Cecilie Fjellhoy thought she had been met by her prince charming to start with.
Just just How A israeli conman’s alleged victim states he swindled her out of $200K
Cecilie Fjellhoy thought she had met her prince charming whenever she matched on Tinder with Simon Leviev.
Fjellhoy, a 29-year-old Norwegian masters pupil located in London, stated she had been swept off her foot to their very very first date, including a personal airplane trip to Bulgaria. Fjellhoy said Leviev informed her he ended up being A israeli millionaire who called himself the “Prince of Diamonds.”
“I happened to be texting my buddies during the exact same time like in an organization talk exactly like, ‘I’m not sure what’s happening,’” she said.
Exactly what started as being a storybook love changed into a real-life nightmare, Fjellhoy said – the one that delivered her into debt and fearing on her behalf security. It is a tale that is cautionary the risks of online dating sites.
“we hate him, he is therefore terrible,” she stated. “we have always been simply fed up with crying about that you realize? It is simply therefore painful. I recently hate myself that i did so this.”
View the complete tale on “Nightline” TONIGHT at 12:35 a.m. ET
Leviev was created Shimon Hayut, a 28-year-old convicted Israeli con-man who served 36 months in Finnish jail for defrauding a few feamales in purchase to invest in their luxurious life style of personal jets and quick cars, which Fjellhoy said he adored to demonstrate down.
Fjellhoy said Hayut defrauded her away from significantly more than $200,000, finding by by herself lulled right into a sense that is false of by their grand intimate gestures and flowery declarations of love. She stated she dropped victim to “confidence fraudulence.”
In June, Hayut had been arrested in Greece for making use of a false passport following a joint procedure between Interpol and Israeli police.
Outside of court Hayut told reporters from VG, a Norwegian socket that first broke the story, “we is certainly going back again to Israel, which is my house nation, and I also will face what exactly is waiting for me personally here and that is it, and we’ll sort every thing away. Whatever issues we will sort it away in court. that individuals have actually,”
He now faces extradition to Israel, where he had been indicted last year on theft, forgery and fraudulence fees unrelated to Fjellhoy but he fled the national nation before he had been set to face trial.
In line with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, internet-facilitated relationship frauds, also referred to as self- self- confidence fraudulence, may be the number one style of customer fraud into the U.S. around the globe, victims of self- confidence fraudulence lose huge amounts of bucks every year, in accordance with the FBI.
Fjellhoy, whom shared her tale with “Nightline” early in the day this season, stated her love with Hayut started away innocently sufficient.
“this is the very first time where we felt like, ‘Oh my god i enjoy him. Also it appears me back as well,’” She said that he really likes. “He’s texting 
in which he’s calling in which he generally seems to actually want to become acquainted with me, and I also think I feel a bit for that.”
Fjellhoy said Hayut shared with her that their task as a diamond dealer, employed by a business called LLD Diamonds, kept him traveling constantly, so that they dated cross country. She stated they delivered one another love notes over text, in video clip declarations and vocals tracks.
She said he came to go to her in London as he could, but most of the time, she said he flew her to where he had been. She stated he’d constantly allude to a component of risk in the work that kept him away, constantly for a jet that is private. At one point, Fjellhoy said she was told by him he could not return to London due to threats he had been getting, “but he could easily get us to where he had been.”
She stated Hayut stated become under constant danger from unknown nefarious enemies. She stated she was told by him it absolutely was a risk of involved in the diamond business.
Fjellhoy said Hayut surrounded himself with individuals whom aided perpetuate the misconception, also going as far as to deliver pictures of himself along with his bodyguard into the medical center once they had been allegedly “attacked.”
In accordance with Fjellhoy, it absolutely was maybe not a long time before Hayut made a huge ask, begging her to increase her personal credit line to him making sure that any routes, accommodations and dinners could be scheduled under her name and their expected “enemies,” as she stated he called them, could be tossed off their path.
“One associated with significant reasons why he required it had been protection… he required my title as being a address, he stated,” Fjellhoy told “Nightline.” “I’m sure it appears crazy. but why would he have this giant man he didn’t need the security? with him if”
Fjellhoy said she relented because Hayut promised to back pay her, but funding his jet-set lifestyle had been costing her. Therefore the cash he had been guaranteeing her was not to arrive.
“My angel My love i recently chatted to your bank and so they explained that the transfer of Amex is going to be there on thousand percent,” read one text message Hayut sent her monday.
“the total amount he has to be in a position to simply work for a week is simply plenty,” Fjellhoy stated. “It is never just a couple of thousand, for us normal people who will be a lot of cash, however for him it isn’t big money.”
She stated he informed her he required huge amounts of income he needed to book flights and hotels for because he had “an entire team. Fjellhoy said she assumed, because of their fancy garments and lifestyle, he previously cash and would spend her straight back.
“You did not even think because you were so sure that this guy and the people that you had met was part of the LLD Diamonds and that the money existed,” she said that it was a problem when you were taking up the loans. “as he stated, ‘Everything’s likely to be fine following this week,’ after which it did not. Therefore just ‘one more week’ and then ‘one more week.’ Therefore in the long run you nearly you did not also recognize exactly exactly exactly how much cash you really owed.”
And eventually, Fjelljoy stated, she was at love with him.
“that is the most difficult element of it … whenever we understood which he was not who he said he had been,” she stated. “That the individual that we believed that I knew and liked, he previously simply done something within the many wicked method.”