Otter killed by illegal crayfish trap set in Hartshorne pond
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Conned by the Tinder Swindler: how his victims took revenge
If Simon Leviev were to enter the busy north London café in which I'm sitting with Cecilie Fjellhoy and Pernilla Sjoholm, 'He would wet his pants and run,' Sjoholm says. Posing as a diamond heir, Leviev — better known as the Tinder Swindler — has defrauded victims around the world out of more than $10 million. While the 2022 release of the smash hit Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler laid bare the women's devastation — the crippling debt they were left trying to escape, and, for Fjellhoy, the marriage and baby-filled future Leviev had promised being exposed as a sham — now they say the tables are finally turning. 'I have way more power than he does,' Sjoholm, 38, says with a smile. 'He's not a real man; he's scared of two blonde women.' The enormous reach of the documentary — the most watched in Netflix's history on its release, racking up 166 million hours of viewing time within its first month on the platform — made Leviev recognisable to many would-be victims. 'He's really angry with all the successes that we have had,' Fjellhoy, 36, says. 'I think he really wanted us to be miserable for the rest of our lives.' Instead, the women say they are in a strange way grateful for the Leviev-shaped wrecking ball that tore through their worlds nearly a decade ago. Both now travel the world giving talks about online safety and romance fraud, while Sjoholm has cofounded IDfier, an identity verification platform designed to weed out those lurking beneath AI and deepfakes. It has also strengthened their determination to seek better protections for victims. 'We want the laws to change. This is not just money loss,' Sjoholm says. It's on a par with 'murder, in my eyes. This is emotional abuse; people take their lives due to this. It's a serious, serious crime.' Fjellhoy says that the way the likes of banks and police treat victims of romance fraud can be worse than the original deception. 'A far tougher pill to swallow — and why I'm still traumatised — is the treatment of me after it,' she says. 'No victim should be placed into a courtroom and have to defend themselves. And the criminal who started everything, he's just been taken out of the equation.' • Read more expert advice on sex, relationships, dating and love Though it was affecting, the film inevitably couldn't capture the complexity of the women's relationships with Leviev — real name Shimon Hayut (he has no connection to the Leviev diamond dynasty after which he renamed himself to bolster his credentials) — nor the aftermath. And so Fjellhoy and Sjoholm have written Swindled Never After: How We Survived (and You Can Spot) a Relationship Scammer, an unflinching account of their brushes with suicide and bankruptcy, global fame and public blame, along with online safety tips and expert insight from criminologists and psychologists. The goal, the women say, is to try to stem the rapidly rising tide of romance fraud, which cost the UK £106 million last year. It is also their chance to reframe the victim-shaming that so often follows crimes of this kind. For them, the question is not why do people fall for such scams, but rather why do perpetrators prey on innocent victims in the first place? And why does it remain nigh-on impossible to bring them to justice? Fjellhoy was 29 when she swiped right on Leviev, who told her he was visiting London, where she lives, on a business trip. They met for coffee at the Four Seasons and, within 24 hours, she was boarding a private jet to his next meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, along with his young daughter, her mother and a smattering of 'business associates'. She liked his 'magnetism' and style, she says, and, having grown up on a diet of Disney fairytales, was earnestly looking for everlasting love. But her 'prince of diamonds', as he dubbed himself, would within months lose his sparkle, his penchant for Rolls-Royces and five-star hotel stays quickly becoming Fjellhoy's problem. Leviev, now 34, made her acquire a platinum Amex card — so former acquaintances wishing to do him harm, he said, couldn't track his movements — and maxed it out immediately. He urged her to meet him in Amsterdam with $25,000 (some £18,000) in cash, and requested similarly vast sums on so many occasions that she ended up taking out nine loans totalling $250,000. When he sent her a cheque for $500,000, which then bounced, it occurred to her that 'the man who held me in his arms, kissed me on the forehead, shared a bed with me and planned a future with me… All that was a lie.' That realisation 'makes me tear up, even today'. Fjellhoy, then working in tech with a full social life and strong support network back in her native Norway, considered herself an unlikely victim of such deception. But between the deep sense of violation at the hands of a master manipulator and being hounded by creditors (four took her to court), 'I felt like I was drowning; someone was dragging me to rock bottom,' she writes in Swindled Never After. In one particularly dark moment, a lorry driving towards her in the next lane gained a sudden appeal. 'Wouldn't it be better to end it here?' she wondered, before forcing herself to return home, visit the local hospital and get a referral to a psychiatric unit. After three weeks there, and seven years of therapy and medication, it is only in recent months that she has come off antidepressants. 'I never wanted to be on them,' she says. But, 'I needed them. I was thinking of stopping a couple of times, but then when you get hit with a lawsuit [by creditors], or police officers barging in, you need antidepressants,' she says. 