- Megha Mohan y Fay Nurse
- BBC World Service
When the Netflix documentary, The Tinder Swindler (“The Tinder Scammer”), came to light in February 2022, which at that time was Simon Leviev’s girlfriend stood by his side.
But now he says he felt he had no choice, because he was under his emotional control.
In a video recorded with a phone, a young blonde is seen sitting on the edge of a bed. She holds her left foot with her left hand while she talks on the phone.
A part of her hair is plastered to her face, which is wet with tears. There is also a wound on his heel.
Her eyes are red and her face is flushed, but her voice is clear as she gives the person on the other end of the phone line directions to the apartment.
In front of her, there is an open and packed suitcase lying on the floor.
The man who records the video, on the night of March 29, 2022, raises his voice to say: “It’s a lie! Nothing has happened to him.”
It is Simon Leviev, the convicted con man and protagonist of the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler (“The Tinder Scammer”).
The woman is the Israeli model Kate Konlin, 23, who was his girlfriend at the time.
Leviev sent the video to the BBC along with other videos and documents about their relationship.
“She lies,” he wrote the scammer.
“Of course he would call me a liar,” Kate Konlin tells the BBC.
“He has called all the women who have spoken against him liars. He doesn’t want me to tell my story of emotional abuse“.
At first, Konlin’s friends adored Leviev.
“It’s too perfect,” she recalls being told enthusiastically, “it’s even a little scary.”
Shimon Heyada Hayut (who legally changed his name to Simon Leviev), slipped into their Instagram direct messages in 2020 and within a few weeks they were together.
“At first, our relationship was a love bomb,” Konlin tells the BBC. “He was obsessed with me”.
He was no longer the same “happy person”
Leviev accompanied her to photo shoots and waited for her while she worked. He cleaned her house and sent her loving voice messages.
image source, Kate Konlin
Despite his conviction, Simon Leviev has thousands of followers on social media.
It was intense, but since she was 23, for her it was what she thought love was then, she says.
But after a while the fights started.
Konlin says that when he criticized her appearance, her clothes, her weight, and her skin (with acne breakouts), it started to lose confidence In herself. She was never sure what he would say next.
“I felt that had leaded feet“remember.
During the 18 months they were together, he saw his friends less and less and when he did, they told him that he was no longer the cheerful, extravagant and sociable person they knew.
“They said it was ‘grey’,” he says, looking at his hands.
“I’m in a bind. Do you understand?”
Within a few months, Leviev began to borrow money, thousands of dollars, to a total of US$150.000Konlin says.
She was already an international model who had appeared on the covers of Vogue Japan, Grace Italy and british magazine Wallpaper.
He was financially secure and claims he knew it.
Konlin sent the BBC more than a dozen voicemails from Leviev. He often yells at her and asks for loans saying his own money is tied up in investments.
In one of them, he yells at her as he explains why he can’t pay her back: “Kate, I’m a millionaire! And that’s a fact.”
“I’m in a bind right now. Do you understand? I’m in a bind. Does your fucking brain understand that? That bird brain of yours. I’m in a bind, Kate. I didn’t steal from you. You gave it to me of your own free will. You lent it to me. I’m in a bind, that’s all.”
“The Tinder Scammer”, which became the most watched documentary on Netflix in 90 countries when released in February 2022, claims Simon Leviev ripped off some US$10 million to women you met on the dating app.
He denies the accusations.
“People will believe me because you are a woman”
Konlin says she watched the documentary sitting next to her on the couch.
image source, Kate Konlin
Kate Konlin received insults on social networks after the premiere of “The Tinder scammer”.
“I knew it was all true,” he says. But she says that she felt compelled to accept her version of events.
According to her, it was a controlling relationship and he found it easy convince her to defend him publiclyfor example, on the American news program Inside Edition.
“He told me: ‘If you stand up for me, people will believe me, because you are a woman.'”
At the same time, his Instagram inbox was flooded with insults sent by people who had seen photos of him at the end of the documentary.
“People told me that they wished I had cancer or got hit by a car and that I deserved the worst for having a relationship with him,” Konlin says.
Their discussions intensified and on March 29 everything came to a head.
“I felt dead”
“I told him: ‘It’s over, I’m leaving. I can not take anymore‘. I started packing up my things.”
That’s when the discussion turned physical, he says. He says he pushed her and she scraped her foot on a rough-edged step.
“I was bleeding. I felt dead. I wanted to commit suicide“, remember.
This made the fight stop. That’s when Leviev recorded Konlin as she called an ambulance and he yelled that nothing had happened to her.
After going to the hospital, Konlin filed a complaint against Leviev with the police.
image source, Kate Konlin
Konlin claims that Leviev’s criticisms undermined his confidence.
When we asked Leviev to respond, he sent us nine emails in 45 minutes, and then two more direct messages on the Cameo app.
There were many screenshots of WhatsApp messages and a video of Konlin being seen yelling at him and grabbing him.
Leviev claims that he has never physically assaulted any woman.
A mundane control that goes unnoticed
Janey Starling, an anti-domestic abuse activist, says that the picture Konlin paints of her relationship with Leviev follows a family pattern.
“Coercive control is something that happens every day and it’s very mundane. It’s very small. It goes unnoticed,” he says.
“Many abusive men have never been physically violent with their partners… but have been intensely controlling, intensely critical, belittling and threatening.”
“It’s a little a red herring look for physical violence to determine if a relationship is abusive,” he explains.
We brought up with Leviev several accusations that Konlin made about her behavior, including that he had controlled her with a heavy hand, and he said that she was lying.
Despite being a convicted fraudster, Leviev has thousands of followers on social media.
The Danger of “Glamourizing” Your Lifestyle
He keeps posting videos of himself driving expensive cars and spending time with beautiful women. In some videos, people ask for photos with him, like he’s a celebrity.
He charges $100 for a personalized video message and $199 for a call.
Kate Konlin now wants to tell other women how to recognize coercive control.
His popularity worries the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which tracks harmful trends on the Internet.
“We are witnessing a glamorization of a hyper-masculine, anti-female mindset and lifestyle, and it is spreading to the more accepting and impressionable of people, especially pre-teenage youth,” says Jessica Reaves, editorial director of the Center on ADL extremism.
“It’s incredibly dangerous because what’s being said is, ‘You too can have this lifestyle and also, by the way, part and parcel of it is dehumanizeor generally hate women”.
We asked Leviev if he accepted this description of his social media posts, and he did not respond.
Today, Konlin laughs that she might be one of the only models in the world who’s glad she’s put on weight.
She says she was underweight from stress during her time with Leviev.
After almost a year without job offers following the publication of “The Tinder Scammer”, her modeling career has taken off again. She now wants to tell young people what an unhappy and controlling relationship can be like from within.
“If a woman who is in the same situation sees what I experienced and how I came out and that today I am stronger and more beautiful than when I was with him, I hope she can see that she can come out too.”
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC News World. Download the new version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss out on our best content.