A fairy tale with an unhappy ending: how Tinder scammers work and not only

Social networks have become a place where anyone can create an image of the rich and successful. This has led to the emergence of various kinds of scammers. The hero of the acclaimed Netflix documentary is far from the only one on this list

In February 2022, the docudrama Tinder Scam was released on Netflix. It is based on the story of Simon Leviev, an Israeli scammer who conned women out of millions of dollars.

Who is “Tinder Swindler” Simon Leviev and how he cheated

The Tinder Scam is the story of three European women who have been scammed by an Israeli native for years. He not only broke their hearts, but also emptied their bank accounts, forced them to get into huge loans. And yet, he escaped punishment.

The real name of the swindler is Shimon Yehuda Hayut, but he received world fame as Simon Leviev.

Leviev used a Ponzi scheme. This model was named after one of the founders of financial pyramids, Charles Ponzi. Ponzi created the first large financial pyramid, where the income of the first participants in the pyramid is paid at the expense of the subsequent ones. Levaev acted in a similar way: while one woman saved her lover or best friend from the “enemies”, depending on the relationship, making out more and more loans, Simon conquered another victim with this money. No one knows exactly how many women he deceived. According to the authors of the film, he managed to lure out about $10 million.

Leviev created a believable image of the beautiful life of a young millionaire. The man posed as the son of an Israeli billionaire and diamond king Lev Leviev. He never sat still, traveled a lot for work, making deals and signing non-existent contracts all over the world. His Tinder profile, where he met future victims, as well as his Instagram account (accounts were blocked after the film was released), were filled with photos of private jets, yachts, and expensive sports cars. In pictures from social networks, he was vacationing at the best resorts in five-star hotels. Leviev himself always wore only branded clothes and accessories. True, as it later turned out, not shunning fakes.

In addition to the virtual image, the man perfectly kept the real image of a rich romantic: numerous love messages, hearts and emoticons in love, bouquets of roses, walks around the city, proposals for living together and plans for children. The Tinder scammer was perfect in every way.

When it came time to “beg” for help, Leviev flooded the victim with messages with bloody photos of his bodyguard and video from the ambulance. He claimed that because of his business he was being pursued by “enemies” and now he needed a lot of cash. He cannot use bank cards due to the risk of being tracked, so his girlfriend / girlfriend needs to help him. To help meant taking on numerous loans. For example, one girl in love with Simon took out nine loans for a total of $250.

The same applied to the moments when the money had to be given back. Photos of fake transfers and fake checks were used, where only the names of the recipients changed. Thus, once created props, he used again and again.

He has enough experience in fraud to make his love-money conveyor run smoothly. The first charges against Shimon Hayut were brought in 2011. But then he left Israel to avoid trial for theft, forgery and fraud for cashing stolen checks. In 2015, the Helsinki District Court convicted him of major fraud against three women Leviev met on Tinder. Then he deceived his “beloved” for a total amount of more than $100. In 2017, Khayut was extradited to Israel, where he was to be charged again and convicted, but Khayut changed his name to Simon Leviev and fled the country again. In 2019, as shown in the film, he was arrested in Greece after using a fake passport. Leviev was convicted of theft, fraud and forgery in Israel (2011 charges unrelated to his crimes in Europe) and sentenced to 15 months in prison. After serving only five, he was released from prison for good behavior.

Leviev is blocked from the dating app Tinder, but despite his misdeeds, remains a free man. After the release of the film and the popularity that surged over him, he intends to conquer Hollywood and build a stellar career. According to the American portal TMZ, the man plans to write a book, participate in the filming of the American version of the show “The Bachelor” and launch his own dating podcast. As of February 2022, Simon is dating an Israeli model who, apparently, is not embarrassed by her partner’s past.

According to the candidate of psychological sciences, associate professor at Florida International University Alena Prikhidko, Simon Leviev suffers from an antisocial personality disorder, which is characterized by a lack of moral standards and a violation of generally accepted conventions, as well as narcissism. He perfectly understands which points to press and which strings to pull in order to get what he wants. While courting, talking about love and the desire to start a family and have children, he uses emotional triggers and important life values. And although such scams are far from new, it is precisely today, when building relationships is a real problem for many people, that they are perceived especially painfully.

Four Traits of a Potential Victim

No one wakes up in the morning thinking, “I’m giving away all my money today.”

Using surveys of victims and non-victims, Monica Whitty, a professor at the University of Warwick in the UK, has identified several traits in people who fall victim to romantic scams.

Fraudsters, after gaining their victim’s trust, often create realistic-looking contracts, bank statements, or official letters to justify their requests for money. They portray these requests as urgent and secret, as in the case of Leviev’s “security emergency”. This tactic reduces the victim’s ability to respond rationally or seek outside advice.

Cassandra Cross of the Queensland University of Technology has been researching various aspects of online fraud since 2008. Victims of romantic scams suffer from a wide range of negative impacts, including shame and social stigma, she says. They are often blamed and held accountable for their financial losses. This stereotyping makes them less likely to ever report such crimes.

