'The Tinder Swindler' has an active arrest warrant out on him in Spain

The Courts of Algeciras in Cádiz, have an active search and arrest warrant against Simon Yehuda Hayut, the 31-year-old Israeli known as 'The Tinder Swindler', after the popular Netflix documentary revealed the scammer to the world after he had ripped off several women in different European countries for hundreds of thousands of euros.

Hayut, also known as Simon Leviev, is a career criminal that has left his mark in Spain after being involved in an incident on a beach in Tarifa in January 2019, presenting a false driving license to the Police as identification.

The Algeciras court opened criminal proceedings against him in February 2019 after receiving a file from the Tarifa Local Police because he had got his car stuck in the sands of Lances Sur. However, after being taken to the police station, he presented a licence in the name of Michael Bilton.

Three years later this identity has been confirmed as false after verifications carried out by a municipal agent specializing in counterfeit documents, who saw the documentary and contacted the Norwegian journalist who had uncovered the case.

This means that the Cadiz court have now opened criminal proceedings for the crime of false documents in competition with the other crime against road safety, which was initially directed against the Israeli citizen Michael Bilton.

Legal sources have indicated that on June 25th 2020, the court issued an order to provisionally file the procedure, when the person under investigation did not appear, and was officially wanted with an active search and arrest in force.

After revealing that the licence he identified himself with was false, the Local Police of Tarifa sent an extension of the proceedings to the Guardia Civil for the 2019 incident, because they believe that the person who ‘beached’ his Maserati Varado is in fact Simon Yehuda Hayut, who was accompanied by a Russian female.

This procedure will reopen the case and let them register the true identity of the investigated person, who, when the incident happened, justified the existence of a known address in Malaga and offered sufficient guarantees of having a livelihood and funds, to avoid being arrested.

The fake driving licence has been sent to the Investigation and Analysis Department of the Guardia Civil (GIAT) in Seville, where it will be officially certified as false so that the cases can stay open, and the arrest warrant can stay active.