The singer and model Liene Ushakova (Liene Ušakova) advised girls to watch a certain movie and warned them to stay away from Ronald Alpe. She emphasized the importance of remembering his face to avoid trouble, as he has multiple profiles and uses different names.
Netflix recently released a documentary called The Tinder Swindler in early February. It tells the story of an Israeli man who deceived women by pretending to be the son of a billionaire, gaining their trust and swindling them out of large sums of money to impress other women.
Shimon Hayut, an Israeli man, pretended to be the son of billionaire Lev Leviev, the owner of a diamond mining company. He used various tactics to deceive women he met on Tinder, creating a lavish facade on social media to maintain the ruse. He would then ask the women for financial help under false pretenses.
He convinced his girlfriends that he was in danger and needed money. They, believing him and deep in love, took out loans to support him. However, he disappeared with the money, leaving them heartbroken and financially devastated.
The documentary reveals that the swindler managed to deceive his victims out of a total of ten million dollars.
In 2018, Liene Ushakova publicly exposed her ex-lover Ronalds Alpe on Facebook, sharing screenshots of their conversations and an audio recording.
Her post garnered responses from numerous women who had also been deceived by Ronalds. Some even disclosed that they were carrying his child. Liene detailed her passionate romance with Ronalds, including sharing intimate fantasies and sending a personal video. Additionally, the swindler gained access to Liene's passport and other personal information.
Unlike the character in the Netflix documentary, Ronald Alpe was not solely involved in scamming women. In 2020, he was sentenced to three years of probation and fined 8,600 euros for attempted large-scale fraud.
According to the program De facto (LTV), Ronald Alpe attempted to swindle 215 thousand euros from businessman Ernest Bernis. This was connected to a one million euro reward offered by a collapsing bank for exposing corrupt practices in the Latvian financial industry. Alpe only managed to obtain a much smaller sum in reality.
For instance, in one incident, Alpe sent his friend to a cafe to pick up two parcels. The first contained cigars and 500 euros. The second had a gift bag with a bottle of whiskey and 20,000 euros. Alpe's next move was to claim that he possessed a computer with incriminating data. He promised ABLV Bank to hand over the computer through a laundry service but demanded 15,000 euros for the transfer. However, the computer was found to be password protected, and he failed to receive the payment.
During these events, Alpe, operating under a false identity, was contacted by the bank's security chief on behalf of Bernis. Ultimately, they decided not to pay for the password due to suspicions of fraud.
In parallel, Alpe contacted Bernis via email, pretending to be one of his acquaintances. Bernis instructed his lawyer Janis Karklinsh to correspond with a potential informant. Here, Alpe demanded a reward of 200 thousand euros for providing information.
“He actually contacted us through Latvian e-mail servers, mobile phones. Then it seemed that such a person could not be a swindler. After all, the scammer is usually hiding. Then he provided, I would say, certain information. These were printouts of emails, fragments of audio recordings that gave reason to believe that a person might actually have something. (..) Well, then quickly, after 2-3 days, we realized that this was actually an attempt at fraud, since the audio that we were given was made at an open meeting of the Riga City Council nine years ago, where they spoke in some aspect about administrators, but it was taken out of context,” lawyer Janis Karklinsh explained.
Then the representatives of the bank contacted the State Police. Following the developed plan, they continued to communicate with the fraudster for about a month. In the end, an agreement was reached that he would receive 50,000 euros from Karklinsh’s office.
Alpe sent his friend for the money, who knew nothing about illegal actions. As soon as he received a box of whiskey with money, he was immediately detained by the police. Nearby, Alpe himself was detained, the premises of which were located one block from the lawyer’s office.
Alpe quickly pleaded guilty. He returned 20,000 euros to Bernis before the first hearing, so the court decided not to sentence him to a real prison sentence.
In this story, De facto also reported on another episode.
