The notorious Tinder Swindler has once again found himself ensnared in a web of legal woes. Nearly three years after Shimon Yehuda Hayut took center stage in Netflix's documentary of the same name, the convicted con artist was apprehended on September 14th on charges of fraud, as confirmed by his attorney, Sagiv Rotenberg, to The New York Times.
Hayut, who also operated under the alias Simon Leviev, was taken into custody in Georgia following allegations from a German woman that he had swindled her out of nearly €44,000 ($52,000) between 2017 and 2019, according to Interpol documents reviewed by the outlet. Among the alleged fraudulent activities, as detailed in the documents, were thousands of dollars in charges racked up on a credit card and phone contract opened in the woman's name. This included a staggering €9,000 ($10,600) for hotels and flights for him in the Cayman Islands, after he purportedly claimed his credit card was blocked.
Although the German authorities sought Hayut's arrest in Georgia, Rotenberg informed The New York Times that his client had not been formally charged with any crime in Germany. The 34-year-old, who vehemently denied the allegations, has a seven-day window to appeal the court's decision, as per documents from the Batumi City Court.
This latest arrest comes five years after Hayut was sentenced to 15 months in prison in Israel on four counts of fraud. However, Hayut—who was accused of bilking over $10 million from his Tinder dates through whirlwind romances with unsuspecting women, as highlighted in the 2022 documentary—only served five months due to Israel's efforts to reduce its prison population at the onset of the Covid pandemic, according to the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang.
Two years post-release, one of his purported victims, Cecilie Fjellhøy, recounted her tale of meeting and falling head over heels for Hayut, whom she knew as Leviev. The Netflix documentary delved into Hayut's romantic escapades with multiple women on Tinder, wherein he, as per the narrative, posed as the son of an oligarch and opened numerous credit accounts in his dates' names.
Though he later admitted to using fake passports and leading a life "under a false identity," which ultimately led to his legal entanglements, he contested Netflix's portrayal of his situation in the documentary.
