Johannesburg - The man dubbed “the South African Tinder Swindler” will have to wait until March 9 to see if he’s granted bail. The 39-year-old appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Friday and was remanded in custody.
At his first court appearance on February 25, the state alleged that Amon Namara conned at least three women out of their money and is facing charges of fraud, money laundering and theft.
The FBI said in a news release, victims of romance fraud lost $1 billion last year. The self-proclaimed businessman and social media influencer had allegedly been running his operation in Sandton using techniques similar to the now internationally notorious Simon Leviev.
Leviev made headlines last month after the release of the hit Netflix documentary, the Tinder Swindler. The documentary shows how Shimon Hayut (who went by the name "Simon Leviev" and pretended to be the son of a billionaire diamond tycoon) allegedly scammed Tinder users out of millions of dollars. (Tinder has since banned him from the dating platform, and the Leviev family is suing Hayut for claiming to be the son of Lev Leviev.)
"Inventing Anna," also on Netflix, tells the story of Anna Sorokin, who went by the name Anna Delvey as she posed as a wealthy German heiress trying to build a social club in New York - defrauding friends, banks and other investors in the process. Globally, both stories are grabbing huge audiences. "The Tinder Swindler" was Netflix's second-most popular film and "Inventing Anna" was the most-watched TV show from Feb. 21 to 28, according to the streaming platform.
A Ugandan national, Namara has allegedly made off with jewellery, clothes, and thousands of rands swindling wealthy women. He matched with his unsuspecting victims on the popular dating app Tinder. Posing as a millionaire who owned a Bentley and several properties in Johannesburg, Namara would take his partners on whirlwind dates before syphoning off large sums of money from them. He was arrested in Sandton last week. A soaring number of “romance frauds” has highlighted safety concerns around online dating.
A mother-of-two who spoke out after she was duped, said after coming out of a “stressful” relationship, her friend signed her up for the popular dating app. When she matched with Namara on the app, he quickly asked for her phone number and they met for lunch at her home. She described him as a “sweetheart”.
“In August 2020, he told me that he was having some problems and he asked for R15 000. He said he’d repay it by the weekend,” she said.
In total, she was conned out of R52 000 but he also made off with stock worth more than R60 000 from her boutique. One of the items was a Rolex watch worth R10 000. Namara had promised another woman a trip to Knysna, but said he needed money to make the booking. She allegedly forked out R16 000, but to her surprise, Namara left her stranded at the airport. After sharing her frustrations on social media, other women came forward with similar experiences.
“I found information about him and he said I should go ahead and open a (criminal) case against him if I wanted to. He said he didn’t care and would buy the docket (from the police),” said the unnamed woman.
Unfortunately, romance scams are common.
"While anyone can be a victim of this fraud, the bad actors are known to target women over age 40 who are widowed, divorced, elderly, and/or disabled," the FBI said in a news release. The women portrayed in "The Tinder Swindler," however, were in their 20s and 30s. Erika Kaplan, a senior matchmaker and vice president of membership at Three Day Rule in Philadelphia, says it's easy to fall for these scams in part because so many people on dating apps are passive. It's common to get matches that lead to no conversation, or conversations that never lead to in-person meetings.
So if a dater finds someone who comes on strong and acts like they want them in their life, "it's really in stark contrast to what you're used to. Instead of assuming this interaction is fake you want to believe that you manifested it," Kaplan said.
Kaplan said most victims want to believe so badly that they had found the diamond in the rough.
"Master manipulators can be really persuasive simply by being who someone wants them to be. And many people on dating apps are looking out for love more than looking out for scammers,” she concluded.