If you’ve been scrolling through Netflix to find your next show to watch, you might have come across this brand-new documentary that was just released two days ago on 2 February:
The Tinder Swindler.
And if you haven’t, here’s the trailer:
Basically, according to the trailer and the Netflix synopsis, this true-crime documentary is about how a man tricked numerous women across the world into giving him millions of dollars after pursuing them through Tinder and acting like a wealthy man.
And the victims want payback.
(A more succinct TLDR explanation would just be the title, if you just glossed over the last two paragraphs).
And here’s what you should know before watching the documentary.
The Man in Question
So, who exactly is the Tinder Swindler?
He’s no other than Simon Leviev, a 31-year-old Israeli man whose real name is Shimon Hayut.
He also has no familial ties to the Russian-Israeli billionaire and diamond mogul Lev Leviev, even though the former claimed to be his son.
(I mean, of course.)
Hayut, whose hometown is Bnei Brak, Israel, acted as a wealthy bachelor on the online dating site Tinder in order to trick women into having conversations with him and developing feelings for him.
He would shower them with lavish gifts and bring them out on spending sprees, presumably to gain his victims’ trust. And where did that money come from?
Yup, from the women that he had previously conned.
Afterwards, he would claim that he needed money for emergency purposes, and would reportedly ask the women that he was “dating” at the time to transfer him colossal amounts of money up to over $200,000 to help him tide over the period of time.
Charges Against Hayut
But the most shocking thing might be that he is still a free man in Israel as of today.
According to The Times of Israel, although he was convicted of theft, forgery and fraud in Israel back in 2011 due to cashing stolen checks, he fled before his sentence.
He was deported back to Israel in 2017 after being found to have defrauded women in Finland, but he fled Israel once again.
He was then arrested in 2019 after being on the run and being found with a fake passport in Greece and was sentenced to 15 months’ jail. He was also made to pay his victims NIS 150,000 (approximately S$63,000) following his sentence.
However, he was released early for “good behaviour” after serving five months in prison during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This was allegedly due to a programme in Israeli’s prisons that aimed to reduce the prison population and avoid a major outbreak of the COVID-19 virus in prisons.
Ah, because people don’t get COVID when they’re not in prison…?
After his release, he got into trouble once again, this time because he lied to a medic in order to have his vaccination dose shifted forward.
When asked about the incident, he told The Times of Israel he said, “I am not someone who waits in line or at places. With all due respect, I will not sit and wait three to four hours. I am not someone who waits and no one can say a word about it.”
Er… Okay lah, I’ve never had to wait three to four hours for my vaccine, so maybe he should take consider taking a look at the Singapore healthcare system. Then again, I don’t think anyone will want him to come to Singapore…
Hayut on Social Media
Currently, Hayut is still active on his Instagram account (@simon_leviev_official), having just posted an Instagram story of him riding in the backseat of a car with other people right before he turned his account private. Apparently, his account switches between being public and private frequently.
With the number of followers doubling since the release of the documentary, Hayut’s account currently boasts over 200,000 followers.
Although it was suggested in the documentary that Hayut is back on Tinder, in a statement to The Tab, Tinder said, “We have conducted internal investigations and can confirm Simon Leviev is no longer active on Tinder under any of his known aliases.”
Additionally, it was mentioned that Hayut was contacted by the Netflix documentary team to participate in the film.
However, according to Decider, Hayut replied with a voice message that said, “I will proceed with the lawsuit against you for defamation and lies and that everything is based basically on a lie. And that’s it. This is how it’s gonna be.”
Victims
I won’t spoil the main stories of the victims for those who’re interested in checking it out; if you’re interested in finding out how the victims are coping now and how their lives have changed, you can click here.
But here’s a relatively spoiler-free thing that happened outside of the documentary.
When one of his victims, Pernilla Sjoholm, who was interviewed in the documentary, was informed of his release, she expressed her anger and disappointment.
According to Decider, Sjoholm told an Israeli TV station, “I was in shock from the decision to release him. I’m really disappointed by [Israel’s] justice system which gives a man like that a reduced sentence. He deceived people and left prison after five months? Did you go crazy in Israel?”
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Well, after all that I’ve said, it’s pretty clear that if you’re a true crime lover, you’d probably want to swipe right on this documentary.
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Featured Image: Netflix + Instagram (@simon_leviev_official)
