NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Deception, scams and cases of false identity – these are common risks in online dating that Shimon Hayut said he can prevent with his soon-to-launch dating app, Safe Love. He knows how scammers commit such deceptions. He was one of them. Hayut, also known as Simon Leviev, gained prominence as the “Tinder Scammer” due to his romance fraud schemes. The 36-year-old made a handsome income by extorting women he met online. VICTIMS OF ALLEGED NETFLIX ‘TINDER SCAMMER’ DOC HAVE COME TOGETHER FOR THIS REASON: ‘A BIG F— YOU TO HIM’ Shimon Hayut gained prominence as the “Tinder Scammer” due to his romance fraud schemes. (Shimon Hayut) In 2015 and 2019, he was convicted of fraud, theft and forgery in Israel and Finland, he confirmed to Fox News Digital in a video conference interview. He served time in Finland from September 2015 to 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 imprisoned until May 2020, he said. INFLUENCER ACCUSED OF TARGETING RICH DATING APPS BEHIND BARS In Finland, Hayut was sentenced in 2015 to two years in prison after authorities said he defrauded three women, according to the Times of Israel. He was convicted in 2019 of four counts of fraud and sentenced to 15 months in prison, but was released after five months, the BBC reported. Hayut now plans to use his experience to reduce the risks involved in searching for potential partners online, he said. He compares himself to notorious con man Frank Abagnale Jr., a convicted con artist immortalized in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film “Catch Me If You Can.” Abagnale committed check fraud, theft and forgery, and later became a fraud prevention specialist. Police in Greece said on Tuesday, July 2, 2019, that they had arrested an Israeli man on fraud charges, named in media reports as the “Tinder scammer” who allegedly defrauded European women he met on the dating site. The suspect has been described in news reports as Shimon Hayut. According to the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang, the suspect presented himself as the son of an Israeli billionaire and had defrauded women in Norway, Finland and Sweden of hundreds of thousands of dollars to finance a luxurious lifestyle. (TORE KRISTIANSEN/AFP via Getty Images) BRACELET SOCIAL MEDIA FRAUD SCHEMES CAUSE HAZARD AS TRUMP OFFICIAL PRODUCES TOUGH WARNING TO ‘FRAUDFLUENCERS’ “The idea came about because I was the Tinder scammer,” Hayut said in his thick Israeli accent. “They say I made the dating environment unsafe. So I thought, ‘Okay. Let’s make it safe.'” He mainly divides his time between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. His experience in the area of fraud makes him the perfect candidate to help others avoid becoming victims, he said. “I used fake passports. I used fake identity,” he said. “I’ve been condemned for that. I’ve paid my debts to society. Obviously, things I’m not proud of.” But because of his unpleasant past, he is confident he has the skills and knowledge to prevent the types of fraud he committed. “I know what fake passports are like,” he said. And maybe even “better than a passport controller at the airport, because I went through hundreds or even thousands of… fake passports.” “No one questioned me even once,” he said. “I know I know how to challenge the system.” “They say I made the dating environment unsafe. So I thought, ‘Okay. Let’s make it safe,'” Shimon Hayut said. (Shimon Hayut) Match-gone-wrong Hayut’s new dating platform will have more rigid identification requirements than existing dating apps, he said. To ensure a user’s online identity is genuine, they will be asked to carry a government ID 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%, it said. You want to make sure that potential matches seen online are the same (in appearance and identity) as those appearing on a date. He got the idea from his own coincidence gone wrong involving someone who was transgender, he said. One safety feature planned for the Safe Love app is an SOS button that users can press if they feel unsafe on a date. video. It would share the user’s location. And that would be shared with law enforcement authorities, Hayut said. Safe Love is in the final stages of the regulatory phase that it must pass before its launch. “It could be a few days, it could be a few weeks, but hopefully as soon as possible,” he said. Shimon Hayut plans 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 against 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 that any app store would want to be the platform that welcomed a scammer’s return to the same environment in which his crimes were committed,” ODDA wrote in the “Allowing a criminal convicted of romance fraud to operate a dating platform, an environment built entirely on trust and on emotional and financial vulnerabilities that has already been shown to exploit, completely undermines the efforts our sector has made and represents a very real risk to users.” But the rejection does not threaten to stop your project, Hayut said. Afraid of the superiority of his product, he said. “I mean, they’re threatened by me.” Fox News Digital has reached out to Apple and Google for comment. SIGN UP FOR THE LATEST TRUE CRIME NEWS Hayut said his background drives him to make sure his app is “working perfectly” before it launches. He can’t afford to make any mistakes, he said. CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM THE FOX TRUE CRIME HUB “If something goes wrong, I can’t say, ‘Oh, we have a glitch in our system.’ I’ll automatically be [considered] guilty as charged.”SEND US A TIP”I have notoriety. It means I can’t make mistakes.” DO YOU HAVE ADVICE? He knows there are some who say his past crimes make him a threat. He wants you to consider this: LISTEN TO THE NEW PODCAST ‘CRIME AND JUSTICE WITH DONNA ROTUNNO’ “Yes, on paper I’m a convicted criminal,” he said. “But I’m not the same kid I was [at] 19 years old.” GET BREAKING NEWS BY EMAIL Although he has never been married, he is now the father of an 11-year-old daughter with a woman and a 3-year-old son with another woman. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP “And we changed. “People change.”
