Imagine joining Tinder and falling in love with a multi-millionaire, only to find out they are a “Tinder Swindler”. That is what happened to Cecilie Fjellhoy when she matched with Simon Leviev. He ended up conning her out of $200k in money.
Cecilie wasn’t one to be fooled easily. Simon looked and acted like the authentic deal. On their first date, he even took her on a private plane to Bulgaria. She texted her friends her surprise, not sure what to think about the whirlwind experience. At 29, Cecilie had been living in London as a student and was originally from Norway.
It didn’t take long for Simon to work his charm enough to get into her wallet. From that first surprising date onward, she began to fall for the handsome man. He was, after all, the son of a Russian diamond mogul named Lev Leviev.
His story seemed to check out. He would claim that his family disowned him after he left their religion but continued to give him money, so long as he left them alone.
The only problem?
Leviev was not who he claimed to be. He was born Shimon Hayut and was a 28-year-old Israeli con-man. He had been lying most of his life and previously served time in a Finland prison after defrauding women. He had used their affection and wallet to pay for his high-rise lifestyle, which included personal planes and sport’s cars. Little did Cecilie know the same would happen to her.
As Cecilie began falling for “Simon”, she helped him financially. While he gave her frequent grand romantic gestures and declarations of love, he would also reference his past “enemies”. He claimed that he needed to use her line of credit to protect himself, as those people then wouldn’t be able to track where he was. He used her name in the hotel room, supposedly, as a cover from those dangerous people trailing him.
She agreed to help him, as he promised to pay her back and seemed to have the funds to do so. However, something began to go wrong, since he never intended to pay her back, he didn’t. He would swear up and down that he would or had transferred money, and then it wouldn’t arrive. He required thousands of dollars a week to live off and claimed this was because he had a team to look after, and people guarding him.
What hurt her the most was that she was in love with him. She felt physical shock that the person she loved and trusted, hadn’t cared for her at all. She was so upset that she was placed under a hospital’s psychiatric care for being suicidal. She couldn’t believe that she had given so much money to someone who’d created a facade and never been who he claimed.
Simon would later claim that the money he borrowed from her was legitimate, but that he couldn’t find her to pay her back. He was arrested for using a fake passport in June in Athens.
The media coverage helped, Cecilie believes, and it gives her some peace to know that he will receive some legal penalty for lying in one, of so many areas of his life.
Do you think that Cecilie was silly to believe someone she loved would pay her back, or can you empathize with her trust? Since Simon tried to give the appearance of being a wealthy worldwide traveler, images of him might have been traceable. Don’t give away your heart and money you need to a fraudster! Search online connections with our detailed high powered algorithm: Social Catfish and read our article on Tinder scams.
The best part about our search engine is that you can search by image (even profile pic!), name, email, phone number, and username. As you can see by Cecile being admitted to a Psych Ward, these situations can be soul-crushing. We are here to help you search better!
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