After allegedly scamming multiple women on Tinder out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, Shimon Hayut has been permanently banned from the dating app.
“We banned Simon Leviev and any of his known aliases as soon as the story of his actions became public in 2019,” Tinder said in a statement to Us Weekly on Tuesday, February 8. “He is permanently banned from Tinder. In the lead up to the release of the documentary, we conducted additional internal investigations and can confirm Simon Leviev is not active on Tinder under any of his known aliases.”
Hayut, 31, who has used the pseudonym Simon Leviev, has also been banned from dating websites including Match, OKCupid and Hinge, according to USA Today.
The Israel native recently made headlines after he was the subject of Netflix’s new documentary, The Tinder Swindler. The true crime film was released on Wednesday, February 2, and it followed three women who alleged that Hayut defrauded them.
In The Tinder Swindler, Pernilla Sjöholm, Ayleen Charlotte and Cecilie Schrøder Fjellhøy recalled their experience with Hayut after they all individually started romantic relationships with him online. After he allegedly claimed that he was the son of Israeli philanthropist Lev Leviev, Hayut would ask for money to help get out of personal trouble.
The three women later realized that they were scammed out of thousands of dollars and went public with their story in an interview with Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang in 2019.
Fjellhøy revealed that she was nervous to take part in the Netflix project, telling Australian outlet Nine News, on Sunday, February 6, “I hid under my shirt for most of the time. It’s such a rollercoaster for me, from the love and talking about that to talking about some much harder things. So, for me, it was a proper rollercoaster both taping it and watching it.”
Hayut, for his part, has denied defrauding the women and he chose not to participate in the documentary. He was arrested in June 2019 after traveling with a fake passport and was extradited to Israel. Hayut was sentenced to 15 months in prison for fraud charges unrelated to the women who starred in the documentary and was released five months into his sentence.
Although Hayut previously documented his lavish lifestyle on social media, he has since deleted his Instagram account. Shortly after the Netflix doc was released, French Montana revealed that he had met the alleged conman without knowing who he was.
“I can’t believe I met the swindler,” the rapper, 37, captioned a throwback selfie with Hayut on Sunday alongside a laughing emoji.
The Tinder Swindler is available to stream on Netflix.