The main message of the film “The Tinder Swindler” is not to close yourself off from the world, stop trusting it and live the rest of your life alone. “We told a story to help these women feel more confident. The ability to speak as frankly as possible is the real power for me, ”says director Felicity Morris.

Catfishing and kittenfishing: online dating trends

Social networks provide an opportunity to embellish yourself and your life. But where is the line that separates the desire to appear better from boasting or purposeful deception?

In 2010, the documentary “Catfish” or “How I was friends on a social network” was released. He tells the story of how American photographer Nev Shulman wanted to find a girl with whom he corresponded for many months on the Internet. However, it turned out that the beautiful 19-year-old Megan does not exist. All this time, the hero communicated with a middle-aged woman who lives a thousand miles from Shulman.

Since then, catfishing (catfish in English – catfish) has become a well-known term and refers to a type of fraud when a person creates a completely false identity on a social network in order to deceive, harm or simply “play”. There is a lighter version of it – kittenfishing (kitten translated from English – kitten) – when the user uses his identity, but with a small amount of lies.

Since 2012, MTV has been running the Catfish reality show about the truth and lies of online dating. Hosts help people who are entangled in a virtual relationship with someone they’ve never met in real life. Each episode is an investigation into whether the other member of the virtual relationship is real or not.

According to statistics, 24% of Americans pretend to be the opposite sex when creating their fake identity, another 73% use other people’s photos, 53% of Americans admit to falsifying their online profiles.

Bitcoin scam

In social networks, you can run into not only a love swindler. Until March 2021, Jegara Igbara, better known as Jay Mazini, ran a popular Instagram account with almost a million followers. There, he published a video where he, along with rapper 50 Cent, handed out tips to Burger King employees in Queens (USA) in the amount of more than $30 thousand. He also offered to buy bitcoins from other users of the social network at prices 3,5-5% higher than the market value. Masini explained this by saying that traditional exchanges limited the amount of bitcoins he could buy. When the victims agreed to make a transaction, the man sent them fake screenshots of bank transfers for the promised amounts. In response, the victims provided bitcoins, but the promised bank transfers never arrived. In the spring of 2021, Jay Masini was accused of fraud for millions of dollars. As of February 2022, the account of the former Instagram influencer is blocked.

Hunting for a liar

In February 2019, the @BallerBusters account appeared on Instagram, the creators of which expose fake entrepreneurs. Using a mixture of screenshots, memes and crowdsourced information from followers, the account is looking for people who lie to followers about their position in society. So, according to various sources, Jay Masini, accused of fraud, appeared more than once in revealing posts of the account.

The profile administrator believes that a new type of scammer is active today in American social networks – young business gurus. Their tapes depict a luxurious life full of cars and money. Victims pay for courses, mentoring programs, access to closed groups with exclusive content, but as a result they receive a dummy. However, neither this account nor others can somehow influence the business of such teachers. Just to warn subscribers. Any information they collect is “an opinion and should in no way be construed as a statement of fact. Fraud and fake gurus are subjective terms that mean different things to different people.”

According to a BallerBusters tweet, their Instagram account has “arrested” people such as world-famous Indian entrepreneur and investor Evan Lutra, business guru Den Lok, and others.

Millionaire from Khimki

In 2016, the imposing 65-year-old millionaire Boris Bork appeared on Instagram.

As it turned out later, it turned out to be a project of marketer Roman Zaripov.

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For two months, he and his friend created the image of an Instagram millionaire for a simple pensioner from Khimki: they rented branded clothes and cars, photographed a pensioner in fashionable places in Moscow, and so on. No more than ₽50 thousand was spent on all the necessary paraphernalia. The reactions were not long in coming. At the turn of 8 thousand subscribers of the “millionaire” began to be invited to federal television channels, clothing brands offered to appear in commercials and accept gifts free of charge, and the girls pecked at the imaginary opportunity to ride to Europe for free. The project was canceled when large cash injections were required.

Photoshop rich life

In 2019, blogger and businessman Dmitry Grobovsky filmed a story for his YouTube channel about fake millionaires from social networks. He showed and told how much it costs to create an image of a beautiful life. It doesn’t take a lot of money to splurge. All you need is some free time and a team that will shoot material for social networks for months in advance. The business has long adjusted to the needs of customers and allows, among other things, hourly rentals. When renting a yacht, for example, they will even pick up the time when there will be the least number of visitors on the territory of a private yacht club. And packages from TSUM are always available on marketplaces for a symbolic ₽100.

For example, renting a Ferrari, a room in one of the towers in Moscow City, shopping at the Central Department Store, renting a private jet cost Grobovsky ₽18,5 thousand.

Another experiment was conducted by 19-year-old Byron Denton from London. A young man pretended to be rich on social networks for a week.

He started posting edited photos on Instagram. The pictures showed Denton wearing Balenciaga, shopping at Louis Vuitton and sitting on a private jet. It took him about 45 minutes to create each post. During the week of the experiment, only five people asked if his photographs were real, the rest easily believed.