Tinder Swindler ‘Shimon Hayut’ told the Mail he was ‘unstoppable’ in an exclusive interview just hours before he was released from prison, we can reveal.
The 35-year-old sweetheart fraudster seemed strangely confident despite his incarceration in Georgia when he sat down to answer written questions.
‘I will tell you this,’ he wrote in his first major interview since the 2022 Netflix documentary. ‘No-one has stopped me – and no-one can stop me.
‘Yes they arrested me, but they only delayed me. I am unstoppable and I will get out from the same door I’ve got in.’
Hours after we received his answers, the Russian-Israeli was seen strolling out of Kutaisi Penitentiary Establishment No 2 a free man.
Hayut had been held in prison in the Black Sea nation for two months after being arrested on arrival under an Interpol red notice for alleged fraud committed in Germany.
He faced up to 10 years in prison if extradited and convicted of defrauding a Berlin-based woman for £38,000.
But yesterday German authorities cancelled their arrest warrant in a huge victory for his legal team – Sharon Nahari from Israel and glamorous Georgian attorney Mariam Kublashvili.
Tinder Swindler Shimon Hayut strolling out of prison following his dramatic release
Hayut has boasted he made ‘millions’ off the back of the Netflix documentary in an exclusive interview
It perhaps explains the typically bombastic answers Hayut gave us despite being holed up with six cell mates, only allowed to shower once a week, with no TV or internet.
Hayut said he would change ‘nothing’ in his life, saying: ‘My life made me the man I am today and I am one of a billion.’
‘My story is not over,’ he added. ‘It’s just the warm up… and to all my haters keep watching, it’s gonna be a good show.’
He also said he had found ‘the one’ in Dubai and now dreams of ‘settling down and getting married’ – even offering to do a follow up interview after the wedding.
‘I don’t know if she will wait for me until I’m out,’ he wrote. ‘But I will try my best with her. I feel when you know that you met the one that is meant for you.’
Georgian lawyer Mariam Kublashvili known for winning tough cases and Israeli extradition specialist Sharon Nahari
Hayut told the Daily Mail ‘I am unstoppable’ hours before he was freed from Georgian prison
The Swindler said while the world thinks of him ‘with the jets, with the yachts, with the sports cars and the girls’ that ‘in reality’ he is ‘simple’ man.
But he also claimed to be in talks with a production company about making a biopic – with Zac Efron his preferred choice to play him ‘if he could wear glasses’.
And he said with his skillset he ‘could be one hell of a spy’ – even claiming to be inundated with ‘requests’ from ‘brain research institutes’ such is his intellect – but said ‘in my current life, I make more money’.
He signed off our interview with a message to ‘my haters’.
‘The next time you are looking into the sky and you see one light brighter than the others, it’s not the stars,’ he wrote. ‘It’s the wing tip of my private jet passing over you.’
Hayut is now set to clamber back into that private jet, thanks to his attorneys – Mr Nahari and Ms Kublashvili. Both are known for winning tough cases, and this must rank among their toughest.
The Tinder Swindler bragged that he would be back in his private jet sooner than we think
Hayut has long been wanted for a string of alleged fraud and theft cases totalling an estimated £7million that were made famous by The Tinder Swindler Netflix documentary.
His alleged victims said he posed as diamond mogul Simon Leviev to con them.
Women said the Israeli would dazzle them with his wealth before tricking them into handing over vast amounts of money leaving them feeling suicidal with crippling debt.
Following his arrest, it appeared he may finally face justice but now he has no convictions over any of the allegations made in the show. What’s more, all arrest warrants have been dropped, meaning he is free to travel.
Clearly though, Hayut struggled during his time inside. Describing the conditions, he wrote: ‘It’s really hard, prison. The hardest I’ve ever been… all the days look the same.
‘I’m locked 24 hours in a tiny cell, with six people, no-one in prison speaks or understands English which makes life in prison even harder.’
He said he was left in the same clothes he was arrested in for over a month.
‘Emotionally it’s very hard, I do have bad days and I do have breakdowns but I try to be optimistic,’ he wrote.
Hayut described prison as the hardest situation he had ever been in sharing a tiny cell with six inmates
The sweetheart scammer claimed to have met ‘the one’ in Dubai and said he wanted to settle down and marry
But asked specifically if he had any regrets, Hayut said only for his 2011 conviction in Israel for fraud and being caught using a forged passport in Greece in 2019.
Of the women who have spoken emotively of the damage he did to them? This is ‘hate and slander and lies’, he said, claiming he was suing ‘the Netflix girls’.
He claimed that ‘someone else in my position would kill themselves’ because of the ‘hate and lies’ but ‘I made tens of millions of dollars because of it’.
Asked if he was confident in his case, Hayut said: ‘Absolutely, I will be free and I will be exonerated from all of it. Sooner than you think.’
In that, at least, he was proven right.
