Tinder Swindler · Undercover Underage · Logan Paul
Plus: Now you can edit your Best Evidence comments
the true crime that's worth your time
There’s a new trailer for The Tinder Swindler. The Netflix doc details the Shimon Hayut case — he’s the convicted scammer who posed as a billionaire on Tinder, then scammed his victims out of slews of money.
Here’s how it worked: Hayut claimed he was Simon Leviev, the son of real rich guy Lev Leviev. A look at a Forbes list from 2018 ranks the real guy at number 2124 in its annual ranking of top billionaires, which is a sentence that pained my pinko heart to type. He’s also a Russian-born diamond mine and construction company owner who now claims Israeli citizenship but lives in London, so I am sure he is a great guy. No red flags there!
But he’s not our problem, because the fake Simon Leviev wasn’t actually related to this person, he just said he was, much to the excitement of various women he wooed. Per the Times of Israel, “Hayut would charm women with lavish gifts and take them to dinners on private jets using money he borrowed from other women he previously conned. Then, citing security concerns related to his business, he’d ask them for financial favors he promised to pay back.”
I have a soft spot in my heart for Hayut as a media-rich report on his scams from Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gangwas the subject of one of our earliest issues. It still stands as a great lesson in innovative true crime storytelling. It’s also a thrilling scroll, as the journalists in the story are chasing Hayut across Europe, with one of his victims acting as a double agent to help them find him. You can see why director Felicity Morris (Don’t F**k With Cats) hopped on board to make the film.
It’s unclear how much money Hayut wrested from his victims, as obviously, not everyone who was taken in wants to come forward. The best I can do is “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” based on media reports, but Netflix claims “millions of dollars” so, whatever. All I know is that it’s not just a blown-out-of-proportion catfish story like Sweet Bobby so I’m game.
Hayut was tried and sentenced in 2019 but was released a few months later, as the pandemic prompted prisons around the world to release non-violent inmates. A few months after he was set free, he allegedly claimed to be a first responder so he could get a coronavirus vaccine when they were first being offered in early 2020. Speaking with an Israeli broadcast TV station, Hayut said “I am not someone who waits in line or at places …With all due respect, I will not sit and wait 3-4 hours. I am not someone who waits and no one can say a word about it.”
And a day after that, we get Undercover Underage. The six-part series follows the work of Roo Powell, a seemingly non-QAnon-person involved in the pursuit of sexual predators who target kids online.
Powell’s a copywriter and branding/marketing pro (here’s her website) who also founded Safe from Online Sex Abuse (SOSA). (Her dad, interestingly enough, was Australian publishing magnate Gareth Powell.) Per the press release for the show, “Undercover Underage follows Powell and her SOSA team as they fabricate three distinct, fictitious teenage personas through social media, photos and online profiles in order to bait and then identify predators.”
The conversation around ethical issues related to publicly luring suspects has been ongoing since at least 2007, with news orgs like NPR asking Chris Hansen some tough questions after a subject killed himself. Since then, amateur predator hunters like Dads Against Predators and these fucking ding-dongs have popped up all over the place, many likely inspired by false claims of kids in danger spread by conservative conspiracy theorizing pundits and their followers on social media.
So what I’m wondering is how Powell, a clearly media savvy person who, based on her Twitter presence, does not appear to be a far-right person, will distinguish what she does with these other groups, many of whom appear to think Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates are running a shadowy child exploitation show. (To be clear: I don’t find herespecially likable based on her Twitter activity, either, but Twitter rarely allows folks to appear in their best lights.)
I guess I could get my answer immediately, as Undercover Underage has apparently been available for streaming on Discovery+ since last fall, something ID left out in its press release on the premiere. Is this a comment on the lack of impact Discovery+ content has on the wider world? Anyway, starting February 3, the show will be available to the rest of us, with two episodes dropping that night at 9 and 10 p.m., with subsequent installments airing at 9 every Thursday. — EB
Logan Paul, the internet personality perhaps best known for his deeply problematic vlog from a Japanese “suicide forest,” is now presenting himself as a victim of a Pokemon card scam. I mean, folks, are we supposed to take this guy seriously? I’m not saying that in a deliberately ignorant “these kids these days with their bitcoin and NFTs” way, I am honestly asking if Paul’s videos and life are to be taken at face value, or if they’re Andy Kaufman-esque performance art.
Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, as we would any other crime victim, and run down the case: Paul announced via Twitter in December that he’d spent $3.5 million on “this sealed & authenticated box of 1st Edition Pokémon cards. Before you scoff, per Kotaku, “The six containers, if real, could of course contain cards worth far more than the purchase price.” So, big news, if true!
The narrative building is interesting, and helps explain why Paul has the following he does — even my cranky heart wondered how this would play out, and I really only use YouTube for DIY instructions and how-tos for appliances to which I’ve lost the instruction manual. It’s a real-time investigation technique that a lot of true-crime filmmakers could really benefit from, even if the subject in this case (Paul) is a supremely unsympathetic one. To his credit, he leans into his heel role fairly unrepentantly. It’s kind of a fascinating performance.
As you can see from the video above, the yarn ends in heartbreak, as Paul unseals that sealed box, potentially losing much of the set’s worth. Fears of that loss were put to rest, however, when it was revealed that the box actually contained GI Joe cards with little to no value.
I can’t speak to the quality of the website Sportbible, but that’s where I found the conclusion of the tale: the person who reportedly sold the cards to Paul, one “Bolillo Lajan San,” announced in a since-deleted Instagram story that
Upon opening the first edition @bbcexchange authenticated Pokémon case, we noticed that the boxes inside looked off and … Sadly the case was FAKE.
I have reimbursed Logan his 3.5 however we will see how quickly I am made whole from the sellers who brought it to me already authenticated in the coming days or if it turns into a drawn out scenario.
One thing worth noting is that $3.5 million is a number that’s come up in relation to Paul before: As NBC reports, at the end of 2020, Paul was sued for that same amount by production company Planeless Pictures, which said in the suit that Paul’s suicide forest video “caused it to lose a multimillion-dollar licensing agreement with Google.”
The lawsuit states that in the fallout from the video, Google ended its relationship with Planeless Pictures and did not pay the company the agreed-upon $3.5 million.
Planeless Pictures is seeking that Paul pay the $3.5 million as well as additional damages and attorneys fees, according to the suit.
Over a year later, there’s hasn’t been any publicly-announced movement on the Planeless case, but the confluence of figures is really something! — EB
You can now edit your comments on Best Evidence (and any other Substacks you follow). That tidbit was buried in a recent “author tools” missive, Substack’s homeroom announcements publication for all of us folks toiling here in varied levels of obscurity.
Sarah and I groused to each other that we’d rather have an excellent search function (partially because Sarah and I are inveterate grousers; partially because our Slack is littered with “I know we discussed this but I can’t find what we said” threads; and partially because Substack’s search is worse than, like Blogger’s was in 2001).
Enough with me sounding like Internet Methuselah. Here’s a cut and paste of what you do (text and examples are Substack’s, not mine! As if you didn’t suspect):
1. Select the three dots underneath your comment and select "Edit comment".
2. Once you make your change, an edit status with a time stamp will appear next to your name on the comment.
I am being a jerk about this, but I do agree that it’s a helpful improvement!
To be clear: unlike on some commenting platforms (say, Disqus), Sarah and I can’t edit your comments, nor do we want to. Remarks you post here or on other Substacks are yours. The only intervention we ever offer is the occasional delete and ban, which I think we have had to do twice?
As people who have been moderating communities as part of our writing careers for (a combined) five decades, that’s a pretty remarkable track record given the subject matter and size of our readership. That our threads and comments are so non-toxic are a credit to all of you. Be proud! — EB
Wednesday on Best Evidence: Speak of the devil, Wednesday’s our discussion thread day! This week, we have a very important art question for you.
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