Tinder Swindler scammed me out of £200K – but he’s STILL conning innocent women with shameless tricks
THE Tinder Swindler conned unsuspecting women out of more than £8million - and one of his victims has claimed he’s still up to his dodgy tricks now.
Cecilie Fjellhoy, 33, first matched with Simon Leviev, who she thought was a globe-trotting millionaire businessman, on Tinder in January 2018.
However, in the 13 weeks following their first date, he scammed her out of around £200,000 - which she is still paying back, as well as dealing with the emotional scars.
If that weren’t enough, Cecilie claims she regularly gets messages from women telling her Simon is trying to con them out of money under a different name.
'He's still at it'
“It’s still going on, he’s still at it,” she tells The Sun. “It’s incredible. I get messages all the time, like, ‘I think I’m talking to Simon.’
“He’s definitely still at it, for sure. Just now he’s using other people.
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“It’s never his name on anything.”
Simon - whose real name is Shimon Hayut - was returned to his native Israel in 2017 to be recharged and sentenced, but assumed a different identity and fled the country.
Israel declared him a fugitive, and he was eventually extradited back in 2019, convicted, and sentenced to 15 months in prison, but was released after just five months.
He had previously served two and a half years in a Finnish prison after being found guilty of defrauding three women.
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And just last month, a young woman, Iren Tranov, came forward in Israel to claim Simon had defrauded her too - while he claimed everything that had been said in the Netflix documentary was a lie.
373,000 TikTok followers
Cecilie - who was a police suspect in the fraud case for two years due to her name being on falsified documents - believes Simon, 32, gets away with it because part of the con is making people believe the victims were in on it.
She says: “By blaming victims of fraud, we fall for the con ourselves. This is what he wants. He wants police to go after me. He wanted the banks to go after me like, ‘Oh, you did it.’
“I feel like by going after me and blaming me for what happened, then he’s still out there thinking he’s won. This is what he wants you to do, blame his victims when it’s his behaviour.”
Simon, now known to be the son of the El Al airline’s chief rabbi Yohanan Hayut, told Cecile he was the son of Israeli Russian diamond tycoon Lev Leviev when they met.
He was surrounded by bodyguards, flew on private jets around the world, and, by the looks of social media, he is very much still living this flashy lifestyle - and has over 373,000 followers on TikTok alone.
“It’s insane how many TikTok followers he has,” Cecilie says. “It’s not fun for me that he’s still out there, and I still have my debts.
“I am strong, it’s fine, but people don’t know about all the fights that you have to have and you become this spokesperson as well.
“You get a lot of people coming to you wanting help and it’s difficult to help others when you are still battling it and you can’t give them the hope it’s going to be fine.
“I think it’s important for people to know that there was more to it after you’ve been defrauded and trying to take your life back. You need to have some stamina.”
'Still clouds my judgement'
As well as financial woes, Cecilie has been left with huge emotional scars from what Simon did to her.
She’s struggled to find a man she can trust since Simon, and is now taking part in Celebs Go Dating in the hopes she finds her Mr Right - having already been seen on a date with someone else called Simon.
“When I first realised I was defrauded, it wasn’t even about the money,” she explains. “It was more that I felt cheated on. I lost a lot, but I lost a future and a boyfriend I thought I had, all the plans for our future I thought were on the cards.
“He does cloud my judgement.
“Even now, with a new Simon in my life, I’m still questioning myself a lot.
“Even though I have good feelings about him, it’s like, but why is he here? Is he here for the fame? Is he real?”
Won't let Simon win
However, Cecilie insists she's not going to let Simon win and is jumping into the dating process headfirst in the hopes of a brighter future.
She finishes: “What I’m proud of is that I have been able to just go with the flow. You can’t do anything about other people’s actions. I’m quite proud that I’m just being able to open up and maybe fall in love again.
“I can’t live my life not taking risks for fear of being hurt again, life and love is a risk.
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“If I don’t take them and try to move forward then my past relationship wins, Simon wins, and I don’t want him to have that hold on me.
"He’s taken enough from me, I won’t let him take my future.”
