Women registered on Tinder will now take it twice before embarking headlong into a romance with a stranger. On February 2, Netflix unveiled a chilling documentary on Simon Leviev, whose real name is Shimon Hayut, nicknamed “The Tinder Scammer“. For two hours, several victims testify, accusing the man they were madly in love with of being a real crook.
After weeks of silence – he refused requests from journalists who nevertheless offered him the right to reply in the same documentary -, Simon Leviev finally came out of his reserve in an interview broadcast on the American show Inside Edition. Her truth is far from what everyone discovered in the film: “I’m not a scam, I’m not a liar. People don’t know me, so they can’t judge me“. He argues that the story has been “invented from scratch“: “They took it all, manipulated it all, edited it all, to make it into a biased narrative. All this to destroy me. […] I want to clear my name. I was just a single guy who wanted to meet girls on Tinder.“
Not sure that his story will satisfy the millions of spectators glued to their screens by discovering the shenanigans of which he is accused. For several months, Simon Leviev pretended to be the son of a heavyweight in the diamond business. After matching with his victims on Tinder, he offered them dates that took the form of private jet trips, dinners in starred restaurants and luxury hotels galore. Once the women were very much in love, he pretended to be the target of serious threats so that he no longer had to use his credit cards so as not to be found by his executioners. His conquests, very worried, therefore agreed to help him out by making loans, not suspecting for a single second, with the lifestyle he led, that they would never be reimbursed.
The ride ended in 2019 with his arrest in Greece. Extradited to Israel, his country of origin, Shimon Hayut, his real name, was sentenced for an old fraud case to a 15-month prison term, reduced to 5 months for good behavior. He is now free and would have even won a contract with a reality TV agent. He would also be in the process of writing a book to tell his side of the story. Pretty prospects for the future for the one whose victims still continue to pay off their debts, contracted out of love for him…