Deception, scams and circumstances of false id.
These are common dangers in online courting that Simon Leviev said he can stop with his soon-to-be launched courting app, Safe Love.
He knows how fraudsters commit those deceptions. He was one of them.
Leviev, who was born Shimon Yehuda Hayut, gained prominence as the “Tinder Swindler” because of his romance fraud schemes. The 36-year-old made a lavish income extorting money from girls he met online.
In 2015 and 2019, he was convicted of fraud, theft and forgery expenses in Israel and Finland, he confirmed to Fox News Digital in a video convention interview.
Simon Leviev, left, is expelled from the metropolis of Athens, Greece, in 2019. He was then jailed in Israel until May 2020. AFP via Getty Images
He served time in Finland from September 2015 until 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 jailed until May 2020, he said.
In Finland, Leviev was sentenced in 2015 to two years behind bars after authorities said he defrauded three girls, according to The Times of Israel.
He was convicted in 2019 of 4 expenses of fraud and sentenced to 15 months in prison but was launched after 5 months, the BBC reported.
Leviev now plans to use his experience to cut back the dangers concerned in discovering potential accomplice matches online, he said.
Leviev also served time in Finland from 2015 to 2017 after extorting money from online courting matches. Instagram/@simonleviev7
He compares himself to famed fraudster Frank Abagnale Jr., convicted con man immortalized in the 2002 Steven Spielberg film “Catch Me If You Can.” Abagnale dedicated examine fraud, theft and forgery and later grew to become a fraud-prevention specialist.
“The idea came from me being the Tinder Swindler,” Leviev said in his heavy Israeli accent. “They say I made the dating environment unsafe. So I thought, ‘All right. Let’s make it safe.’”
He principally splits time between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. His experience in the space of fraud makes him the excellent candidate to help others keep away from being victims, he said.
“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.”
But because of his unsavory previous, he’s assured that he has the expertise and data of how to stop the varieties of fraud he dedicated.
“I know how fake passports look,” he said. And perhaps even “higher than a passport controller in the airport, because I did go tons of or if not hundreds of … faux passports.
“No one ever questioned me once. I know I know how to challenge the system.”
Match gone mistaken
Leviev’s new courting platform will have more inflexible identification necessities than present courting apps, he said.
To guarantee a consumer’s online id is real, the consumer will be required to add a authorities identification card and take a selfie to match it. Any images uploaded to a profile will not be allowed if they differ from that selfie by more than 15%, he said.
He desires to guarantee that potential matches considered online are the same — in look and id –—as who exhibits up on a date.
He got the thought from his own match gone mistaken involving someone who was transgender, he said.
A security characteristic deliberate for the Safe Love app is an SOS button that customers can press if they’re feeling unsafe on a date.
The cellphone would immediately begin recording audio and video. It would share the consumer’s location. And that would be shared with law enforcement authorities, Leviev said.
Safe Love is in the late phases of the regulation section it must go before its release.
“It could be a few days, could be a few weeks, but hopefully as soon as possible,” he said.
Giving love a dangerous title or love crimes
The Online Dating and Discovery Association (ODDA), a group that promotes protected online courting, has spoken out opposing Leviev’s plan for the app.
In a letter despatched to Google and Apple, the group urged the tech giants to ban the platform from their app shops.
Leviev in a picture posted on July 24, 2026. He has made a new courting platform called Safe Love to stop scamming. Instagram/@simonleviev7
“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, Leviev 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.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Apple and Google for remark.
Leviev said his background drives him to make sure his app is “working perfectly” before its release. He can’t afford to make any errors, he said.
“If something will go mistaken, I can not 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 previous crimes make him a menace. He desires them to think about 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 lady and a 3-year-old son with another lady.
“And we do change. People do change.”
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