A woman who fell in love with a fraudster who swindled her out of $200,000 is now speaking out about her ordeal.
Cecilie Fjellhoy, from Lillestrom, Norway, met the Israeli playboy, Shimon Hayut, posing as a wealthy diamond dealer on Tinder.
Hayut, 29, claimed to be the ‘Prince of Diamonds’ and organized a private plane for his first date with the 29-year-old graduate student, taking them to Bulgaria from London.
Four weeks after they first met each other, the conman asked Fjellhoy to take out a credit line for him in her name, claiming it to be a security measure against the threats he faced.
Hayut, who posed as Simon Leviev, the son of Jewish billionaire diamond trader Lev Leviev, has previously snared several other Scandinavian women by using a similar ‘confidence fraud’.
The conman successfully made Fjellhoy fell in love with him before manipulating her financially, the woman said in an interview with ABC News.
Hayut has also been in a Finnish prison where he spent around three years for defrauding women.
Speaking to ABC News, Fjellhoy shared how the heartless betrayal broke her down and got her admitted in a psychiatric center.
‘I hate him, he’s so horrible, I am just tired of crying about this you know?’ she said. ‘It’s just so painful. I just hate myself that I did this.
‘I had to be put into a hospital. Psychiatric ward. Because of suicidal thoughts because I thought my life was over, like I didn’t see a way out.
‘You’ve lost your boyfriend but he didn’t just dump you, he never existed, he was never your boyfriend.’
The handsome Israeli guy asked Fjellhoy to apply for an American Express platinum card, telling the Norwegian to file a $200,000 income.
Hayut assured the woman that no one will check it.
Fjellhoy used the card to take huge loans and ended up spending a whopping two million Norwegian krone (around $200, 600) in just 54 days.
According to VG, Hayut was spending Fjellhoy’s money at the Conservatory in Amsterdam, the Ritz Carlton in Berlin, on Gucci in Barcelona, and on Louboutins in Bangkok.
The unfortunate woman was also paying bills for Hayut’s two assistants and a bodyguard as well as for his flights around the world.
She said the conman spent over $75,000 on the AMEX from March 2 to March 25 last year.
The Israeli man also used Fjellhoy’s money to defraud other women. He used the funds to convince Pernilla Sjoholm, a Swedish woman, that he was a billionaire’s son.
Sjoholm also got tricked and wired him over $35,000, she told VG.
Fjellhoy believed Hayut’s affections were real, and that the conman was a wealthy CEO who would later reimburse her money.
However, the man was in touch with lots of other women while he texted Fjellhoy every day, asking, ‘Good morning, dear, Did you sleep well?’
Fjellhoy said she was left in a ‘shock’ when she realized she had been conned out.
The Norwegian said: ‘I almost wanted to throw up, it was the first time in my life that I had gotten such a shock that my body physically was telling me that, ‘OK your life is ruined,’ everything came crashing down around me.’
The woman said the horrific experience has made her a new person who will always struggle to trust people.
‘I see a difference in myself when I talk to people, [I am] much less naive,’ she said.
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