Chagit Leviev On Her Family’s Legal War With ‘The Tinder Swindler’

Long before the world heard of the Netflix
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documentary The Tinder Swindler, or the name Shimon Hayut, Lev Leviev (aka The King of Diamonds) founded LLD Diamonds. The company, touted as the world’s largest privately held diamond manufacturer and cutting group with ownership in mines around the world, was operating business as usual and things were copacetic.

A few years ago, however, there were rumblings about Simon Leviev, a wealthy son of Lev’s who was living quite an extravagant, jet-setting lifestyle and stirring up problems. Since its February 2 premiere, more than 50 million people have watched the film and of course, now realize no such son exists.

In 2017, Chagit Leviev, Lev’s daughter and CEO of LLD Diamonds USA, received a rather bizarre phone call that set off very loud alarm bells. The man on the other end of the line was calling because he was about to deposit three checks from her company totaling $350,000.

“It was very suspicious and I asked him to please send me pictures of the checks,” she explained in a phone interview. “It was shocking to me because the checks looked so real and even had our company name and address!” She was also confused because she heads the company out of New York and the caller was in another country claiming the checks were for services rendered by her company’s CEO Simon Leviev. “I explained there is no one in our company or family with that name and he is certainly not the CEO.”

Shocked at how authentic the checks looked, she and her family immediately called the bank. At the time, they had no idea the extent of the fraud and in regards to the three checks in question, the account number wasn’t linked to the company. “He was apparently using someone else’s account information and there was no money in it.”

Still, she felt unsettled and the family filed a police report with Israeli police. The complaint, she says with frustration, was closed a few months later. She had good reason to feel unease. Over the five-year span from then to the 2022 documentary, she and her family have received many emails and phone calls from numerous European vendors regarding unpaid charters for private planes, yachts and high-end car services.

“He left a trail of unpaid bills and we’ve received requests for payment for these services,” she explains. Over the years, she’d heard about someone named Simon claiming to be her brother. “It was odd because there is no one with that name in our family but we are nine siblings in total so it’s not too uncommon to have a mix-up of names.” At first, it didn’t worry her but it soon became obvious there was a problem.

When asked what this has done to her family both personally as well as professionally, she lets out an audible sigh and pauses for a moment. “It’s very scary to know there’s someone out there with so much personal information about us. It’s not just that he had that information but that he used it to defraud so many victims. We are victims, too. Our identity has been stolen and used to scam people. He’s a sophisticated, high-level criminal. I’ve seen many of his fake documents and I’m in awe of how real they look: letters, checks, passports and wire transfers. There was so much detail. He took his fraud one step further and on some of the documents, he even had the last four digits of our company’s bank account number. We have no idea how he got that information.”

As awful as this part of his scam was, she was also disturbed by the cruelty Hayut showed his victims. “He lured these women with acts of love and warmth in the lowest, nastiest way possible. It’s just heartbreaking. I was really sad for these women. It’s shameful and so low to do something like that.”

Since the documentary premiered, Leviev says she has learned of and been in contact with several of Hayut’s victims, including the three women featured in the film: Cecilie Fjellhoy, Ayleen Charlotte and Pernilla Sjöholm. “I reached out to them and we spoke over several Zoom calls. I wanted them to know we support them.”

She continues to gather additional information as she connects with more women caught in Hayut’s web. When the Leviev family and LLD Diamonds filed a criminal suit this week, it made international headlines. If convicted, Hayut could get an 11-year sentence in an Israeli prison. Currently, she confirms, he is living in Tel Aviv.

From various pieces of evidence, including recordings and witness accounts, this was at least in part, a father-son con. “Our case is against Shimon and Yohanan Hayut,” she states. “There is a recording of his father introducing Shimon as a son of the Leviev family. So, we found out he was an accomplice when he introduced his own son as our family member.”

The family’s attorney, Guy Ophir, confirms that Hayut could get prison time as well as monetary fines. “It is unfortunate that no state has filed charges until now and because of this, the Leviev family has instructed me to use any legal procedure available by law to bring this man to justice. This complaint is only the beginning in an all-out legal war and more will come.”

She confirms reports that the family also intends to sue Hayut in a civil case, which they are currently working on. “The criminal lawsuit is just the first step out of many we will be taking to have him face justice and get the sentence he deserves.”

She describes Hayut as “a fraud who stole our family’s identity and has tried to exploit our good name to con victims out of millions of dollars” and is relieved that his real identity and actions have been globally exposed. “Hopefully, this will bring an end to his unscrupulous actions.” She adds that no one in her family has ever met Hayut. “That’s the last thing we’d want to do.”

She says the family is also upset they knew nothing of the Netflix doc prior to its release. “They used our family name, our company name and even family photos and no one called us or asked for our comment. We just had to watch with everyone else. We were disappointed. This is a real company and he faked pay stubs and bank statements. We found so much out when we watched the documentary.”

Hayut is a wanted man in several countries and has spent some time behind bars. He was finally caught while using a fake passport in Greece in 2019 and extradited to Israel where he was charged with theft, fraud and forgery of documents stemming from a 2011 crime spree. He served five months in prison out of a 15-month sentence and was released for good behavior during Covid. And he served two years (2015-2017) in a Finnish prison for defrauding three women there.

But he has yet to pay for all of his crimes. Instead, he’s planning a career in entertainment. Since signing with talent manager, Gina Rodriguez of Gitoni Inc., he’s announced he wants to write a book, host a dating podcast and he’s pitched a TV show. He’s also made money on celebrity website Cameo.

Back to her statement that this criminal lawsuit is just the first of many steps, she says the family wants to sue anyone who has given Hayut a platform. “It’s outrageous! What an unbelievable joke to let a convicted criminal become a Hollywood star. People lost a lot of money because of him and there are many victims. This has become a joke but it’s not funny at all. He used love to con these women and in the name of that love, they did anything he asked. This is not someone who steals money and leaves. He stayed around for a long time and tortured them.”