How to avoid ‘Tinder Swindlers’: ‘Boy Meets World’ star-turned-adult actress Maitland Ward on ‘red flags’

Netflix’s viral true-crime documentary “The Tinder Swindler” had millions of viewers crying foul after it began streaming on the platform Feb. 2.

The mind-bending story from director Felicity Morris, who also produced the Emmy-winning series, “Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer,” chronicles the depths a Tinder user by the name of Shimon Hayut, now 31, would go to to charm women around the world into loaning him money – to the tune of an estimated $10 million. 

Hayut posed as Simon Leviev and claimed to be the son of a diamond mogul on the popular dating app.

It was only when a group of women banded together to expose Leviev that his scheme was foiled, and he was ultimately convicted of fraud, theft and forgery. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison in December 2019, only to be released early after serving five months.

Former “Boy Meets World” star Maitland Ward, who now makes a large part of her living as an adult actress while also disseminating content to paying fans online, told Fox News Digital that while she empathizes with the women who were bilked out of millions of dollars by the Tinder Swindler, she believes all the warning signs were apparent in their interactions with Leviev. 

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“A major red flag should have been when they were trying to take money out over and over. I mean, when anybody asks you to do something you’re not comfortable with, and they’re pressuring you to do it, and they don’t understand if you don’t want to do it, that’s a major, major red flag,” Ward, 45, explained of the ruse Leviev had been running on unsuspecting women.

“A major red flag should have been when they were trying to take money out over and over.”

— Maitland Ward

“Before he began asking for money, I can see why they fell for it because he showed the planes and all the money and dinners and stuff. But yeah, I think it’s just this deep psychology in us to want to be loved and to want to have this fairy-tale dream. I really see with the people that are catfished, and I feel bad for them, I feel really bad for them that they fall for it.”

Leviev is a free man living in Israel while some women he duped are still paying the price for forking over their fortunes to the man infamously known as the Tinder Swindler.

Fox News Digital spoke with Ward about why she believes the “Tinder Swindler” was able to get away with what he was doing for so long, how she often receives messages from people on the internet that someone who is pretending to be her has catfished them, as well as her memoir based on her life post-mainstream television, titled “My Escape From Hollywood: Why I Left to Become a Porn Star.”

Fox News Digital: What was the feeling you had when your book reached No. 1 in its category on Amazon when preorders launched? 

Maitland Ward: It was just so amazing to see the reception that people were having for it. I just love it. It’s going to be such a porn-positive book. It’s like it’s going to have a lot of dishy, funny, salacious stories from all the mainstream stuff I’ve worked on and things you’ve never heard before, I promise you. 

I have some dish that nobody’s heard, but then it’s also going to be a story of female empowerment and my personal journey to find my true, authentic self and my sexuality and be comfortable with that. And you really have pride in that. And to take control of my life and my career when Hollywood was trying to fit me into a box. I was like making my own way out of the box, you know, out of the coffin of childhood fame or young celebrity.

I was carving my own way, and I think that’s going to show all the way through the book. So it takes me from adolescence all the way up through all the projects that I’ve worked on in the mainstream and then, of course, how it got me on my journey to porn and then everything that goes on there.

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Fox News Digital: Why do you think Leviev was able to get away with what he was doing for so long?

Ward: Yeah, it’s interesting because, like myself, and a lot of other well-known people or celebrities and porn stars have people who catfish and pretend to be them all the time. And I’m always surprised that people fall for it so easily. Like, there are certain people that can fall for it really easily. And I think it’s because they want to believe it. They want to believe they’re talking to you. They want to believe they have a connection with you personally. 

Like with [Leviev], they wanted to believe he’s this handsome billionaire who is sweeping them off their feet or whatever. So they’re believing in that fairy tale. And I think that’s true as well with how people catfish fans. I’ll get all the time people saying, “I was screwed over by you”, and I’m like, “It’s not me.” They think it’s me because they want to believe it’s me. I mean, would I really want to be paid off in Google gift cards or whatever? They’ll say to me, “You were broke last year, you were leaving your husband and I gave you all these Amazon cards” or whatever it is. And I’m like, “Did you not see all the work I was doing?” Just look online.

And then it always amazes me that they will believe this person, but then they’ll find my verified account and then go after me and not correlate that, wait a minute, you found the real person there, but you believed it was me over here. And then they’ll give these weird stories, these catfishers – like he did, “Oh, I’m being hunted by somebody or the enemy is after me, so I need money.” Like they’ll say, “My husband is holding me hostage, or I want to leave porn.” That’s a big deal. Or they’ll say, “I want to leave porn, but I can’t. I have to get any money I can. Can you help me leave it?”

