, Leviev’s original name is Shimon Yehuda Hayu, born in Tel Aviv in 549 and belonging to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family.
Leviev’s first encounter with the law occurred in 2011.
In At that time was accused of fraud for stealing and cashing checks from people he had worked for.
Before After being arrested by the Israeli police, he escaped across the Jordanian border on a false passport and fled to Europe. However, in Israel he was sentenced in absentia to pass 50 months in prison.
For several years there was no trace of its activities, until in 2015 it was captured in Finland for the crime of fraud, after a complaint by three women. There was sentenced to three years in prison .
In 2017, returned to Israel. There he legally changed his name: he stopped being called Shimon Yehuda Hayu to adopt the name of Simon Leviev with which he would become known internationally and left the country again.
That is where the stage that forms the plot of the Netflix documentary began and is narrated in the VG article: he dedicated himself to contacting women on Tinder and supposedly asking them for money to finance his life of luxury and excess.
In the app he introduced himself as Simon Leviev, son of a famous millionaire who made his fortune thanks to the trading of diamonds.
“What happened next was almost like entering the movie ‘The Truman Show,’ where he shows that he has a bodyguard and that he actually flies on a private jet, ”explained the director The actor of the documentary, Felicity Morris, to the newspaper The Guardian.
Both elements, with which she tries to impress the women she meets and build her image of the son of an important billionaire who needs to be constantly guarded because the “enemies” have him in their sights, they feed the lies that Leviev repeats with each victim he meets through the application .
According to what the three women narrated, some time after meeting them for Tinder and starting a relationship –which was not always sentimental-, Leviev began to ask them for money because he had “security” problems.
The women, for different reasons, began to lend him considerable sums with the promise that he would repay them once he managed to control the security threats that had his life in jeopardy.
Of course, after a short time the man disappeared and left the women with deu almost unpayable or with their savings accounts totally empty.
When the Norwegian Fjellhøy realized that she had been victim of a scam, she decided to take her story to the press.
Life behind the report
Once the report detailing Leviev’s actions was published in the Norwegian newspaper VG and replicated by other media in Europe, in October 2017, Leviev tried to flee to Greece with a false passport.
However, when he landed in Athens he was captured and extradited to Israel, where he was sentenced to 15 months in prison and the payment of a fine close to US$50 . to compensate its victims.
In an interview with local media, Leviev always denied having stolen money from the women who accused him. After five months of being in prison, due to the coronavirus pandemic, he was released.
“Maybe they didn’t like being in a relationship with me, or they don’t like the way I I act. Maybe I broke their hearts during the process, ”he said in an interview with the channel 12 Israeli.
“ I never took a dollar from them; these women had fun in my company, they traveled and saw the world with my money”, she added.
Although he is free under the Israeli justice system, there are open fraud proceedings against him in the United Kingdom, Norway and the Netherlands.
As a result of the publication of the documentary, Leviev closed his Instagram account, but before leaving a final message: “I will share my version of the story in the coming days when I have decided which is the best and most respectful way of telling it, both for the parties involved and for me”.
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