Despite being a convicted criminal, Darron Levin managed to gain the confidence of employers, business associates and women he’d met on dating websites. A number of individuals say they handed over a combined total of hundreds of thousands of dollars to him after he was charged and was serving a 21-month sentence for criminal fraud. Marcus Reubenstein reports on how a viral social media video from one of his alleged victims helped expose him.
In October 2025, Sissi Wang, a divorced mother of two, went to Eastwood Police Station in Sydney to file a complaint about Darron Marc Levin, a man she’d met seven months earlier through dating app Bumble. She alleged she was a victim of a dating scam and had been deceived out of more than $30,000 to help him buy a residential property in the affluent suburb of North Bondi in the city’s east.
According to Wang, “When the police took my complaint, they looked up his name and told me there had been four other complaints from women saying they’d been scammed by Darron, the biggest was for $150,000.
“They didn’t tell me he had been convicted of violence against women but instead told me I should take civil legal action if I wanted my money back.”
She was eventually directed to Kings Cross Police, the Local Area Command where Levin lived, and provided a detailed statement. Her police complaint having made no progress, she decided to fight back through her social media channels.
A successful photographer with more than 1.6 million followers across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, she posted a video entitled “Scammed by Finance Guy After Divorce” going into detail about the circumstances of the alleged scam. Wang did not show Levin’s face nor reveal his name. She posted a similar video on Instagram and to date her videos have had more than 350,000 views.
Another woman, who’d also met Levin on the Bumble dating app in 2025, tells a similar story to that of Wang. She says, “I found out about Sissi’s story through social media, and it was chilling as it’s 100 per cent accurate, the Levin she described in her video did the same thing to me.” However, she says she baulked when he asked her to invest $40,000 in his North Bondi property scheme.
Threats of retaliation
In a WhatsApp message to Wang, Levin threatened her with defamation and, according to Wang, he’d made other threats in phone calls. When contacted by APAC Business Review, Levin replied by SMS saying, “Its [sic] now in Supreme Court defamation”. A spokesperson for the New South Wales Supreme Court says there is no record of a claim being filed.
Says Wang, “I don’t expect to ever see my money again, I want to warn other women about a man who is still using dating apps to lure them into his scam.”
According to a woman Levin had met on the Hinge dating app, after she’d seen Wang’s social media posts, he was desperate to disparage claims that he had scammed other women and that he was unable to repay investors.
In early June, he sent her a screenshot of an email purporting to come from a Sydney law firm notifying Levin of the release of $26 million in funds from that firm’s trust account to DML Corp, a company name that does not appear on ASIC records.
When contacted by APAC Business Review the law firm confirmed the email was fake, that Levin was never a client and there was no such transaction.
Hoodwinking employers
Before a string of criminal convictions for assault, AVO breaches and fraud, Levin told future employers and associates he once held an executive role at, Westfield shopping centre operator, Scentre Group. He appears to have used that as an entrée into senior roles within the commercial real estate and finance sectors.
On his LinkedIn profile, Levin claims to have worked for Scentre Group for five years. The company confirmed to APAC Business Review that he was once an employee but left the company 20 years ago, a spokesperson declined to comment on the circumstances of his departure. There is no suggestion that Scentre Group had knowledge of Levin’s activities outside of the company.
Evading notice
A number of subsequent employers say they foolishly took his word as to his bona fides. Aside from his charm and bravado it appears luck has been key driver in his professional career in Australia.
In May 2022 he approached a commercial real estate company offering to expand its financing capabilities, setting up a new company division and bringing on board his own private client base. Levin brought with him an impressive resumé that listed an MBA from the University of New South Wales, also posted on his LinkedIn profile. A spokesperson for the university confirmed, “UNSW has no student records for an individual named Darron Levin.”
The CEO of that company says, “We brought Darron on board because he was with a successful private property development company and its founder has one of the best names in the industry.”
Had they contacted that company, NMBE, prior to engaging Levin, they would have discovered he had been arrested and charged a year earlier for defrauding his employer—eventually being found guilty in the NSW District Court in 2024.
Darron Levin’s list of criminal and civil court appearances
Levin lasted four months at the commercial real estate company, the CEO now saying, “He owes our company money, he is the worst kind of person I have ever met, he’s dishonest and sleazy.”
Two employees each allegedly invested $20,000 into a residential property scheme in Penrith, west of Sydney, from which they never recovered their funds. The CEO says he gave Levin a $20,000 advance on commissions and, he says, one of his company’s clients invested a substantial amount money he never saw again.
Civil action for unpaid loans
That client was a company, Perfect Distributions Australia Pty Ltd, that took Levin to court claiming he failed to repay a $259,000 loan for a commercial property purchase in November 2022.
Says a director of that company, “We loaned him money to buy a property which he falsely claimed to have title over. He continually falsified bank statements and remittances claiming he was about to repay the loan.
“To us, this was a case of fraud which we reported to the police, they said they can’t do anything and to pursue it as a civil matter.”
The matter went to court but early on in the civil proceedings Levin’s legal team apparently withdrew. Says the director, “His lawyers wrote to our lawyers telling them they were no longer representing Levin as he’d not paid their bills.”
According to the plaintiff, neither Levin nor his lawyers attended subsequent hearings, and the company successfully sought a default judgment for $275,000 plus costs. The director of Perfect Distributions Australia says an enforcement order was granted, and it was discovered he had just $7,000 in his bank accounts.
A mortgage refinancing company that employed Levin for five weeks says it became suspicious when he allegedly submitted dubious paperwork on a property transaction for a company in receivership. Says the CEO, “Shortly after we terminated Levin’s employment, we followed up the police check he had provided to our human resources department and discovered it was a fake document.”
The big steal
Far and away the most brazen scheme Levin engaged in is the one that led to his fraud conviction in 2024. Having left Scentre Group he turned his sights on a reputable commercial property and asset management company, NMBE.
Says one of the company directors, “This fraud was calculated, he [Levin] falsified documents, had unsuspecting tenants pay bank guarantees into his personal accounts—guarantees our company was forced to repay—and he generated fake invoices.
“Upon an audit of payments we discovered ten transactions, valued at more than $320,000, paid into companies we believe were ultimately controlled by immediate family members.”
In total NMBE says Levin’s fraud, which ran from 2017 until 2021, amounted to more than $2 million. The company successfully pursued bankruptcy proceedings against Levin concluded in June 2026. At the time of writing Levin is an undischarged bankrupt with an Australian Financial Services Authority creditor list showing he has debts of over $347,000.
Responding to questions from APAC Business Review, NSW Police confirmed, “In January 2026, officers attached to Kings Cross Police Area Command commenced an investigation following reports of an alleged online scam.”
The allegations in this article were put to Levin in email and SMS messages. In an SMS message he responded saying, “Never heard such crap in my life this is beyond [sic]”. In a follow up email response, he did not comment on questions related to criminal convictions and denied all other allegations.
Editor’s Note: APAC Business Review has obtained documents, images, video and audio messages that support the allegations of those quoted in this article. For privacy reasons, some have asked for their identities to remain anonymous.
