It’s safe to say Tinder has swiped left on Shimon Hayut.
The dating app has officially banned Hayut, who also used the name Simon Leviev while connecting with potential dates, from using their application after the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler detailed his alleged scams.
On Monday, Feb. 5, a Tinder spokesperson told E! News, “We banned Simon Leviev and any of his known aliases as soon as the story of his actions became public in 2019. He is permanently banned from Tinder. In the lead up to the release of the documentary, we conducted additional internal investigations and can confirm Simon Leviev is not active on Tinder under any of his known aliases.”
The Netflix documentary, released Feb. 2, featured interviews with multiple women who alleged they had been conned out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by Hayut. Claiming he was the son of Israeli diamond magnate Levi Leviev, the native of Bnei Brak, Israel would lure women in with luxurious first dates. According to Cecilie Schrøder Fjellhøy, that meant whisking her away to Bulgaria on a private jet.
But as time went on, Hayut would begin to open up to his dates about the threats he was facing from so-called enemies in the cut-throat diamond industry. Eventually, he’d say that he feared for his life and would allegedly ask the women to open a credit card in their name and give it to him since he couldn’t use his own card for security purposes.
Israel Police and Interpol believe he scammed numerous women out of thousands of dollars.
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Hayut was previously convicted of defrauding three Finnish women and served three years in prison before being released on bail and disappearing in 2017.
The Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang went on to investigate Hayut’s multiple scams with the help of Fjellhøy, who secretly recorded a conversation with the 31-year-old con man. In the conversation, Hayut denied defrauding her and others, claiming their accusations were born out of a personal vendetta.
But the VG report was seen by one of Hayut’s longtime girlfriends Ayleen Koeleman, who tipped off Interpol and Israeli police to his location, leading to his arrest at the Athens airport on Jun. 28, 2019.
Convicted of four counts of fraud, Hayut was sentenced to 15 months in an Israeli prison, though he only served five months gaining an early release as part of efforts to decrease the prison population at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Though now it seems he’s found himself in Tinder jail.
