Not too many people are losing sleep over the fact that Simon Leviev, better known as “The Tinder Swindler,” allegedly got a taste of his own medicine. The 31-year-old Israeli citizen reportedly got scammed for a few thousand dollars by an enterprising Instagram user.
Sources told TMZ that Leviev, who was born Shimon Hayut, got taken by a pair of scammers pretending to work for Mark Zuckerberg’s tech company Meta, which owns Instagram. A verified account user claimed she’d be able to assist Leviev and his girlfriend Kate Konlin get verified accounts of their own through her boyfriend, who worked at Meta.
Leviev even allegedly did video calls with the boyfriend who pulled it off to look like he was working in Meta offices.
The scammer and fake Meta employee claimed he could only award Leviev the coveted blue check and delete all the fake accounts pretending to be him if Leviev sent him $6,664. According to TMZ, Leviev sent payments through two separate PayPal transactions.
Soon after, Leviev’s manager started questioning the story and checking into the alleged Meta employee. That’s when the social media scammers disappeared and deleted their accounts completely. Meta confirmed that they don’t charge money for verifying accounts.
The reason most followers feel less than sympathetic for Leviev is because of all the people he’s conned out of money in the past.
Netflix’s “The Tinder Swindler” takes a closer look at two of the victims Leviev cheated before he was convicted and sentenced to 15 months in prison in Israel for fraud and forgery in 2019. Court documents said he “defrauded, cheated, conned, falsified, and hurt women, men and businesses” in multiple cities and countries. The conman was released after just 5 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Leviev allegedly cheated multiple Tinder users out of an estimated $10 million by establishing an elaborate Ponzi scheme. The 31-year-old would woo unsuspecting women with lavish private jets, vacations, dinner, and jewelry, but would be using stolen funds to finance the luxury items. After earning their trust, Leviev would pretend to be in danger from his “enemies” and would convince the women to take out massive loans on his behalf to help him. Then he’d use that money to attract the next victim.
The Netflix series explained exactly how Leviev orchestrated his cons, which included tricking women into believing he was the son of Israeli Russian diamond tycoon Lev Leviev, People reported. However, the real Leviev family is now suing the “Tinder Swindler” for falsely representing them.
The lawsuit was filed in Tel Aviv and states that “for a long time, he [Simon Leviev] has been making false representations as being the son of Lev Leviev and receiving numerous benefits (including material ones).”
Lev Leviev’s lawyer promised this is only the first of many lawsuits.
“This legal action is only the beginning of a number of lawsuits that my firm is currently working on,” he wrote. “In the next faze we will file a monetary suit against Hayut and any other affiliate that will work with him, including some websites that have Joint ventures with Hayut and/or have offered to buy cameos from him. Anyone that will try to capitalize from this scheme will be sued.”
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