“Simon has an aura about him, a real confidence,” Cecilie told media. “I had no reason not to believe him.”
What Cecilie didn’t realise was that, like many other women, she was being sucked into an elaborate scam.
Simon Leviev, whose real name is Shimon Hayut, was a fraud. He is now known as the ‘Tinder Swindler’, after a new Netflix documentary of that name.
Things quickly turned dark for Cecilie, as Hayut confided that a multimillion-dollar business deal was putting him in danger because of his powerful enemies.
He claimed he’d been advised to cancel his credit cards so they couldn’t trace him, and suddenly Cecilie was having to help him out financially.
Instagram @simon_leviev_official
“People say I was stupid, but I truly believed he was in danger,” she says.
At one point, Hayut sent her a video of him and his bodyguard in an ambulance after being attacked, and over the following weeks, he allegedly put her under pressure to let him use her American Express card and later to get out a $35,000 cash loan she would bring to him in the Netherlands.
It was only when her bank in London…
