Key Takeaways
- Leviev says his experience manipulating women makes him uniquely qualified to build a safer dating app, but safety groups are skeptical.
- The ODDA is urging Apple and Google to block Leviev’s dating app, arguing that his fraud history conflicts with the industry’s efforts to make online dating safer.
- The women who lost money to Leviev's fraud have turned their experiences into advocacy and tools designed to make online dating safer -- and to keep scammers off apps.
The Tinder Swindler, AKA Simon Leviev, wants to launch his own dating app, which feels a little like Hannibal Lecter opening a restaurant. The irony is hard to miss: The man whose name became synonymous with allegedly manipulating women for money on a dating app now wants to build a platform for people looking for love.
The kicker? He says his app would facilitate safe connections for women.
“I am about to launch a dating app I’m going to call Safe Love,” he told ITV’s This Morning. He told the morning show that his manipulation skills make him well suited to run a safe app. “I know, unfortunately, how the system works, and I designed something to protect the world, and there’s nothing out there like this.”
I can think of a few people who might have reasons to doubt this, most of all the women who found themselves out hundreds of thousands of dollars — an established total of $10 million, according to some reports — due to his fraud.
“I don’t have the benefit of the doubt, I have zero trust,” Leviev said of his reputation. “So I have to prove myself. I have to create something so great… and obviously it needs to be regulated, and I need to get approval.”
The Online Dating and Discovery Association (ODDA) is hoping to prevent Leviev from achieving this approval.
The Tinder Swindler Can’t Just Create a Dating App, Can He?
Not if the ODDA has anything to do with it.
In September, the ODDA sent an open letter to Apple and Google formally requesting the companies to “refuse to list or immediately remove any dating app founded, operated or fronted by Simon Leviev.” CEO Simon Newman told me that Leviev’s claims that Safe Love will be “a safe space for women” are “deeply troubling.”
“Simon Leviev is a romance fraudster who used false identities to manipulate women he met online, and the victims at the centre of his story are still living with the financial, emotional and mental impact of his actions,” Newman explained.
The ODDA says Leviev’s app “seriously undermines the efforts our sector is making in tackling fraud.”
Between 2017 and 2019, the Tinder Swindler, AKA Simon Leviev, who was born Shimon Hayut, allegedly defrauded multiple women out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. He seemingly used fake drivers licenses and fraudulent passports to hide his identity from the women he met on several dating platforms, including Tinder.
In 2025, Leviev was arrested on fraud charges unrelated to his alleged romance scams, but he was released for unknown reasons two months later, according to the Times of Israel. His story was the basis of the record-breaking Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler.
Now, the ODDA says Leviev’s app “seriously undermines the efforts our sector is making in tackling fraud.”
Newman implores Google and Apple to consider the consequences of a dating app owned and operated by a convicted fraudster. “App stores may not choose to judge an app by its owner’s past, but we believe both want to play their part in making sure online dating remains a space people can trust,” Newman told me.
What Happened to the Women Leviev Swindled?
I’m of the opinion that the only silver lining to emerge from Leviev’s alleged scams is the resilience of the women he swindled. One of these women, Pernilla Sjöholm, went on to start an identity verification system called IDfier, which can be used to ensure a user’s identity on dating apps.
So Leviev’s claims that there’s “nothing out there” to protect dating app users from fraud is simply untrue.
“I would like to see rules implemented that ensure dating apps must verify user identities before profiles can be created,” Sjöholm told me in 2025.
Since then, ID verification has become a safety standard in the industry, with leading apps like Bumble, Hinge, Grindr, and yes, Tinder introducing various forms (and strengths) of ID verification.
Another survivor, Cecilie Fjellhøy, now hosts Netflix’s Love Con Revenge, and was named one of the Top 10 Female Cyber Security Speakers to Hire in 2025. She also cofounded the romance fraud prevention organization LoveSaid.
Sjöholm and Fjellhøy are not the only women to turn their experience with Leviev into advocacy for romance fraud prevention. Ayleen Charlotte, another woman featured in the Tinder Swindler documentary, launched the global initiative S.A.F.E, or “Scam Awareness & Fraud Education,” to educate people about scams and victim support.
It’s unclear whether Leviev’s plans for a dating app will ever come to fruition, or whether Apple or Google would even allow him to distribute it through their app stores. But if they do, it would be a particularly dark day for the industry: The Tinder Swindler would go from allegedly exploiting the dating world to owning a piece of it.
