Online daters face a range of dangers, from romance scams to stolen identities. Shimon Hayut says his upcoming dating platform, Safe Love, is designed to help users avoid those threats.
His proposed solution is rooted in firsthand experience. Hayut understands how online fraud works because he once carried it out himself.
Better known as Simon Leviev, Hayut became internationally infamous as the “Tinder Swindler” after using romantic relationships to defraud women. The 36-year-old reportedly extracted large sums of money from women he met through dating platforms.
Shimon Hayut became known worldwide as the “Tinder Swindler” following a series of romance fraud schemes. (Shimon Hayut)
Hayut told News Media in a videoconference interview that he was convicted of fraud, theft and forgery in Israel and Finland in 2015 and 2019.
He said he was imprisoned in Finland from September 2015 through March 2017. He was also arrested in Israel in 2011 and again in 2017 in connection with the same case. After being extradited from Greece to Israel in June 2019, he said, he remained in jail until May 2020.
In Finland, Hayut received a two-year sentence in 2015 after authorities accused him of defrauding three women, according to the Times of Israel.
He was later convicted in Israel on four fraud charges in 2019 and sentenced to 15 months in prison. He served five months before his release, the BBC reported.
Now, Hayut says he wants to draw on that history to make online dating safer and reduce the chances that users will be matched with fraudulent partners.
He likens his planned transformation to that of Frank Abagnale Jr., the notorious con artist portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film “Catch Me If You Can.” Abagnale was convicted of check fraud, theft and forgery before later working as a fraud-prevention consultant.
Greek police said Tuesday, July 2, 2019, that they had arrested an Israeli man accused of defrauding women he met through a dating website. Media reports identified the suspect as Shimon Hayut, widely known as the “Tinder Swindler.” Norway’s Verdens Gang reported that he allegedly posed as the son of an Israeli billionaire and took hundreds of thousands of dollars from women in Norway, Finland and Sweden to support an extravagant lifestyle. (TORE KRISTIANSEN/AFP via Getty Images)
“The idea came from me being the Tinder Swindler,” Hayut said. “People said I made the dating environment unsafe. So I thought, ‘All right. Let’s make it safe.’”
Hayut now divides much of his time between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. He believes his intimate knowledge of fraud gives him a unique understanding of the warning signs that could help protect people searching for love online.
“I did use false passports. I did use false identity,” he acknowledged. “I’ve been convicted for that. I’ve paid my debts to society. Obviously, these are things I’m not proud of.”
Still, Hayut argues that his troubled past has given him specialized insight into the tactics used in the very scams he hopes to prevent.
“I know what fake passports look like,” he said, suggesting that his experience may even exceed that of some airport passport officials because he had successfully used hundreds, possibly thousands, of counterfeit documents.
“No one ever questioned me once,” he said.
“I know how to challenge the system,” Hayut added.
“People said I made the dating environment unsafe. So I thought, ‘All right. Let’s make it safe,’” Shimon Hayut said. (Shimon Hayut)
Match-gone-wrong
According to Hayut, Safe Love will impose stricter identity-verification standards than many established dating apps when it launches.
To ensure a user’s 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 – in appearance and identity – as who shows up on a date.
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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 SOS button that users can press if they’re feeling unsafe on a date.
The phone would immediately start recording audio and video. It would share the user’s location. And that would be shared with law enforcement authorities, Hayut said.
Safe Love is in the late stages of the regulation phase it must pass before its release.
“It could be a few days, could be a few weeks, but hopefully as soon as possible,” he said.
Shimon Hayut is planning to launch the Safe Love app soon. (Shimon Hayut)
Giving love a bad name or Love crimes
The Online Dating and Discovery Association (ODDA), a group that promotes safe online dating, has spoken out opposing Hayut’s plan for the app.
In a letter sent to Google and Apple, the organization urged the tech giants to ban the platform from their app stores.
“We do not believe either app store wishes to be the platform that hosted a fraudster’s return to the very environment in which his crimes were committed,” ODDA wrote in the letter.
“Allowing a convicted romance fraud offender to operate a dating platform, an environment built entirely on trust and on the very emotional and financial vulnerabilities he has already been proven to exploit, completely undermines the efforts our sector has made and represents a very real risk to users.”
But the pushback doesn’t threaten to stop his project, Hayut said.
“They won’t be able to do that, and they won’t succeed,” he said.
They’re afraid of the superiority of his product, he said.
“I mean, they’re threatened by me.”
News Media reached out to Apple and Google for comment.
Hayut said his background drives him to make sure his app is “working perfectly” before its release. He can’t afford to make any mistakes, he said.
“If something will go wrong, I cannot be saying, ‘Ah, we have a fault in our system.’ Automatically, I will be [considered] guilty as charged.”
“I have notoriety. It means that I cannot do mistakes.”
He knows there are some who say his past crimes make him a threat. He wants them to consider this:
“Yes, on paper I’m a convicted criminal,” he said. “But I’m not the same kid that I was [at] 19 years old.”
Though he’s never married, he’s now the father of an 11-year-old daughter with one woman and a 3-year-old son with another woman.
“And we do change. People do change.”