'Tinder love of my life conned me out of £200,000 - but I got my revenge'

With his lavish dates, private jet trips and claims of being the wealthy son of a diamond billionaire, it wasn’t long before Shimon Hayut swept Cecilie Fjellhøy off her feet.

But her world came crashing down when she was fleeced out of £200,000 by her boyfriend, who claimed he needed access to her credit cards to evade the rival diamond dealers who wanted to hurt him.

Cecilie alleges she was a victim of Hayut, a convicted fraudster from Israel who was the subject of the Netflix hit series The Tinder Swindler in 2022. He used dating apps to meet multiple women, wining and dining them before setting up lines of credit and loans in their names.

Now, in Netflix’s brand new series Love Con Revenge, Norwegian-born Cecilie sets out on a quest to unmask other scammers after being publicly shamed for falling for Hayut’s lies. It comes after one man said he was scammed out of hundred by a fraudster pretending to be Jennifer Aniston.

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In the six-part series, we hear from other victims who come forward to tell their stories in the hope of getting revenge on their love con artists.

The fraudsters here are not billionaire diamond dealers escaping thugs, as in Cecilie’s case - but have similarly extraordinary covers. These include an ‘army veteran’ who says he needs money to give to the family of his war comrade who died taking a bullet for him. And the wellness guru who needed urgent loans to fund his health retreat.

The stories sound far-fetched, but there is always a “nugget of truth in every single one - so you believe them,” says Cecilie. “In my case, Shimon Hayut was playing a character called Simon. He was not a diamond dealer, but I went on a private jet with him. That's why it seemed real.”

Details may vary but at heart they all have one thing in common: “They are straight out of the romance con artist playbook,” she says.

Cecilie works alongside private investigator Brianne Joseph, Cagney and Lacey-style, to uncover love cons that have left victims not only broke but traumatised.

But, as Cecilie points out, it’s the fraudsters who should be “hiding in shame, not us”.

Cecilie, who moved to London from her native Norway, knows only too well the all-encompassing shame other victims of romance scams feel. After she went public with her own story, she got blamed for falling for Hayut’s web of lies.

“Not only are you a victim of a crime, but people will laugh at you,” she says. “I was trolled for being gullible, and I know that these people will get trolled as well, and that’s heartbreaking. But being gullible is not a crime.

"I was groomed by Simon. It was abuse. I lived in total fear. It was traumatic.”

Cecilie met Shimon Hayut, who went by the alias Simon Leviev, on the online dating site Tinder in January 2018. (Hayut has since legally changed his name to Simon Leviev.)

Over a period of two months, he took Cecilie on several lavish dates.

“He started telling me how he was making so much money from diamonds, his competitors had started making threats against his life,” she recalls. “He said his security team said that his whereabouts and where he spent his credit card were being detected, so he couldn't use it anymore.

“He never asked me for money outright. He said he needed protection - that he was in danger from rival diamond dealers who wanted to hurt him.

“I cared for him, and I was in love with him, so when he asked me if he could use my credit cards so they couldn't track him down, I agreed. Also, I had met his friends and his business partners, so everything seemed to be real.

“Everything was reliant on my agreeing to give them my credit cards. I truly believed his life depended on it.”

Cecilie eventually went to the Met Police in May 2018 after growing suspicions. Officers started investigating but dropped the case two years later, in part due to the complexity of gathering evidence across multiple jurisdictions.

"It’s fun for me to try and help others when I'm still hoping for my justice,” she reveals. “I'm able to talk to these victims [and say], ‘it’s not a magic recipe to go public and then everything will work out.’

“Despite an overwhelming amount of evidence, it's almost impossible for anyone to go to jail for this.”

She adds: “It's not just about their money. It’s about power and mental abuse, but it was great to see these women getting their power back. But speaking out is about protecting others. Bringing those criminals' faces to the public will protect so many. That is what we are doing here.”

Her own ex, Simon, has become a poster boy for themisogynistic incel movement that has gained widespread attention online in recent years. Incels - involuntary celibates - believe in male superiority and claim women are not their equals.

"Simon has his supporters - people who are enjoying seeing men are doing to women what they believe women have been doing for years.

"The incel community, for example, love these cases. ‘Finally, a man is taking money from a woman’, and it's just insanity,” she says.

Romance scamming, however, is not a gendered crime. The series looks at the case of Aaron Ward, who claims he was scammed out of $100,000 (£74,000) by his girlfriend Sabrina Taylor, who pretended that she had multiple sclerosis.She was later convicted on fraud charges unrelated to Aaron.

The rest of the stories in the series focus on female victims and, in one case, an entire family who claim they were infiltrated by a ruthless conman.

Meanwhile, Todd Dean said he ran a wellness retreat called Sanjara. He took his victim, Jill Scardein, to see the retreat and then asked her to lend him her life savings to plough into the business.

After getting his hands on the cash, he vanished. The retreat never even opened.

In the documentary, Jill describes how the wellness guru turned from “caring, charismatic” into a “monster”.

“The Sanjara retreat did exist. She saw it. Brianne and I saw it too. Sanjara was real but it never opened,” says Cecilie.

Chillingly, private investigator Brianne uncovers evidence to show the retreat was “a hunting ground for vulnerable women”.

Jill had been keen to help him as she had struggled with depression for years.

Cecilie adds: “I hated that he used that mental health aspect to prey on women - targeting their vulnerability. Todd had mental health books around his house, pretending he was very spiritual.”

Known as the ‘selfie scammer’, Todd sent Jill and his other victims at least ten selfies a day and romantic messages as a way of “lovebombing” his way into a relationship with them.

These women claim they were also defrauded by Todd. And along with Jill, they are pursuing a conviction against him. Todd Dean has since been declared bankrupt and has had to sell off his retreat. Dean admitted that he lived off personal loans he took from the women and other creditors while trying to launch NashvilleSanjara Wellness, a mental health retreat in southern Kentucky.

While Sanjara never opened, Dean continued to rent a high rise condo in Nashville and, in some recorded calls, even asked for small amounts of money from women just to cover expenses.

There is usually always a pattern of behaviour, says Cecilie who helped expose Hayut’s fraud in The Tinder Swindler along with two of his other victims, Pernilla Sjoholm and Ayleen Charlotte. “It is crucial to show police there is a pattern, but even then it becomes a tough case to crack - to prove it is fraud or a relationship that went wrong. “In most of the featured cases, the police initially said it was a civil matter but we always had a thick file of evidence with us.

"They can’t just turn you away when you come prepared,” she says. “And it’s about using the right language with police. It can be confusing if you say ‘I gave my money away.’ “You don’t say, ‘I was abused, I was traumatised, I was groomed’, because you don't know that at the time.” In 2019, Cecilie’s ex was convicted of four charges of fraud - unrelated to her allegations - and sentenced to 15 months in prison, but he was released after serving five months.

The conviction followed the two-year sentence he received in Finland in 2015 over the defrauding of three women in that country. Now working as a public speaker and fraud prevention consultant, Cecilie adds: “People are so goddamn lucky if they never, ever meet a criminal like I and other victims have, who would take your heart and break it, just to take your money.” Despite her experiences, the 37-year-old still believes in love, and returned to usingdating apps after her trauma. “I think it’s still a great way to meet people,” she says.

“I’ve always loved very fast. You hear those stories - ‘we went on a date and we’ve been married for 30 years’. It’s sad to feel that can’t happen.“But we need to have awareness that romance fraud does exist. It’s amazing I can now help people like me, and give them a voice. That’s all I need.”

Love Con Revenge launches on Friday September 5 on Netflix