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<\/div>\nBy Jennifer Hassan<\/p>\n
Netflix released a new true-crime documentary last Wednesday about a man who filmmakers claim scammed dozens of victims, mainly women, for an estimated $10-million (about R156-million) after matching with them online. By Friday, Tinder said it had banned the \u201cTinder Swindler.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dating app users reportedly can no longer swipe right on Shimon Hayut, also known as \u201cSimon Leviev,\u201d the man who, as detailed by the documentary, posed as the billionaire son of a Russian-Israeli diamond tycoon and wooed multiple women by showering them with lavish goods, flying them by private jet to luxury hotels around the world and professing his love \u2013 then demanding they send him money, frequently claiming his life was in grave danger from his \u201cenemies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hayut, who called himself the \u201cPrince of Diamonds,\u201d asked the women to take out American Express credit cards and hounded them to increase their spending limits and loan him cash that he never repaid.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have conducted internal investigations and can confirm Simon Leviev is no longer active on Tinder under any of his known aliases,\u201d Tinder said in a statement to Variety on Friday.<\/p>\n
The production featured three women \u2013 Cecilie Fjellhoy, Pernilla Sj\u00f6holm and Ayleen Charlotte \u2013 in different European countries recalling their dealings with Hayut during 2018 and 2019. Tinder could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n
One day before the documentary was released, Tinder published new guidelines for users, titled: \u201cRomance Scams: How to Protect Yourself Online.\u201d While Tinder\u2019s new guide to spotting a scammer online did not directly reference the streaming giant\u2019s film, the dating app said scammers often used such platforms to prey on \u201cvulnerable\u201d people \u201clooking for love.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new documentary, which swiftly soared to the most-watched lists in the United States and United Kingdom, zoned in on Hayut\u2019s real-life criminal record and long history of scamming people \u2013 mainly women looking for love.<\/p>\n
In 2011, Hayut was wanted in Israel on charges of theft, forgery and fraud, including for defrauding family in that country while serving as their babysitter, the Times of Israel reported. He fled Israel before he could be sentenced. Also, according to Erlend Ofte Arntsen \u2013 one of the journalists who has covered Hayut and is featured in the documentary \u2013 Hayut also scammed a family in New York for $42 000 in 2008.<\/p>\n
Hayut settled in Finland. In 2015, authorities charged him with defrauding three women and sentenced him to two years in prison. In 2017, he was returned to Israel to face authorities for the outstanding charges there \u2013 but fled again. The Netflix documentary mostly covers his dealings with women after this point.<\/p>\n
In July 2019, Hayut was arrested in Greece (thanks to, as the documentary shows, a little help from Ayleen Charlotte, Interpol and Israeli police). He was extradited back to Israel.<\/p>\n
He was sentenced to 15 months in prison for fraud, and ordered to pay compensation of more than $43 000. But Hayut only served five months, the Times of Israel reported.<\/p>\n
The documentary says that Hayut is free \u2013 though his whereabouts are unknown \u2013 but his victims from the romance scams continue to pay off the debts they incurred at his request.<\/p>\n
Following the documentary\u2019s release, Hayut took to his personal Instagram account, telling his 200 000 followers that he was gearing up to provide his version of events, Variety reported. However the account \u2013 which showed the fraudster posing in swanky suits, clutching champagne bottles and sitting on private jets \u2013 has since been deleted.<\/p>\n
Tinder, in its new guidelines, urged its users to be wary when getting to know an online match, adding that in the United States alone, criminals bagged an estimated $304 million from romance scams in 2020, citing data from the Federal Trade Commission.<\/p>\n
In its list of lengthy advice, the company said users should \u201ctrust their gut,\u201d look out for \u201cover-the-top displays of attention\u201d and avoid sharing personal details such as their passport information or social security number.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbove all else, do not send money online,\u201d the company said in the three-page warning.<\/p>\n
On social media, many watchers were aghast at the stories of the women, with some praising them for sharing their experiences so openly and sounding the alarm on Hayut\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cCecilie [Fjellhoy] put her pride and privacy aside to disrupt a longtime fraudster,\u201d read one tweet. Others called the women \u201cincredible\u201d and \u201cbrave.\u201d Ayleen Charlotte, the woman who is featured pledging to \u201cswindle the Tinder swindler,\u201d was praised by many for her commitment to bringing Hayut down. Some branded her a \u201cballer\u201d and a \u201cbaddie.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will forever be an Ayleen stan,\u201d tweeted one user.<\/p>\n
Charlotte says she loaned Hayut approximately $140 000 during the 14 months they dated. Fjellhoy has been declared bankrupt in the United Kingdom, where she is living and told Britain\u2019s ITV that she is over $270 000 in debt. \u201c\u201dIt\u2019s impossible to pay it down,\u201d she said in an interview last week.<\/p>\n
While some sympathized with those who had been scammed, others said they would have spotted the signs or acted with a lot more haste.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first red flag is a single billionaire on tinder,\u201d read one tweet. \u201cCommonsense is not common,\u201d read another.<\/p>\n
Source <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Jennifer Hassan Netflix released a new true-crime documentary last Wednesday about a man who filmmakers claim scammed dozens of victims, mainly women, for an estimated $10-million (about R156-million) after matching with them online. By Friday, Tinder said it had banned the \u201cTinder Swindler.\u201d Dating app users reportedly can no longer swipe right on Shimon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1070420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1070416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1070416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1070416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1070416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1070416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}