'I tell you, that is not something that is for the faint of heart.' Sjoholm, the more voluble of the two, was also left contemplating suicide after learning of Leviev's lies. Their platonic nine-month relationship involved her being flown via jet to parties in Mykonos and Rome (in some cases, unknowingly paid for by Fjellhoy), and the offer of a $15,000 monthly rental budget so that they could move in together. Rather than being 'gold-diggers', as internet critics have suggested, Sjoholm says they were 'milking cows' for Leviev, whose network of victims doesn't discriminate against gender, individuals or companies, or global location. Sjoholm lost $45,000 funding his playboy lifestyle — the deposit she'd saved for a home — an amount then doubled by legal fees when she unsuccessfully attempted to take the bank who had wired her payments to Leviev to court. The course of their lives would be altogether different had Fjellhoy not contacted a Norwegian newspaper in 2019. Its journalists found Sjoholm waiting outside the Mandarin Oriental in Munich as she met Leviev. When he left and saw the cameras, he turned aggressive, issuing death threats that 'were not cryptic; they were spoken as if they were a done deal: 'I've paid a price for your head. It wasn't even that expensive — it only cost €1,000 because you aren't worth any more.' ' • Sweet Bobby and me: the catfishing that shocked the world The fallout left Sjoholm questioning not only 'what I would do to myself; I didn't know what Simon might try to do to me.' Those feelings worsened following the film's release. During what she now looks back on as 'the lowest point in my life', she began making fake posts on Instagram to mislead the now millions of people watching her every move, in case Leviev's threats — or the legions of 'incels' she says were now supporting him — led to a nasty end. Today Sjoholm, who is Swedish but lives in Spain, is in a far better place. She was introduced to her partner via mutual friends four years ago and, as mother to their two-year-old twins, has found her 'life's purpose'. (They call Fjellhoy, who spent three months at their home after they were born, 'auntie'.) Moving on has been crucial, she says. 'I don't let this consume my life. Because if I were to sit there and just look into what [Leviev's] doing every day, and be angry and be annoyed, then I am continuing to let him defraud me.' Although defiant, she concedes that the anger still eats at her sometimes. There are 'days where I feel like I'm struggling; that I would have loved to give all this money, for example, towards my children and their future. And I gave it away to a criminal instead.' She is, at least, free from the choppy waters of the online dating pool, which is 'definitely worse' now compared with when the women met Leviev. • The handsome army hero who turned out to be an AI dating scam Fjellhoy has returned to the apps — 'I still love love' — albeit with more caution. 'Of course, I have my guard up; I haven't been in a long-term relationship since then. So I think it has had a bigger impact than I would like to say,' she admits. Now, her swiping comes with extra mental gymnastics: is this person who he says he is? Or, 'Are they just going on a date because they think it's interesting to hear the Tinder Swindler story?' (She is not worried about being financially duped again, she says, as, 'There's nothing left. I'm bankrupt. I can't even get a credit card.') She toyed with avoiding mention of the documentary to potential suitors entirely, but has opted to list it on her dating profile — her way of avoiding what she thinks will otherwise lead to 'draining' conversations down the line. 'It's not baggage,' Fjellhoy says of her unique backstory — although one match did immediately block her on learning of her Netflix fame. 'But before this, it was just so much easier.' It is unclear what struggles, if any, Leviev has been left to face. In 2019, he was jailed for 15 months in his native Israel for using a fake passport, but was released after just five. Aside from a 2015 conviction for defrauding three Finnish women — one of whom Fjellhoy met on that first private plane ride — he has mostly evaded justice. He has repeatedly alleged that he is making a documentary with Netflix (the platform says this is not true), was selling personalised video messages on Cameo for $200 and has threatened to start a podcast. Last year he said that the women's claims were 'all a big show and will eventually fall apart… I'm like Trump. I can't be knocked down; I'm invincible.' His victims believe he has evaded prosecution and punishment thanks to the complex nature of his frauds, plus the fact that they span numerous countries and jurisdictions. That so many people continue to get in touch asking whether Leviev has finally been caught and charged only highlights how broken the system remains, the women feel. 'Not to have had justice in this case is a disfavour for the fraud community as a whole,' Fjellhoy says. 'Because if you can't even get him' — someone whose case is highly public and is known to authorities the world over — 'what are you even talking about?' All the while, his victims continue to contact Fjellhoy and Sjoholm — most recently, a man who said he'd been working as Leviev's driver in Dubai, where he now lives, posting photos of his lavish lifestyle. 'He [the driver] wrote to me in dire straits,' Fjellhoy says. 'And that's the issue. People reach out to us and then it's, 'Oh, shouldn't you just let it go, Cecilie? Shouldn't you not look up what [Leviev's] doing?' Well, we're being approached by his victims today,' she says of the dozens of other victims who have contacted her since The Tinder Swindler aired. 