Our first date was at The Wolseley, one of London’s most fashionable and expensive restaurants, and my glamorous companion, a Middle-Eastern businessman, was charm itself. Ali said that as soon as I’d walked in his heart had told him I was ‘the one’.
He ordered champagne, loudly telling the waiter he wanted ‘the £200 Dom Perignon’. Later, he clasped my hands in his, kissed them and swore he’d never let me go.
Those soulful eyes were as deep and rich as the chocolate pudding we were served: he wanted to know everything about me. I was already his ‘darling Amanda’, the woman he’d been waiting for.
Amanda thought she’d found a perfect match in the rich, handsome businessman who stole her heart online. Instead he tried to steal her savings
I know, I know! Looking back, it sounds crass, over the top and frankly unbelievable. Yet, as any of my female friends will tell you, sometimes we women cannot help ourselves.
One of those friends called me last week and told me I had to watch the new Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler. Now! ‘It’s your Ali!’ declared Jane, who has been privy to the highs and lows of my love life for decades.
Actually, it wasn’t ‘my Ali,’ but as I lost myself in the story of how Simon Leviev, a handsome and immensely wealthy ‘diamond trader’, conned a string of intelligent, independent women into giving him hundreds of thousands of pounds, I felt a chill shiver of recognition. I had been there.
An instant hit, The Tinder Swindler has drawn in 45 million viewers in its first week and it’s easy to see why. It is an extraordinary story.
How can these women — all with successful careers — have allowed it to happen, I found myself asking as I watched? But I knew the answer.
Just as life can throw huge challenges our way, amazing things can sometimes happen, too. And, if we’re really being honest, aren’t single women whatever their age really hoping for that? Deep down we’re all looking for our prince.
Simon Leviev — real name Shimon Hayut — was a clever scammer. He presented himself as the son of Lev Leviev, a genuine Israeli diamond merchant, and set up a website for his fake company, LLC diamonds.
When the women who matched with him on Tinder Googled him, what seemed to be copper-bottomed evidence of his business and social life was all there.
An instant hit, The Tinder Swindler has drawn in 45 million viewers in its first week and it’s easy to see why. It is an extraordinary story.
What they did not know was that his life of luxury and excess was funded by a romantic Ponzi scheme. He used money taken from one woman to lavish on the next in a ruthless campaign to part them from their own cash.
And while he was showering his new dates with gifts and wooing them on fabulous dates, he would hint at the dark side of the diamond trade. Once he had them in his thrall, they would get a flurry of panicky, late-night messages. He had been attacked and the messages would be accompanied by pictures of his bloodied ‘bodyguard’ Peter.
Leviev would tell them he was in fear for his life and that he could not use his credit card as his ‘enemies’ would be able to track him down via his transactions.
One after another, his girlfriends transferred money to him, took out loans or gave him their credit card details — safe in the knowledge that he was a very rich man who would pay them back. In total, the three women who took part in the documentary lost more than £300,000.
I salute their courage in admitting what happened to them. But how many more women get scammed and are too embarrassed to go to the police? Almost £92 million has been lost through dating scams between November 2020 and October 2021, according to figures from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.
I was so nearly one of them. Like Leviev, my ‘Ali’ was of Arab origin, handsome and subtley designer-clad. In his late 50s, he was a far cry from the few hopeless dating app encounters I’d had with scruffy Englishmen.
I met Ali on Bumble, the supposedly ‘empowering’ site that puts women in control, letting us — not men — swipe right for a match. It was late 2019, and I was once again looking for happiness after the painful end of a long relationship.
My Bumble profile did not have sexy selfies on it, but a snap of me taken from a distance, leaning up against a dusty old Land-Rover Defender. I lied about my age, shaving off a few years (everyone does it!) and described myself as a writer, not a journalist.
I suspect Ali discovered I was a columnist on a national newspaper — perhaps by matching images on Google — before our first date and decided I was probably comfortably off and therefore worth pursuing.
That first date was a success. There is something utterly irresistible about a man who is overflowing with enthusiasm for you, a man who listens, who thinks everything you say is deeply meaningful or hilariously funny — and who tells you over and over that you are beautiful.
Our next encounter was lunch at an upmarket Soho restaurant where the staff seemed to know him and grovelled as he passed over a small wad of notes to secure us the best table. Afterwards, he said he’d take me home and we walked to his car parked nearby. I don’t remember the make but he made a point of telling me it cost £100,000. Ali then said he had to collect some shoes he had ordered at the Westfield Shopping Centre in West London. Once there, he led me straight to the Versace boutique.
Looking back at our texts and WhatsApp exchanges, I can track the progress of my ‘romance’. It was always just the two of us in this intense, very private, relationship
‘Amanda, try these on,’ he ordered, reaching for a pair of £650 trainers.
No sooner had I done so, than he’d paid for them. Then it was off to Prada to buy £200 worth of perfume. ‘I want to buy you beautiful things,’ Ali told me. I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman when tycoon Richard Gere takes her shopping on LA’s exclusive Rodeo Drive.
And so it began, with Ali wining and dining me, having fun, talking endlessly on the phone when we weren’t together, and growing ever closer.
Sometimes he stayed over at my house but Ali and I never had sex. Tucked up in the spare bedroom — he wore £200 Bottega Veneta black boxer shorts in bed — he told me he wanted to ‘wait’ until we were engaged.
