Deception, scams, and cases of false identity â 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. Lets 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, hes 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 ofâ¦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 users 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 â in appearance and identity â 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 SO
