Snared at last! But as the heartless Tinder Swindler languishes in a tough Georgian jail, his many victims are praying he won’t wriggle off the hook yet again

For a man long dedicated to enjoying the finest things in life, the conditions at Shimon Hayut’s current place of residence must require an adjustment of vast proportions.

Certainly, one imagines that a three-month stint (minimum) in the grimly named Kutaisi Penitentiary Establishment No 2 was the last thing Hayut, a man better known globally as the ‘Tinder Swindler’, anticipated when he flew into the Georgian city of Batumi last weekend for what he later insisted was a few days holidaying in the region.

Those travel plans were quickly thwarted when, after touching down, Hayut was met by law enforcement officials armed with a warrant from the international police force, Interpol.

After being questioned for several hours, the 34-year-old – who also goes by several aliases – was promptly detained on allegations of fraud committed in Germany before being dispatched to prison pending extradition proceedings. If subsequently convicted of his alleged crimes in Germany he faces up to ten years behind bars.

Little wonder that, as the Israeli- born Hayut’s longstanding lawyer, international criminal law expert Sagiv Rotenberg, told The Mail on Sunday, his client sounded ‘not happy’ when he spoke to him on the phone following his court appearance.

‘He told me conditions are really difficult in the jail. He is always handcuffed behind his back,’ Rotenberg said.

‘He also told me that the other prisoners are not so easy. He has served some jail time in the past, in other places, but prison in Georgia is really tough.’

It is an ignominious turn of events for a man whose name has become synonymous with romance fraud and audacious financial crimes – but who seemed astonishingly adept at sidestepping the law despite a labyrinth of criminal charges against him in multiple countries.

Money laundering, crypto-currency fraud and identity theft are among the many allegations trailing in his wake, although it is as the ‘Tinder Swindler’ that Hayut has become cemented in the public consciousness.

The 2022 Netflix documentary of that name was a phenomenon, becoming the streaming giant’s most watched documentary that year.

It revealed that rabbi’s son Hayut had used the dating app Tinder to recruit a series of glamorous international dates, dazzling them with whirlwind romances involving jaunts on private jets and stays at five-star hotels before conning them out of millions and disappearing from their lives.

It is thought he may have stolen £8.7 million from multiple alleged victims – one of whom, Norwegian software designer Cecilie Fjellhoy, ended up in a psychiatric ward after handing over £185,000 in a matter of weeks.

Yet to date he has not been charged with any alleged crimes committed after 2011 – until now. His arrest relates to charges of defrauding a Berlin-based woman who claims to have been the victim of a £38,000 scam.

So it is little wonder that when she heard the news of Hayut’s arrest, the first word that sprang to the mind of another of his victims, 38-year-old Swedish businesswoman Pernilla Sjoholm, was ‘finally’. 

‘I am the biggest fan of the German police force right now,’ she told the MoS from her home in Stockholm. 

‘I would like to give them a big salute because they appear to have done what no other country has managed to do, which is ensuring he has to face some repercussion for his actions.

‘It doesn’t matter that it’s not my case. One woman’s justice is justice for everyone.’

Pernilla – who appeared in the documentary – met Hayut, then going as ‘Simon Leviev’ on Tinder in early 2018, and although there was no romantic spark, the pair quickly became fast friends, their relationship unfolding against a backdrop of meetings across Europe – from Amsterdam and Rome to Mykonos.

‘It was a love bombing through friendship’, she recalls of the dynamic and apparently caring Hayut, who would call to check on her all the time and surprise her with unplanned visits.

‘He is a shapeshifter. So for some women he was the glamorous man flying in private jets, but for me he was someone who went to museums and coffee shops, because I’m not interested in the other stuff.’

As he did with all the women he met on Tinder, Hayut told Pernilla he was the son of Israeli diamond tycoon Lev Leviev and himself a successful diamond dealer, a ‘legend’ he used over time as a pretext to ask for money.

In what would become his modus operandi, he would make panicked phone calls saying his business enemies had frozen him out of his bank accounts or were extorting him, and begging for help.

In the space of just a few months, Pernilla gave him £39,000, only learning of her friend’s true identity after being contacted by Scandinavian journalists who had started to investigate him.

‘I was devastated, heartbroken,’ she recalls. ‘It’s not just about the financial loss. It is the emotional betrayal. I was in a very bad state.

‘At the same time, I had this strong conviction that he couldn’t get away with what he had done.’

That conviction was shared by Ayleen Charlotte, a Dutch businesswoman who was romantically involved with Hayut for 18 months and told the MoS she gave a ‘little cheer’ on hearing of the news of Hayut’s arrest. During their time together she gave him £130,000.

‘When something like this happens it is like a balloon that pops,’ she says of the moment in 2019 that she learned – like Pernilla, through journalists – that everything she thought she knew about her partner was a lie. 

‘I found out that my boyfriend wasn’t real, that our relationship of one-and-a-half years plus was fake and that everything he ever told me was a lie.

‘He’d dated other women during our relationship and on top of that I lost over 150,000 euros, which meant that my future plans were shattered. It was completely and utterly devastating.’

Nonetheless determined to fight back, Ayleen came up with a scheme of her own, pretending to stand by her man, and persuading him to allow her to sell all his designer clothes on eBay to raise funds. 

