The dating industry’s lead trade group is urging Apple and Google to block a new dating app that the convicted fraudster known as the Tinder Swindler says he plans to launch to safeguard women from similar criminals.

Simon Leviev, soon to turn 36, who inspired a 2022 Netflix documentary by that alias after achieving notoriety for conning at least six women out of an estimated 7 million pounds, wants to name his app Safe Love.

Leviev’s criminality first became widely known after reports by Natalie Hansen and Kristoffer Kumar and others from the Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang, assisted by ICIJ’s Israeli member Uri Blau.

The son of a rabbi, Simon Leviev wooed several Scandinavian women with glamorous trips, gifts and expensive meals, then shook them down by claiming to be in danger and needing cash to flee danger.

Each victim was used to fund the seduction of the next.

In 2019, Leviev was sentenced to jail in Israel for 15 months after being extradited from Greece and convicted of theft, fraud and forgery of documents. He served only five months.

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Leviev, whose actual name is Shimon Yehuda Hayut, had posed on the dating app Tinder as the playboy heir to the Russian-Israeli diamond billionaire, Lev Leviev.

At the time he changed his name, he had several prior convictions for fraud. One former girlfriend accused him of physical abuse in a BBC interview.

This week, Leviev told Britain’s ITV’s Morning Show and Israeli TV that he is a rehabilitated man and a father of two, who wants to teach young men to treat women with respect — and to allow them to date safely online.

Unconvinced by Leviev’s self-professed rehabilitation, The Online Dating and Discovery Association has written to Apple and Google calling on them to cancel the convicted fraudster’s planned app.

“In our view, a convicted fraudster having any involvement in our industry seriously undermines the work our sector is doing to tackle fraud,” ODDA chief Simon Newman told ICIJ in a statement.

“It can only have negative repercussions for platforms and users alike,” he said. “We believe it should not be allowed to happen, and that action is needed to prevent it.”

Newman called on Apple and Google to seriously consider the harmful impact that could occur if they were to host any dating app founded, operated or fronted by Leviev.

Leviev said that his past as a fraudster meant he possessed a different set of skills and could advise others on how to avoid fraud.

“Yes, I do know how to lie,” Leviev told the Morning Show. “I do know how to cheat. I do know how to manipulate.”

Becky Holmes, an author and expert on dating scams, who unrelatedly spoke with ICIJ about its recent investigation into the Social Discovery Group’s pay-per-action dating platforms, publicly slammed Leviev and the Morning Show.

Holmes wrote on LinkedIn that it was bad enough that Leviev’s victims had been through hell without them having to see Leviev’s “slimy, smug, remorseless face” everywhere.

“My hope is that anyone who sees his interviews and posts is reminded of the horrors of romance fraud and feels even more grateful for what campaigners against this crime do,” Holmes wrote.