Woman describes sitting next to 'Tinder Swindler' boyfriend while watching hit Netflix documentary
Netflix
- The ex-girlfriend of Simon Leviev watched the "Tinder Swindler" documentary with him.
- She alleged to the BBC she had also suffered emotional and financial abuse by Leviev.
- Konlin said she left Leviev after the toxicity in their relationship intensified.
The ex-girlfriend of Simon Leviev, also known as the "Tinder Swindler," has told the BBC that she watched the documentary about her abusive boyfriend while sitting next to him.
The Israeli model Kate Konlin told the BBC, "He's called every woman who has spoken out against him a liar. He doesn't want me to tell my story of emotional abuse."
The 23-year-old spoke of how her relationship with Leviev was "perfect" at the beginning, just as it was with the women who appeared in the "Tinder Swindler" documentary.
"At first, our relationship was a love bomb," Konlin told the BBC. "He was obsessed with me."
She thought that this is what real love should be.
Soon, however, the loving and doting relationship turned sour, with Leviev — who was born as Shimon Heyada Hayut — constantly criticizing Konlin's looks, clothes, and weight.
She lost herself in the 18-month-long relationship, she told the BBC.
—BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) February 19, 2023
She said the relationship continued to become more and more abusive, with Leviev asking Konlin for hundreds of thousands of dollars. She told the BBC he owes her $150,000.
In a voice note played to the BBC, Leviev screams at Konlin for money.
He is recorded as saying, "Kate, I'm a millionaire! And that's a fact. At the moment, I'm stuck. Understand? I'm stuck! Do you understand that in your screwed-up brain? That bird brain of yours. I'm stuck, Kate. I didn't steal from you. You gave it to me of your own free will. You lent it to me. I'm stuck, that's all."
This mirrors the events that took place in the "Tinder Swindler" documentary, where Leviev scammed multiple women out of roughly $10 million. He continues to deny the allegations.
Konlin told the BBC that she watched the documentary while sitting on the couch next to Leviev, who controlled her and persuaded her to defend him.
"He told me, 'If you stick up for me, people will believe me, because you are a woman,"' she told the BBC.
Konlin said she left Leviev after the toxicity in their relationship intensified and after, she said, he pushed her, causing her to injure her foot and call an ambulance.
When she was getting into the ambulance, Leviev filmed her and shouted that nothing had happened to her. Konlin made a complaint to the police. Leviev denied he had ever been physically violent to any woman when the BBC questioned him about the incident.
Leviev was arrested and convicted in Finland in 2015 on charges of defrauding several women, serving two years in prison.
In December 2019, he was also sentenced to 15 months in prison in Israel after fleeing the country twice in an attempt to avoid charges of theft, forgery, and fraud in 2011 and again in 2017. Leviev served five of the 15 months before being released in May 2020.
Despite being a convicted con man, with many of his victims having spoken out about the emotional and financial abuse they endured at the hands of Leviev, he continues to have a massive social-media following.