More people are set to come forward as convicted fraudster Darron Levin is charged with multiple counts of deception, impersonation, and intimidation. Marcus Reubenstein reports.
In July, MWM reported on Darron Marc Levin, who’d allegedly been duping investors into buying pieces of a fictitious property in the upmarket Sydney suburb of North Bondi. Last week he was arrested and charged with swindling six victims out of $650,000. At least five more people are likely to come forward.
At 7 am on Tuesday, August 25, heavily armed police from the ODIN special operations group came knocking on the door of Levin’s luxury apartment in Sydney’s Potts Point. They were joined by detectives who arrested him on 31 charges, including obtaining financial advantage by deception, impersonating a solicitor and attempting to stalk and intimidate intend fear of harm in a person.
NSW police have confirmed the investigation is ongoing.
Threats and intimidation
One of the charges is for threats made against 41-year-old single mother of two, Sissi Wang, who had exposed Levin two months earlier in a viral social media video. A defiant Wang, who alleges she was scammed out of $30,350, also posted audio of one of those threats in which Levin can clearly be heard threatening to blow up her home.
Wang, a successful photographer with more than 1.6 million social media followers, told MWM, “As soon as my video appeared on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, the threats began. He first said he would financially destroy me and that his lawyers would get millions of dollars out of me for defamation.
“Then he directly threatened me and my family. I was genuinely scared, so I went to the police.”
NSW Police arrested Levin the day before a MWM investigation into him was published. He was served with an apprehended domestic violence order and was also criminally charged for threats he made against Wang.
He appeared in Manly Court on August 11, where he was granted an adjournment for the matter to be heard at Sydney’s Downing Centre in September. That charge has now been joined with the other offences for which he was arrested on August 25.
In total he’s alleged to have robbed unsuspecting investors of $652,350. NSW Police allege they found an estimated $2.5m in luxury watches and jewellery in his apartment, and that these were bought with the proceeds of crime.
He was charged with offences against six individuals; MWM has spoken to four others, who allege they’d paid Levin a combined total of $151,000. They say they have, or are about to, file reports with NSW Police.
A debt collector for two other women he’d met on dating websites says one, allegedly owed $10,000, has contacted police, while the other, who says she lost $18,000, is considering coming forward.
Impersonating a solicitor
As the matter is now before the courts, police will not confirm the details of the charges against Levin. However, the allegation that he impersonated a solicitor likely stems from correspondence he sent to individuals, purporting to act on behalf of a Sydney law firm.
In June 2026, Levin forwarded a copy of an email to an associate, using the firm’s email signature, claiming that $26m in funds had just been released from a trust account to DML Corp, a company name that does not appear on the ASIC register.
Two months before Levin’s arrest, the principal of that law firm confirmed to MWM the email was a fake and that they had been contacted by NSW Police detectives in relation to other correspondence in which it was claimed he’d conducted business through legitimate law firms.
Image supplied
Bail denied
At his bail hearing a contrite looking Levin appeared via video link, handcuffed in a small cell in the Surry Hills police centre. Police prosecutor Sergeant Ashlee Fraser outlined a string of previous convictions and breaches of intensive corrections orders (ICO) when asking the court to deny bail.
Unlike his 2024 fraud conviction, when Levin was given a suspended sentence and walked out of court, Judge Daniel Covington said he was a danger to the community if sent back on the streets. He outlined that Levin had a history of violent offending with two convictions of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and two convictions for AVO breaches against a former partner.
A number of alleged crimes, for which he’s now been charged, occurred whilst serving suspended sentences for both fraud and assaults. At the time of his arrest, Levin was serving an ICO that is not set to expire until January 2027.
“The charges are serious,” said Judge Covington, “the allegations are sophisticated and involve planning. “I’m concerned about the sophistication in terms of the offending while subject to an ICO – there has certainly, on the face of it, been evidence of further offending.”
