‘Tinder Swindler’ romance fraudster promises ‘safe’ dating app – using intel from con man playbook
Deception, scams, and cases of false identity – these are common risks in online dating that Shimon Hayut said he can prevent with his soon-to-be released dating app, Safe Love.
He knows how fraudsters commit those deceptions. He was one of them.
Hayut, also known as Simon Leviev, gained prominence as the "Tinder Swindler" because of his romance fraud schemes. The 36-year-old made a lavish income extorting money from women he met online.
In 2015 and 2019, he was convicted of fraud, theft and forgery charges in Israel and Finland, he confirmed to Fox News Digital in a videoconference interview.
He served time in Finland from September 2015 until March 2017, he said. He was arrested in Israel in 2011 and 2017 for the same case. And in June 2019, he was extradited from Greece to Israel where he was jailed until May 2020, he said.
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In Finland, Hayut was sentenced in 2015 to two years behind bars after authorities said he defrauded three women, according to the Times of Israel.
He was convicted in 2019 of four charges of fraud and sentenced to 15 months in prison, but was released after five months, BBC reported.
Hayut now plans to use his expertise to reduce the risks involved in finding potential partner matches online, he said.
He compares himself to famed fraudster Frank Abagnale Jr., convicted con man immortalized in the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie "Catch Me If You Can." Abagnale committed check fraud, theft, and forgery, and later became a fraud-prevention specialist.
"The idea came from me being the Tinder Swindler," Hayut said in his heavy Israeli accent. "They say I made the dating environment unsafe. So I thought, ‘All right. Let’s make it safe.’"
He mostly splits time between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. His expertise in the area of fraud makes him the perfect candidate to help others avoid being victims, he said.
"I did use false passports. I did use false identity," he said. "I've been convicted for that. I've paid my debts to society. Obviously, things which I'm not proud of."
But because of his unsavory past, he’s confident that he has the skills and knowledge of how to prevent the kinds of fraud he committed.
"I know how fake passports look," he said. And maybe even "better than a passport controller in the airport, because I did pass hundreds or if not thousands of…fake passports."
"No one ever questioned me once," he said.
"I know I know how to challenge the system."
Hayut's new dating platform will have more rigid identification requirements than existing dating apps, he said.
To ensure a user’s online identity is genuine, they will be required to upload a government identification card and take a selfie to match it. Any photos uploaded to a profile will not be allowed if they differ from that selfie by more than 15%, he said.
He wants to ensure that potential matches viewed online are the same – in appearance and identity – as who shows up on a date.
He got the idea from his own match-gone-wrong involving someone who was transgender, he said.
A safety feature planned for the Safe Love app is an SOS button that users can press if they’re feeling unsafe on a date.
The phone would immediately start recording audio and video. It would share the user’s location. And that would be shared with law enforcement authorities, Hayut said.
Safe Love is in the late stages of the regulation phase it must pass before its release.
"It could be a few days, could be a few weeks, but hopefully as soon as possible," he said.
The Online Dating and Discovery Association (ODDA), a group that promotes safe online dating, has spoken out opposing Hayut's plan for the app.
In a letter sent to Google and Apple, the organization urged the tech giants to ban the platform from their app stores.
"We do not believe either app store wishes to be the platform that hosted a fraudster's return to the very environment in which his crimes were committed," ODDA wrote in the letter.
"Allowing a convicted romance fraud offender to operate a dating platform, an environment built entirely on trust and on the very emotional and financial vulnerabilities he has already been proven to exploit, completely undermines the efforts our sector has made and represents a very real risk to users."
But the pushback doesn’t threaten to stop his project, Hayut said.
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"They won't be able to do that, and they won't succeed," he said.
They’re afraid of the superiority of his product, he said.
"I mean, they’re threatened by me."
Fox News Digital reached out to Apple and Google for comment.
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Hayut said his background drives him to make sure his app is "working perfectly" before its release. He can’t afford to make any mistakes, he said.
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"If something will go wrong, I cannot be saying, ‘Ah, we have a fault in our system.’ Automatically, I will be [considered] guilty as charged."
"I have notoriety. It means that I cannot do mistakes."
He knows there are some who say his past crimes make him a threat. He wants them to consider this:
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"Yes, on paper I'm a convicted criminal," he said. "But I'm not the same kid that I was [at] 19 years old."
Though he’s never married, he’s now the father of an 11-year-old daughter with one woman and a 3-year-old son with another woman.
"And we do change. People do change."