She kept the money for herself before contacting police to report both the fraud and also giving them the details of his fake passport.

It was the use of this passport that led to Hayut’s arrest in Athens in March 2019. ‘He messaged me from the Interpol office at Athens airport to say he’d been arrested and asked for my help,’ Ayleen recalls.

‘He didn’t know that I was the one who had filed a police report against him, and he didn’t know that I was the one who helped track him down. I didn’t reply, and opened a bottle of wine.’

Extradited back to Israel, Hayut immediately stood trial for outstanding theft, fraud and forgery charges from 2011 and was jailed in the Israeli capital Tel Aviv for 19 months.

That sentence was commuted to five months because of the Covid pandemic.

Hayut has subsequently attempted to cash in on the notoriety he achieved through the Tinder Swindler documentary. He briefly hired an LA talent agent and also placed himself on the video website Cameo, where he offered personalised messages for £150. 

He has continued to loudly protest his innocence, telling the American cable network CNN, following the release of Tinder Swindler, that he was on the dating app because he ‘just wanted to meet some girls’ and for a time continued to flaunt his wealth, posting pictures on Instagram showing him boarding private jets and driving a Lamborghini.

In the last couple of years, however, little has been known of his movements.

‘According to my knowledge he has been in Israel,’ lawyer Sagiv Rotenberg says. ‘But I know he’s travelled around the world. He’s been to Dubai, Europe. He was travelling many times.’

Now those travels have come to an end, for the time being anyway, courtesy of that Interpol ‘red notice’, which will likely see him deported to Germany to face fraud charges.

In documents seen by the MoS, the Berlin-based alleged victim claimed that from October 2017 to February 2018, Hayut, posing as ‘Simon Leviev’, embedded himself in her life, presenting himself as a ‘sophisticated businessman’ before taking out a phone contract in her name and using an American Express card in luxury outlets from Gucci to Amsterdam’s Waldorf Astoria hotel.

The alleged victim also claims to have received a photo of her front door alongside messages saying ‘You are my enemy’ and ‘You are the one who will need help’.

More than seven years on, it is these allegations that have seen Hayut incarcerated in Kutaisi, a prison about which concerns have been raised over ill-treatment of prisoners, overcrowding, inadequate conditions and violence.

While he apparently told his Israeli lawyer that conditions were ‘difficult’, Hayut’s Georgian state-issued lawyer Paata Beridze, robustly refuted this. ‘The conditions are very good – humane, decent, and he is fully provided for,’ he said.

‘At the time of his arrest and during his stay in the detention facility, there was no excessive cruelty or any inhuman treatment. He told me this himself and repeated it in court.’

Either way, Hayut is set to remain there for some time, as extradition custody proceedings can last up to nine months, and according to Beridze he is unlikely to get bail.

‘Until I speak to him in person, it is difficult to go into details, but what I can say is that we will contest the extradition,’ Beridze added.

‘He does not want to be extradited to Germany – he wishes to return to his own country.’

He added, perhaps unsurprisingly, that his client had yet to pay him ‘a cent’ despite his requesting payment several times to date. 

Even if Hayut does manage to return to Israel, his legal woes would be by no means over: the MoS understands that there are two outstanding civil cases against him in his homeland, including one centring on an unpaid loan and another from the Leviev family, who are suing him for claiming to be a member of the family.

A lawsuit filed in Tel Aviv magistrate’s court in May 2022 was, according to Leviev family lawyer Guy Ophir ‘only the beginning’.

The Mail on Sunday also understands there is an international arrest warrant against Hayut outstanding in Germany centring on allegations of money laundering, tax evasion, computer fraud and crypto fraud, although his lawyer calls this information ‘unreliable’.

‘It would also not be the first time that warrants are issued for political reasons rather than something concrete,’ says Sagiv Rotenberg. For now, at least, Hayut remains at the mercy of the Georgian prison system – and the longer the better according to Pernilla.

Now in a happy long-term partnership and mum to two-and-a-half-year-old twins, Pernilla has ‘moved on’, launching her own identity verification app as well as becoming a public speaker raising awareness of scams.

But she still passionately feels that Hayut should face the full force of the law.

‘This person destroyed my life, and the life of a lot of people that I love and care about. So I am allowed to feel hatred, I am allowed to wish him the worst,’ she says. ‘To keep people safe he needs to be behind bars for a really long time.’

It’s a sentiment echoed by Cecilie, who said this week her relief at Hayut’s arrest was matched by frustration that it had taken so long.

‘I get this sense of calm because I know that I am being protected. I know future victims are being protected – but, as well, you’re angry that it had to take this amount of time and the amount of victims that we know have been accumulated,’ she says.

Ayleen, who has latterly founded S.A.F.E. by Ayleen Charlotte, a specialised training programme for professionals and first responders dealing with fraud victims, and who gives lectures around the world, is also ‘thrilled’ Hayut is behind bars.

Nonetheless, she admits that she takes nothing for granted.

‘Let’s be honest – the only thing we know for sure is that he’s arrested,’ she said. ‘And what we do know is that where he is concerned, caution is always best.’

• Additional reporting by ANDREW JEHRING and ROB HYDE