'Tinder Swindler' Simon Leviev: Spanish Court Issues Arrest Warrant for Using Fake ID

A Spanish court has issued an arrest warrant for the man who featured in the Netflix documentary, The Tinder Swindler, for using fake ID.Simon Leviev, whose birth name is Shimon Hayut, became infamous after a Netflix documentary told his story. It detailed how he persuaded dozens of women to spend their money on his lavish lifestyle, providing them with outlandish lies about his life story and how only the contents of their bank accounts could save him from imminent peril.An arrest warrant was issued for Leviev for presenting a fake ID to police after driving his £80,000 Maserati on to the beach in the southern resort of Tarifa, back in 2019.

He was with an unnamed woman at the time. Police responded to a call about the Maserati being stuck in the sand at a beach called Los Lances Sur.During the incident, Leviev told the police that he was a "holidaymaker" called Michael Bilton. He produced the false license under one of the aliases he is known to have used. No arrests were thought to have been made at the time, and Leviev and his companion were free to go.He is alleged to have given authorities an address on the Costa Del Sol as he awaits pending investigation.

An Algeciras court official confirmed: "An arrest warrant is out for the person placed under investigation. That's all the information I can provide at this stage."Three years later, the case was on the verge of being dropped. However, the case began to pick up interest again after Spanish police contacted the Norwegian journalist who is seen in the Netflix film unmasking Leviev as a swindler.It is not Leviev's first brush with the law. He spent two years in a Finnish prison for defrauding several women and was released in 2017. He was jailed again two years later in Israel for travelling on a fake passport, but was released after five months on good behaviour.