[imagesource:here]

The Tinder Swindler’s wealthy persona was clever in that it struck a similar note to the lifestyle that one might assume his fake father, an Israeli diamond mogul, to have.

Simon Leviev, AKA Shimon Hayut, pretended to be the son of Lev Leviev, using this claim to fortune as a way to swindle an estimated $10 million from his female victims.

You know the story…

We are really here to delve into the life and riches of the real, albeit former, billionaire and LLD Diamonds tycoon, Mr Leviev, via a Forbes exposé from 2003.

The outlet has republished the story, during this time of heightened interest, following the steps Leviev took as he rose to become the “King of Diamonds”:

Image: Forbes

In short, because there’s a lot, Leviev’s success was very much hinged on his connections. Hayut, too, I guess.

Vladimir Putin was one of those connections, along with Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos, who both helped him “acquire gems, snap up mines and undercut De Beers’ stranglehold on the market”:

In other words, the Leviev fortune—last estimated by Forbes to be a bit under $1 billion in 2020—is very real, even if “Simon Leviev” is not.

Last week, Lev Leviev’s LLD Diamonds released a statement saying, in part, “As soon as we learned of the fraud, we filed a complaint with the Israeli police, and we hope that Mr. Hayut faces the justice he deserves.”

We covered that part when news broke that Hayut was being sued by the real Leviev family for impersonating an association with them and degrading their name.

Back to the real Leviev: at the ripe age of 15, he left his life of Jewish religious education to take up diamond-cutting.

He opened his own cutting factory in 1977, eventually expanding to 12 small factories over the next five years.

By the time he was Israel’s largest manufacturer of polished stones in 1987, De Beers, the giant miner and marketer of diamonds known as the “Syndicate”, asked Leviev to become a sightholder, one of a few exclusive direct buyers of De Beers rough diamonds.

Little did they know, but Leviev soon become “the scourge of De Beers”:

Today he is the world’s largest cutter and polisher of the precious gems and a primary source of rough stones to other cutters, polishers and jewelry makers around the globe. Those who have watched his rise over the last three decades say it was his intense hatred of De Beers that fueled him.

He bristled under the Syndicate’s high-handed treatment of buyers, who were given boxes of rough diamonds at take-it-or-leave-it prices and risked being permanently cut off if they balked.

He trumped De Beers, building partnerships in Russia, Angola, and Namibia, which represented “part of Leviev’s play for direct ownership of rough supplies”.

He owns 100% of his diamond business, Lev Leviev Group, and a controlling stake in Africa Israel Investments. The latter is a Yehud, Israel-based conglomerate whose holdings include: commercial real estate in Prague and London; Gottex, a swimwear company; 1,700 Fina gas stations in the Southwest U.S.; 173 7-Elevens in New Mexico and Texas; a 33% stake in Cross Israel Highway, that nation’s first toll road; and an 85% share of Vash Telecanal, Israel’s Russian-language TV channel. Leviev also owns a gold mine in Kazakhstan, pieces of two diamond mines in Angola and mining licenses in the Urals and Namibia.

All that, but really, Leviev’s legitimacy lies in his extensive religious philanthropy.

The “Uzbeki-born Israeli citizen and devout Lubavitcher” is known to have given away at least $30 million a year.

He is considered a hero in many parts of the world, restoring an old synagogue and building a number of Jewish schools from Russia to New York.

A far cry away from how his fake son spent his supposedly inherited money.

Head over to Forbes for the full breakdown.

[source:forbes]