A one-time manager at Scentre Group, the operators of Westfield shopping centres, convicted fraudster Darron Levin has for years been selling the same piece of an apparently fictitious multi-million-dollar property in Sydney’s affluent North Bondi to unsuspecting investors. Marcus Reubenstein reports.
Having just handed down a 21-month jail sentence—to be served as an intensive community corrections order—New South Wales district court justice, Timothy Gartelmann barely had time to return to his chambers at the Downing Centre complex and disrobe before the man who stood before him was apparently luring people into an investment scheme.
Arrested and charged with Dishonestly Obtain Financial Advantage by Deception in 2021, South African-born, Darron Marc Levin was found guilty in 2024. According to a Sydney man who alleges he paid $50,000 to Levin, three months before his sentencing he passed off a $90,000 cheque, returned due to insufficient funds.
That investor believed he had bought into a legitimate real estate investment in Penrith west of Sydney. He says he had known Levin and his family for years and thought Levin to have had a stellar professional career, including a stint as an executive at, Westfield shopping centre operator, Scentre Group. There is no suggestion of impropriety on Scentre Group’s part or that it had knowledge of Levin’s activities outside of the company.
He says, “Darron is well spoken, well dressed and always paid his bills. He forms relationships with people and then ‘goes to the well’ when he needs money.”
In June 2022, Levin is alleged to have promised a $90,000 return on a $50,000 property investment. With unquestioned faith in Levin, he paid $50,000 into a bank account without any agreement, terms or conditions.
He received a simple invoice—with no company logo, address, website, email or AFSL number—listing the service as “Acknowledgement of payment of off market acquisition.” Despite four years of promises from Levin, the man says his $50,000 has never been seen again.
Levin’s story was that he bought and sold distressed residential properties and offered friends and associates a major investment opportunity. Since 2025, he’d convinced investors that a home in upmarket North Bondi was soon to be consumed as an asset in a liquidation. He told them he’d swooped in before the receivers to buy out the property for $1.8 million having already found a buyer willing to pay almost $4 million.
His offer was for investors to buy tranches in that debt that, in some cases, would see them double their money in months once the sale was complete. It was the same story he’d told others.
In September 2025 Levin allegedly approached the owner of a café near his Sydney office. He had been a regular customer and offered the North Bondi deal. The man transferred $50,000 to Levin.
Says the owner, who asked not to be identified, “I had my reservations, but I viewed it as a high risk, high reward investment so I took a chance. The following day I got cold feet and asked for my money back.”
Promises from an undischarged bankrupt
The man says Levin made numerous verbal promises to repay him, one in a voicemail message sent on 19 June 2026—three days after he was declared bankrupt in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia, owing creditors more than $347,000.
Another of his alleged victims, whose matter has been reported to New South Wales Police, says he paid Levin $60,000 in May of this year.
That man, a cosmetic surgeon who had previously treated Levin’s now ex-wife, handed over a significant proportion in cash. Says the doctor who asked not to be identified, “Darron [Levin] told me that part of the buyout for the [North Bondi] property was for building contractors who would only accept cash.”
As with other transactions, the paperwork was apparently scant, but a sign in his surgery where the money was handed over indicates CCTV cameras are in use throughout the premises. APAC Business Review has viewed video, broadcast in part by the Nine network program A Current Affair, of Levin accepting the cash payment. Levin says, “A lot of these developers and lot of the guys I deal with prefer the cash, [be]cause there’s no tax.” The surgeon says a copy of that video has been handed over to New South Wales Police.
Several days later a female friend of Levin says he sent her a photograph on WhatsApp of twenty-five piles of 50- and 100-dollar notes on a dining room table with the caption: “Family hustle babe”.
The faux family man
An apparently devoted family man, his two children attend the prestigious Emanuel Jewish day school in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, where senior school tuition fees are over $40,000 per year. A woman who’d ended a short relationship with Levin at the start of this year says he portrayed himself as a pillar of Sydney’s Jewish community.
He wore designer clothes, expensive watches, once drove a Bentley Continental and ate at fine dining restaurants. His associates say he has an obsession with sending photos of himself, women he met on dating apps and his children to people who had bought into his investment schemes.
In June he left a voicemail message, obtained by APAC Business Review, to a man allegedly owed money. In it, Levin claims to be part of the notorious Alameddine crime family in Sydney’s west, and threatens to pass on that man’s personal details to them.
Romance, AVOs and assaults
Having been in a seven-month long relationship with Levin, single mother of two Sissi Wang says she handed over more than $30,000 to a man whom she trusted. “It was all a lie,” she says, “he used his children to gain my confidence by constantly sending photos of them and inviting me to watch their soccer games. They even played with my kids, making me believe he was serious about a committed relationship.”
The two met through dating app Bumble in March 2025 and while eventually drawn in by his charm, she was cautious in the early days. Wang has bank records of payments of $30,350 in four tranches. He claimed it was for an investment; she says she gave him the money, “Because I thought his business may have been in trouble and I wanted to help a friend out.”
Four weeks before they met, Levin had been found guilty and sentenced for Assault Occasioning Actual Bodily Harm against a former partner who’d taken out an apprehended violence order (AVO) against him in October 2024.
According to two other women, who asked for their identities to remain private, they had met Levin through dating apps Bumble and Hinge. This was over a period of time when he was serving a 23-month Community Corrections Order for violence against another woman. His current corrections order for assault against his former partner is not due to end until January 2027.
Legal threats
In response to a question over the allegations made by Wang, Levin sent a reply to APAC Business Review by SMS saying, “Highly recommended you stop in your tracks as it’s all fabricated false allegations as well one who is looking for exposure it’s beyond Its [sic] now in Supreme Court defamation.”
In a subsequent SMS reply he stated that Wang is “trying to get clout as exposure to get followers (fame and feel sorry) total lier [sic] been over year ago sad one needs to do things like this as deformation [sic] case $$$ she will be sorry over 30k She has been trying to blackmail since word go with exposure”.
A media spokesperson for the New South Wales Supreme Court says there is no record of a Statement of Claim from Levin lodged with the court.
Only after they broke up did she discover his criminal past, with jail time and convictions on at least four counts of assault and AVO breaches, as well as his conviction for fraud. In a voicemail message he’d left to a friend—obtained by APAC Business Review—he said he’d been imprisoned for seven months.
A spy or an organised crime associate?
Whilst claiming, to least two people he owes money, he is tied to organised crime, he told others he is an Israeli Defence Force member and received training from, Israeli intelligence service, Mossad.
The morning after the Bondi terror attack in December 2025, he sent Wang a WhatsApp message claiming to have been on the scene of the massacre working for a private Jewish community security company. A spokesperson for that company confirmed, “We have never heard of anyone called Darron Levin, we have no association with him.”
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.
