Smart, Sly, and Sexy: A closer look at the Netflix documentary, Tinder Swindler

A promise of love, a show of appreciation, and the average female is already cooking up her fantasy world. Women, they say, are the more emotional beings. They have it in their genetic makeup to be more in touch with their emotions than men. 

While males growing up have all their games and cartoons centered around inanimate things and riskiness, females are introduced early to fantasy, love, and comfort causing their emotional side to develop faster, quicker, and deeper than the average male. It’s not a wonder then that playing on women’s emotions has become one of the easiest ways to get a lot out of a woman. 

The Tinder Swindler, a Netflix documentary, shows just how gullible and vulnerable a woman can become when her emotional tank is being consistently filled up. 

An Israeli man who’s been a fraudster since his late teens poses as someone with a lot of money to spare on Tinder, an online dating app, just to find women to emotionally manipulate and scam. 

Posing as the son of the CEO of LLD diamonds, Lev Leviev, Shimon Yehuda Hayut, after changing His name to Simon Leviev, approaches some women through the Tinder app, showing forth his loving and extravagant lifestyle and getting the women to like him, all the while instilling fear into them about his supposed enemies. 

All it takes is for one person to stand up and come forth, then you would have thousands of others pouring out their story. Cecilie Fjelhoy, after realizing that she had been swindled of $250,000 by Simon decided to try her possible best to expose his deeds to the general public. She got in touch with VG, one of Norwegians biggest newspapers and that’s how several other victims of Shimon surfaced.

We witnessed a rare kind of courage in Ayleem Charlotte, a victim of Shimon, who even when others panicked, decided fearlessly to get back at Simon. She devises an excellent plan to let Simon pay for the money he took from her whiles dating Cecilie. Although she doesn’t get back all the money she lost, she’s still able to salvage some of it and get Simon behind bars even though it wasn’t for the crimes he had committed against her. 

It is when Pernilla Sjöholm comes on board that we realize that Shimon didn’t use only romantic relationships to manipulate the women. As long as he can get you to trust him, then he can easily maneuver his way around. In some cases, he was a babysitter or a pilot or an undercover agent and the list goes on and on and on.

It is worth putting out there that Shimon Hayut has no ties with the Leviev family and LLD diamonds have no official records of being involved in diamond smuggling.

After Netflix released the Tinder Swindler, Shimon Hayut has denied everything that was portrayed in the movie, stating that it’s mere fiction, and has even threatened to sue the producers of the documentary for defamation. Upon his arrest in July 2019, Shimon was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for only the activities of fraud and check forge he had committed in Israel. 

He was released after five (5) months for good behavior due to the covid-19 pandemic. He’s never been tried or charged for defrauding these victims that spoke up. Meanwhile, Tinder and other online dating apps say it has blocked him from accessing their platforms but other sources indicate that he’s back on Tinder and has even found himself an Israeli model as a girlfriend. 

He’s since been living his life as a free man in Israel and even launched a website offering business advice for a fee. He privatized all his social media accounts and wrote quotes in his bio trying to vindicate himself. On his Instagram, he wrote:

“If I was a fraud why would I act on Netflix, I mean they should have arrested me when we were still shooting. It’s high time the ladies start saying the truth.” 

He continued: “If you can’t give them world they want they’ll turn yours to hell. I will be addressing the whole world on Friday. Stay tuned and tag others.“

Meanwhile, after promising to release his side of the story over the weekend prior to the documentary premiere, Shimon Hayut has deleted his Instagram account which was associated with the Netflix documentary. He also released an audio that was featured at the end of the documentary stating to sue Netflix for defamation.

Sadly, he wasn’t even tried for defrauding these women after all they had had to suffer; but these women especially Cecilie and Pernilla are still in touch and have even started a nonprofit organization action: reaction to help all victims of fraud and scam.

Watch the Tinder Swindler Trailer here:

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