And then people will give thousands and thousands of dollars to whoever it is, and then they just run off, and the givers are left holding the bag. And it’s crazy how many people can fall it. But I see how they do. You want to believe that dream. You want to believe that you’re really talking to a celebrity or talking to a porn star or talking to a billionaire. It’s a fairy tale and, unfortunately, in the computer world, you don’t see them face to face, so they can use pictures, and they can use stories and stuff that they’ve collected on the internet and really, really play into the psyche of somebody who wants to believe in the fairy tale.

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Fox News Digital: Why do you think people have the gumption to want to make a leap so quickly and jump into something without actually assessing the risk/reward of what could potentially go wrong? 

Ward: That’s deep psychology, and I think as a society, we’re just ingrained to believe in these fairy-tale moments. We want that life so bad, and we see it, so you just want to just believe it. Like if you’re in love with a celebrity, and then you think they’re talking to you, it would hurt too much to think this is not the truth. And it feels so good. It’s an addiction. It’s kind of like you get addicted to that “wow” feeling you have. You think you’re going to marry this person, you’re going to be with this person, and you’re helping this person. 

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But I also feel bad for them because they usually come at me angry that they’ve been catfished. “You’ve done this to me,” and they still can’t believe it’s not me. They don’t want to believe it’s not me. They’d rather believe that I did something wrong to them. But they’re also very angry and hurt because they believed it and their dream has just been snatched away from them, and they’ve been used and had, and they just can’t come to terms with that. So I am empathetic to that because it’s easier to deal with the fact that you’ve been ripped off and wronged and that your heart was just broken like that.

Fox News Digital: Before you were married, how many of these dates had you gone on that you knew almost immediately you weren’t compatible? 

Ward: Yeah, many years ago. But this also has to do with friendships too because I’m very open sexually, and I work in an industry that’s open sexually. So it’s just any people. I think if they start off just talking about your career, and you’re … I mean, it’s okay to break the ice if they’re a little nervous or something like that. But if they just want to know too much. For instance, I get a lot of guys wanting to date me and thinking that the move is to start talking to me sexually, and I’ll just like immediately fall for them. Or some guys would make really dirty jokes that they think that are going to get them somewhere just because I’m a porn star. They don’t understand how it’s kind of like a catcall on the street. 

“Does that ever really work? Has it ever worked?” Never. It’s the same kind of thing. But then there is the assumption that once you are a porn star, “Well, then you must do it with everyone all the time.” And the floodgates come open, especially right after I started with Deeper and Vixen. People really start coming forward like, “Oh, I haven’t talked to you in a while. How’s it going?” So people just were figuring everyone had a chance, all of a sudden. 

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But a genuine person who I would date or be friends with or whatever – you can tell they actually want to know about you, and they don’t want to just focus on what you do, and I think that’s always good. With anything, people should be asking questions about you as a person and not just surface questions. And it all depends on what you want to use the dating sites for. Some people are finding that they want to just hook up and that’s fine. But if they’re looking for a relationship and not to be screwed over for a long-term thing, you really need to have someone who gives it back and forth and isn’t so focused on your porn career.

I mean, I would be so turned off if somebody just assumed they were going to sleep with me because I’m a porn star, and they didn’t have to even talk to me or do anything. So you get that sleazy vibe, you can totally get it – and that’s not sexy. I would probably sleep with you if you were engaging with me well. That would be way more of a turn-on, and you would have had much more of a chance to sleep with me than if you’re just assuming it, and you’re being just a total surface kind of a jerk.

And there are a lot out there. Although, I think if you’re someone who picks those glossy kinds of people who aren’t real actors or performers, but they know how to advertise themselves well, and they’re so caught up in the perception of themselves online. I know actors and actresses have to present themselves in a certain way. But on Tinder, if they’re … on any of these dating apps, that’s the red flag. 

Because I see some people I know who do it and just see some of these guys who are in their photos with their shirts off flexing their muscles, and they’re on boats and with their Ferraris. Also, with the Tinder Swindler, the one thing I didn’t understand — and I’m not victim shaming. But the one red flag that I did have at the very beginning – why would a handsome super billionaire have to be on Tinder? He would have so many people asking him out all the time. The diamond industry? Oh my God. I would think girls would be everywhere all over him. 

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And also, who are these haters who are after you? These guys, they never name who the enemies are. Are they mobsters? Diamond miners? I’m like, what did he do to get so many enemies, and why are they even after him?

“My Escape From Hollywood: Why I Left to Become a Porn Star,” is set to hit shelves through Simon & Schuster Sept. 6.