'So when people ask me to move on, I get a bit annoyed. Because it's impossible when you haven't received justice and he's still out there. I think there are very few victims who have their criminal so blatantly shaming them and going out in public, telling us that we're liars.' Neither of the women, who are in daily contact and consider themselves 'sisters', has spoken to Leviev for years. Sjoholm's last communication with him was before the documentary aired, while Fjellhoy confronted him in Israel in 2022. 'There have been no repercussions for him; he's never felt any uneasiness with anything. So to see him be that uneasy for once and not knowing what to do, for me that was more than enough.' What do they think drives him to pursue such an appalling line of 'work'? 'Narcissism', they speculate; and 'control… [to] hurt people'. They plan to continue campaigning for harsher punishments for fraudsters and for social media sites to better scrutinise those on their platforms. 'Everyone deserves to feel safe online,' Fjellhoy says. 'We have to fight. It's a marathon. In the end, we will win.' Swindled Never After: How We Survived (and You Can Spot) a Relationship Scammer by Cecilie Fjellhoy and Pernilla Sjoholm (Podium Publishing, £15.99) is published on August 19
Daily Record
an hour ago
- Daily Record
Devastated widow of husband killed at work calls for major changes to prevent further tragedies
Catriona Lockhart's husband Clive Hendry tragically died when he drowned in a horror industrial incident The devastated widow of a Scots fish farm worker who was killed on the job is calling for more serious consequences for companies who fail to protect their employees. Catriona Lockhart's husband Clive Hendry tragically died when he drowned in a horror industrial incident. The 58-year-old was crushed between a boat and a floating pontoon before slipping into the water during a 'touch and go' transfer at salmon giant Mowi's Ardintoul site in the North West Highlands in February 2020. The company was fined £800,000 after being found to have breached health and safety laws. However, Catriona says that firms should face criminal charges if they fail to keep their staff safe. Speaking to the Record, she said: 'Small fines mean nothing to multi-million pound companies. There has never been any prosecutions of employers in Scotland whose failings have led to the tragic deaths of their workers. 'They need to face the full force of the law and they should face prison if they are held accountable for deaths.' Shocking statistics showed that during 2024/25, 26 people in Scotland died due to workplace accidents, which is one in every 100,000 workers. This was an increase from 18 the previous year. Construction, agriculture, forestry and transport industries saw the most tragedies due to falls from height, being struck by moving objects or collapsing equipment. The latest UK-wide data showed men accounted for 95% of all fatalities, while 40% of all incidents involved people over the age of 60. Now, 58, Catriona says major change is needed to prevent further tragedies as she said 'no one should go to work and not return home'. Catriona added: 'Still to this day I never got proper justice for Clive. Real justice would be allowing families to have their day in court, letting the public hear exactly what failings occurred and who was responsible. 'A company can just plead guilty and take a fine. How is that justice?' Catriona says she is reminded of Clive's death every day. The couple were together for 28 years and shared a croft in a village near to Loch Alsh where Clive tragically died. She said: 'You never think your partner is going to go to work and not return home. No one should ever have to go through what I did. But the sad reality is it will happen again. 'Health and safety in Scotland is terrible and these deaths will keep re-occurring. 'Every day I'm reminded of Clive and his death. I still see the boat that killed him out on the water.' David Bell, senior associate at law firm Irwin Mitchell who specialises in fatal accident claims, said: 'To see the fatal workplace rate increase so sharply over seven months is truly alarming. 'The HSE data is really useful and contributes to making various sectors safer but ultimately it falls to employers as all too often fatal workplace accidents are the result of negligence when corners have been cut on PPE, safe working processes or completing risk assessments. 'I urge officials to review what could be done to guarantee safety compliance at the beginning of tasks rather than review safety procedures in hindsight – I believe tougher penalties on those who fail to follow basic life-saving guidance would also be beneficial. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! 'Because the real tragedy is these 26 Scottish incidents represent 26 families, each now without a loved one and facing a painful and uncertain future. 'No one deserves to go to work feeling that they or their loved one may not return home.'
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
The hardest thing is that he was always there for me and, in the end, it felt like I wasn't there for him: NASSER HUSSAIN pays an emotional tribute to his great mate Graham Thorpe
It feels like yesterday. When Rob Key called, telling me he had some sad news, I instinctively knew what it was and yet, like everyone who knew Graham Thorpe, his death left me in a state of shock. I was staying up in Richmond, North Yorkshire, with my family and my initial thoughts, obviously, were with his family: his wife Amanda and their kids, his dad Geoff.
