Halfway through watching the hit Netflix series The Tinder Swindler, I realised I was cheering on the swindler Simon Leviev, who won me over with his ingenuity.

I had the same reaction to Jason Arday. ‘Go on my son!’ I heard myself exclaiming as I waded through the outraged coverage of the former Cambridge professor’s extraordinary exploits.

Whether or not he even knows it, Jason Arday played the rotten, elitist, box-ticking, minority and sick note obsessed education regime brilliantly

Whether or not he even knows it, Jason Arday played the rotten, elitist, box-ticking, minority and sick note obsessed education regime brilliantly

When it got to the bit about him running nine marathons with a broken leg it occurred to me that anyone who did not appreciate this saga for its daring and scope was just plain anti-enterprise.

Anyone who is offended by the improbable adventures of the youngest black professor in Cambridge’s history is missing the point. Jason Arday played a very bad system that deserved to be played. That is why the row over his credentials reminds me of the Tindler Swindler furore, when Israeli businessman Shimon Hayut, who changed his name to Simon Leviev, provoked worldwide feminist outrage after playing women, and dating apps, at their own game.

Leviev would entice a woman by posting pictures of himself on a private jet, then, a few dates in, he would ask her for money in some plausible emergency and use that money to hire the next private jet to entice the next woman, and so on. What was impressive was that he kept reinvesting the money given to him by women who thought they’d bagged a rich man to grow his scheme exponentially. He had vision.

The same could be said of Frank Abagnale Jr who........

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