The Tinder Swindler might be a free man - but is he on social media? Various reports have been saying that Simon Leviev, real name Shimon Hayut, has accounts on TikTok and Instagram.
In fact, todayit was revealed that 'Leviev' had been hitting back at the women he allegedly defrauded, who have since set up a GoFundMe page to recoup some of their debts. Sharing a screenshot of the page, the Instagram account - which claims to be Simon - said: 'Go ahead and help real associations.. not these manipulators. This is what is called MARKETING.'
But Cecilie Fjellhøy and Pernilla Sjöholm, two of the women in the film, don't believe the account to be real. Instead, they believe catfishes are pretending to be the convicted conman. 'I think there are people who just think this is a bit of a fun thing to do to get people's attention and keep people on the edge,' Cecilie told Grazia. '[But] I can see from the videos that he's been putting out, it's looking like he's just downloaded them [from Simon's previous Instagram page]. They're low quality.'
And when asked about the account which hit out at the GoFundMe, Pernilla told Grazia: 'That's not him.'
Simon did have an Instagram page - but days after the documentary, after 200,000 people followed him, it disappeared. In his last statement before the account vanished, he promised to 'tell his side of the story'. 'I will share my side of the story in the next few days when I have sorted out the best and most respectful way to tell it, both to the involved parties and myself,' he wrote. 'Until then, please keep an open mind and heart.'
On the GoFundMe page, Cecilie, Pernilla and Ayleen Charlotte have managed to so far raise £68,000. (The page's goal is £600,000.) Their description reads: 'You’re probably here because you’ve heard about our story, and we appreciate you taking the time to search and find this page. The past few days have been a whirlwind, and we three (Ayleen, Pernilla and Cecilie) have been completely shocked and floored by the flood of compassion and support from everyone. The sheer love is more than we ever expected, and we appreciate you all so much.'
Pernilla revealed that the women hadn't considered creating a page for donations, until they discovered others were pretending to be them. 'We never thought about creating a GoFundMe, but just saw that there were so many pages set up - some of them of were genuine and very sweet, but some of them are also made by fraudsters. We didn't want anyone to get defrauded and benefit a fraudster in this horrible fraudster story.'
Cecilie added, 'It's so so nice because there's like people who are like I just need to wait for my paycheck before I donate, and I could just give five pounds, but I don't have much money now... People are so nice. And I love the love.'
READ MORE::a[Don't Blame The Women In The Tinder Swindler]{href='https://graziadaily.co.uk/life/tv-and-film/tinder-swindler-women-blame-simon-leviev/' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener noreferrer'}
READ MORE::a[Is The Tinder Swindler Simon Leviev Really On TikTok?]{href='https://graziadaily.co.uk/life/tv-and-film/tinder-swindler-simon-leviev-tik-tok/' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener noreferrer'}