It was, he explained, a combination of his cultural background and his respect for me. I accepted what he said — and now I’m grateful for it.
Looking back at our texts and WhatsApp exchanges, I can track the progress of my ‘romance’. It was always just the two of us in this intense, very private, relationship.
He wanted to meet my friends, but every time we made an arrangement he would cancel at the last minute because of ‘work’. So Jane & Co were never able to meet my amazing new man and give me their opinion.
Perhaps the first warning sign that all was not as it seemed was Ali’s habit of changing his phone number frequently. This was due to the nature of his work, he told me (he couldn’t discuss it ‘for security reasons’), which took him all over the world.
When he disappeared on yet another business trip, he would send pictures of five-star hotels where he promised we would holiday together. On one occasion he sent me a video of a five-bedroom apartment he’d bought in Cairo. It would be our home from home in Egypt — and he couldn’t wait until we were living together.
Too good to be true? Yes. And at this point you might wonder why a woman like me — a journalist who’s been around the block a few times and has a healthy degree of cynicism — kept on seeing him.
The answer is simple: because he was so believable, a charming man who vowed he had finally found love. And he paid for everything.
For someone who has often financially supported the men in her life — I was often the higher earner — it was a delightful change to have a man putting his hand into his own wallet, not mine.
Call me old-fashioned but I think, at heart, most women want a settled life, with a lovely man who adores them — and that’s what Ali seemed to be offering.
We had similar life experiences, too; he was very close to his family — as I am — and like me was a divorcee. And, also like me, he hadn’t given up on love. I now see that he was playing on my emotions and telling me what I wanted to hear, but at the time it seemed utterly genuine.
If I ever questioned him about his life, he’d reassure me, saying: ‘Darling, I know you’re a journalist, it’s your job to be questioning…’
Reader, I really fell for him.
On his return from his next work trip, Ali phoned and said he wanted to take me to see his London base, a penthouse overlooking the Thames.
We were in high spirits on our way there. I called my Dad in Australia as I did every morning and Ali playfully grabbed the phone, telling my father how wonderful I was, how he’d take care of me and so on.
Dad, of course, was delighted I’d met someone and believed that soon I’d be happily settled. From then on, he would ask: ‘Mandy, how is that lovely boyfriend of yours?’ (Of all the many lies Ali told, I will never forgive him for lying to my father.)
But it was later, in the reception area of the luxury residential block, that I began to have doubts when I saw him slip something — perhaps money — to the concierge. Then there was the apartment itself — hugely impressive and furnished with beautiful inlaid and hand-carved Middle Eastern furniture and antiques — but strangely lifeless.
I discovered there was no food in the fridge, not even a bottle of milk. No coffee, no wine, nothing to suggest a person actually spent any time there.
Ali explained it all away, saying he hated eating alone and always dined out.
He led me out onto the terrace and said: ‘Darling, this is where you will write your column, this will be our London home for ever.’ (Later, when I showed the video of the Cairo apartment to Jane she pointed out that it was an estate agent’s promotional video. There was not a single personal item anywhere on display.)
Simon Leviev — real name Shimon Hayut — was a clever scammer. He presented himself as the son of Lev Leviev, a genuine Israeli diamond merchant, and set up a website for his fake company, LLC diamonds
Shortly after that, Ali disappeared again — on business — having mentioned in passing a very good and safe investment he could facilitate for me which would make me a lot of money.
Finally it clicked. Now, I may be a fool in love, but not with my hard-earned cash and so I declined Ali’s kind offer. And that was that — or almost. I didn’t hear from him for months. He didn’t return calls or messages. I put those hideous Versace trainers in the attic and gave up on him.
I felt utterly crushed. The only crumb of comfort was that while I may have briefly lost a bit of my gullible heart, at least I hadn’t lost my life’s savings.
It was nearly a year later, on holiday in the South of France with friends (including the ever-wise Jane), that Ali called me at 3am one morning. ‘My darling I’ve missed you so much,’ he gushed.
‘My work has been dangerous, but now I’m back. I have made many more millions, now I’m retiring and we can finally be together.’ New pictures of five-star hotels arrived on WhatsApp, accompanied by a photo of the Pyramids of Giza. He added a screenshot of booking details for a private dawn visit a few days later.
‘Please come this weekend to Cairo, my darling, to meet my parents and family, it is time for us to be together,’ Ali begged.
All I needed to do was pack — and, oh, send him a photograph of my passport details so he could book my first-class ticket on BA.
By now, Jane and I had concluded that Ali was a potential ‘Bumble Swindler’, but I decided to play along. ‘Yes, darling, I’ll be there,’ I promised.
Unsurprisingly, my ‘darling’ Ali disappeared again, presumably realising the game was up when I failed to send the passport details which I guess he wanted for some kind of scam.
I never got to write my column on the terrace of that Thames-side apartment or see the pyramids at dawn. And what a lucky escape it was.
The reason I’m sharing this is because if a wise old bird like me can get conned, then anyone can.
A few weeks ago, Ali called to tell me that he’d now made even more millions, had retired and was back living part-time in London. ‘Darling Amanda, I am free now for us to start our new life together,’ he told me.
I hung up.