In denying bail, Judge Covington said there was a risk of Levin interfering with witnesses, the evidence against him was substantial, and there was a high probability of imprisonment if found guilty. The Director of Public Prosecutions will now take over the case and Levin will next face court on September 10.
New charges likely
Among those making fresh allegations is 31-year-old German national Lennart Rothe, who claims he invested $11,000 into the fake property scheme for which Levin was arrested and charged.
Rothe, a waiter in a Potts Point restaurant Levin frequented, says Levin struck up a relationship with him over a number of months. When he learnt Rothe was working hard to save up to start a new business, Levin offered him a chance to invest in a property deal in the eastern Sydney suburb of North Bondi.
In a message headed “Without prejudice, save on cost”, he offered a $13,000 stake for a $26,000 return in 90 days, telling Rothe,
Money is guaranteed and I will guarantee the return as disclosed.
Levin told him he was buying a tranche in a $1.9m debt on a property for which he had already secured a $4.57m buyer.
Says Rothe, “I went online to check out Darron’s credentials, and he appeared to be a successful businessman. His LinkedIn profile listed a number of senior roles and included that he held an MBA from UNSW—which I later found out to be a lie.
“There were also media reports in property industry publications announcing that he’d been a top finance industry executive. I could find nothing to say he wasn’t legitimate.”
When Rothe began pressing Levin for the return of his money, he says a series of promises escalated into threats: “He became agitated and aggressive and told me he was part of the Alameddine crime family [one of Sydney’s most notorious organised crime families]. By that stage I realised he was a conman and nothing he said could be believed.”
“Successful and trustworthy”
Another victim was his 22-year-old hairdresser who’d borrowed $40,000 from her parents to invest with Levin. The woman, who did not want to be identified, says, “Darron was always coming into the salon wearing designer clothes and a number of different Richard Mille watches. We asked him what he did, and he said he buys and sells things.
“Later he came to me and said, ‘I have a business opportunity, you’re young, and it’s good to invest while you are young’, so I thought I was investing with a successful, trustworthy man.”
Levin offered her the North Bondi property deal, she paid him in November 2025 and after the 90-day maturity period on her investment had come due he offered excuses as to why she hadn’t been repaid. His most recent voicemail to her was on August 10, two weeks before he was arrested and charged with fraud.
As with Wang, whom he met on the Bumble dating app, over the years Levin appears to have targeted numerous women, mostly single mothers. Hours after walking out of Manly Court on August 11, for his AVO hearing, he messaged a single mother he’d met on Bumble, asking: “What you doing babe.”
Another woman he’d met through a dating app attempted to retrieve her funds through a debt collector. She was eventually referred to Marc Eckley, a UK-based expert in global financial fraud, who took on the case without asking for payment.
Well-planned crimes
Says Eckley, “I quickly realised Levin is a predator of the worst kind. It’s not just the financial damage but the emotional hurt he caused the women he targeted. Most of them, I subsequently discovered, were vulnerable single mothers.
“The judge in his bail application was right when he said his (alleged) crimes involved a great deal of planning. From my investigations, it’s clear there are many more victims, and closure for some of them is still a long way off.”
It appears not even his family is immune. In a letter to Eckley from her lawyer, Levin’s sister, Brady Yoshia, the principal of the well-known residential real estate agency Brady Marcs Buyers Advisory, says she is also a victim. Yoshia alleges Levin stole her American Express card and made a $5,000 payment on June 19 without her knowledge. Yoshia’s lawyers told Eckley she reported her brother to police before his arrest.
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Marcus Reubenstein is an independent journalist with more than twenty-five years of media experience. He spent five years at Seven News in Sydney and seven years at SBS World News where he was a senior correspondent. As a print journalist he has contributed business stories to most of Australia’s major news outlets. Internationally he has worked on assignments for CNN, Eurosport and the Olympic Games Broadcasting Service. He is the founder and editor of Asian business new website, APAC Business Review..