'Tinder Swindler' Reinvents Himself With 'Scam-Proof' Dating App

Simon Leviev, the convicted fraudster widely known as the “Tinder Swindler,” is attempting an extraordinary reinvention: launching a dating platform designed to protect users from the very forms of deception that made him notorious. Leviev, born Shimon Hayut, says his planned Safe Love app will require government identification, facial verification and other safeguards intended to prevent fake identities and romance fraud. The platform is also expected to feature an SOS system capable of recording audio and video and transmitting location information during potentially dangerous encounters. Leviev argues that his firsthand knowledge of manipulation gives him unusual insight into defeating scammers, saying he has paid his debt to society and changed. Critics are considerably less persuaded. An online-dating industry organization has urged Apple and Google to prevent the platform from reaching their app stores, arguing that allowing a convicted fraudster to operate a service dependent upon intimate personal trust presents an obvious risk. The controversy leaves Safe Love facing a fundamental question before it even reaches consumers: whether expertise acquired through committing fraud should qualify someone to fight it—or disqualify him from being entrusted with users’ identities, personal information and romantic lives.

Key Takeaways

Leviev says Safe Love will employ government-issued identification, live-selfie verification and photo-matching technology intended to make fake profiles and false identities substantially more difficult to use.
The proposed platform reportedly includes an SOS feature designed to record audio and video, capture a user’s location and provide information to authorities when a dating encounter becomes dangerous.
The central controversy is trust: an online-dating industry group has asked Apple and Google to block the platform, while Leviev argues that his criminal history gives him precisely the knowledge necessary to recognize and prevent sophisticated romance fraud.

In-Depth

Few business propositions could be more ironic than the “Tinder Swindler” selling safety in online dating. Yet Simon Leviev, born Shimon Hayut, is attempting exactly that with Safe Love, a proposed dating platform built around stronger identity verification and anti-fraud protections.

Leviev has acknowledged convictions for fraud, theft and forgery in Israel and Finland. His international notoriety came from allegations involving women he met through online dating, although he disputes significant allegations associated with his famous nickname. Now he argues that experience on the wrong side of the equation provides valuable knowledge about how scammers manipulate victims.

Safe Love reportedly would require users to submit government identification and a live selfie, while technology would compare profile photographs against verified images. Leviev also proposes an SOS function capable of recording audio and video and transmitting location information when users believe they are endangered.

Those are potentially useful safeguards. Romance fraud is hardly theoretical. Federal consumer data have documented enormous losses from schemes in which criminals create false identities, cultivate emotional relationships and eventually extract money through fabricated emergencies, investment opportunities or other stories.

But technology cannot eliminate the most important question surrounding Safe Love: trust. An industry organization has urged Apple and Google to reject the platform, arguing that Leviev’s history makes his involvement fundamentally incompatible with protecting vulnerable users.

Leviev counters that people can change and that he has paid his debt to society. That principle deserves recognition in a country that believes in second chances. But redemption does not automatically confer entitlement to trust. Safe Love therefore faces an unusually high burden: proving independently that its security, governance, data handling and leadership deserve the confidence it asks users to provide.

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‘Tinder Swindler’ Reinvents Himself With ‘Scam-Proof’ Dating App

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