Simon Leviev, the Israeli man known worldwide as the “Tinder Swindler” for defrauding women he met on dating apps, says he is close to launching his own dating platform designed to stop the exact kind of fraud he was convicted of committing.
Leviev, 36, born Shimon Yehuda Hayut, told Fox News Digital in a video interview that the app, called Safe Love, is in the late stages of regulatory review before release. “It could be a few days, could be a few weeks, but hopefully as soon as possible,” he said.
Leviev was convicted of fraud, theft and forgery charges in both Finland and Israel. In Finland, he was sentenced in 2015 to two years in prison after authorities said he defrauded three women, according to The Times of Israel; he served time there from September 2015 until March 2017. He was also arrested in Israel in 2011 and 2017 in connection with the same case, and in June 2019 was extradited from Greece to Israel, where he was held until May 2020, he said. Separately, he was convicted in 2019 on four counts of fraud and sentenced to 15 months, but was released after five months, according to the BBC.
Leviev argues that his history as a fraudster is precisely what qualifies him to build a platform that prevents fraud, comparing himself to Frank Abagnale Jr., the convicted con man who became a fraud-prevention consultant and was portrayed in the Steven Spielberg film “Catch Me If You Can.”
“The idea came from me being the Tinder Swindler,” Leviev said. “They say I made the dating environment unsafe. So I thought, ‘All right. Let’s make it safe.'”
He did not minimize his past conduct. “I did use false passports. I did use false identity,” he said. “I’ve been convicted for that. I’ve paid my debts to society. Obviously, things which I’m not proud of.”
He said that same experience gives him unusual insight into how fraudulent identification documents work. “I know how fake passports look,” he said, adding he may understand the subject “better than a passport controller in the airport, because I did pass hundreds or if not thousands of fake passports. No one ever questioned me once. I know I know how to challenge the system.”
How the app would verify users
Safe Love would require users to upload a government identification card and take a selfie to match against it. Any additional profile photos would be rejected if they differ from that verification selfie by more than 15%, according to Leviev. He said the goal is to make sure the person shown in a profile is the same person who shows up to meet a match in person, an idea he traced back to his own experience with a match who turned out to be transgender.
The app would also include an SOS feature: pressing a button would trigger the phone to begin recording audio and video, share the user’s location, and alert law enforcement.
Industry pushback
The Online Dating and Discovery Association, a group focused on online dating safety, has formally objected to the app’s launch. In a letter to Google and Apple, the organization urged both companies to keep Safe Love out of 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,” the ODDA wrote, adding that 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.”
Fox News Digital said it reached out to Apple and Google for comment. Leviev said the opposition will not stop him. “They won’t be able to do that, and they won’t succeed,” he said, suggesting rivals fear the strength of his product.
Leviev said the stakes of his own credibility mean the app has to work flawlessly from day one. “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,” he said. “I have notoriety. It means that I cannot do mistakes.”
Addressing those who see his criminal record as disqualifying, he said: “Yes, on paper I’m a convicted criminal. But I’m not the same kid that I was at 19 years old.”
Leviev, who splits his time between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and has never been married, is the father of an 11-year-old daughter with one woman and a 3-year-old son with another.
