An Israeli man who charmed women on Tinder by posing as the wealthy heir to a diamond empire swindled victims out of millions before being exposed by a Norwegian media investigation and later profiting from his own story. Shimon Yehuda Hayut, born in 1990 in Bnei Brak, Israel, first ran into legal trouble as a young man. His father served as a chief rabbi for El Al Airlines, but Hayut’s own path took a very different direction. By his late teens, he had moved to Brooklyn, New York, and a pattern of minor fraud and check theft emerged.
In 2011, Israeli authorities charged Hayut with theft, forgery, and fraud after he cashed stolen checks. Reports indicated he had acquired a checkbook from a family he babysat for and another while working as a handyman. After skipping court appearances, he fled using a forged passport under the alias Morai Nashim Toiro, crossing into Jordan and eventually reaching Europe. He was arrested in Finland in 2015 and sentenced to three years in prison after being found with forged Israeli documents and American Express credit cards.
Following his early release, he returned to Israel in 2017 to face additional charges. Instead, he legally changed his name to Simon Leviev, borrowing the surname of Lev Leviev, the Israeli-Russian billionaire known as the “King of Diamonds,” and fled again. It was under this false identity that Hayut launched a more ambitious scheme. He presented himself as Lev Leviev’s son, the “prince of diamonds,” using dating apps to target women across Europe.
His lifestyle appeared lavish, funded by one victim to impress the next. In January 2018, Cecilie Fjellhøy, a Norwegian woman living in London, matched with Simon Leviev on Tinder. After checking his Instagram and finding a diamond company associated with his name, she agreed to meet him at the Four Seasons Hotel. He invited her to join him on a private jet to Bulgaria for business, and she accepted.
While traveling, Leviev shared details of the diamond business and its dangers. Their relationship grew quickly. He asked Cecilie to be his girlfriend and proposed they move in together, offering a monthly budget of $115,000 for a London apartment. Leviev then asked Cecilie to open a credit card in her name, claiming it was necessary for his business dealings while keeping his enemies from tracking him.
He paid the card off at first but soon began racking up charges. When the card was maxed out, he made her an employee of LLDD Diamonds with a large salary on paper to raise the spending limit. By April 2018, Cecilie was under financial strain. Leviev sent her distressing images of himself and his “bodyguard” covered in blood, claiming he had been attacked by enemies in the diamond industry.
He requested money for his safety. Cecilie obtained loans and continued sending funds as his appeals persisted. When Cecilie asked to meet him in Oslo to resolve the mounting debt, Leviev’s behavior shifted. He became distant, denied responsibility, and cut off contact.
Cecilie realized she had been scammed and was left with substantial debt. Cecilie contacted authorities in Norway and England, but without knowing his real identity and because no local law had been broken, they could not act. She then shared her story with VG, a major Norwegian media outlet, providing texts, photos, and voice recordings as evidence. VG’s investigation uncovered the truth.
Simon Leviev was actually Shimon Hayut, who had served time in a Finnish prison for defrauding three women. Journalists located his mother in Israel, but she said she had cut ties with her son due to his history of deceit. Meanwhile, Pernilla Sjöholm, a Swedish woman who had matched with Leviev on Tinder and traveled with him, had become another victim. Leviev convinced her to lend him $50,000, claiming he was in danger.
When VG reached out after finding plane tickets purchased with Cecilie’s money bearing Pernilla’s name, she realized she had been deceived. Pernilla agreed to help expose him. She arranged to meet Leviev in Munich, where he promised to give her a $100,000 watch as repayment. The watch was later confirmed to be counterfeit.
During their meeting, VG photographers captured the first footage of Leviev, who spotted them and ordered everyone to leave. VG published the investigation in February 2019, exposing Leviev as the “Tinder Swindler. ” The article triggered a flood of testimonies from other women who had been defrauded across the world. A Norwegian woman named Ayleen Charlotte read the article while waiting for a flight and realized she had been dating Leviev for over a year and had loaned him substantial money.
She confronted him but pretended to believe his denials. She later sold some of his designer clothing to reclaim part of her losses. When Leviev asked Ayleen to buy him a plane ticket from Prague, she refused, suspecting he intended to flee Europe under a false identity. When she noticed he had suddenly gone offline, she checked flights from Prague and alerted police and Interpol.
Leviev was arrested at the Athens airport. He was sent back to Israel to face charges of theft, fraud, and forgery, and received a 15-month prison sentence. He was released after only five months for good behavior. Since his release, Leviev has not shown remorse.
He denied defrauding the women, saying he was “just a single guy who wanted to meet some girls on Tinder. ” He claimed the women enjoyed their time with him and that he never took money from them. He returned to Instagram, quickly amassing tens of thousands of followers, and reportedly began dating an Israeli model. In 2022, Netflix released a documentary titled “The Tinder Swindler,” chronicling the scheme through interviews with Cecilie, Pernilla, and Ayleen.
It became the streaming platform’s most-watched documentary at the time and received five Emmy nominations. Following its release, Leviev partnered with a talent manager to explore ventures in media and entertainment. Legal representatives for the Leviev family filed a criminal complaint against Hayut in 2022, citing privacy infringement and violation of trademark. The hearing was postponed while Israeli prosecutors reviewed related investigations.
Estimates suggest Leviev defrauded victims of approximately $10 million across the globe.