The 2022 Netflix miniseries, Inventing Anna, brings to life Jessica Pressler’s 2018 New York magazine article, “Maybe She Had So Much Money She Just Lost Track of It.” Based on true events, the series follows the unexpected rise of the faux socialite and con artist Anna Delvey — a pseudonym for Russian-born German Anna Sorokin, who relocated to New York City in 2014.
The show, created by Shonda Rhimes, explores the scammer’s time in New York, swindling hotels, investment firms, banks, and just about every rich resident of the Big Apple into handing her everything from large sums of cash to exclusive Moroccan vacations.
The show mainly follows Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky), a floundering journalist trying to unweave the complicated story of who Delvey (Julia Garner) actually is.
While the show is fictional, the fake German heiress’ story is completely true. She was arrested in 2017 with a subsequent conviction in 2019 by a Manhattan jury for larceny in the second-degree, theft of services and first-degree attempted grand larceny. The scam artist was sentenced to four to twelve years in prison and served 18 months in an ICE detention center.
On October 7, 2022, the New York Times reports she was released from the detention center and placed on house arrest in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan.
The drama introduces us to Delvey’s temporary boyfriend, who’s known as Chase Sikorski (Saamer Usmani) in the miniseries. Within this true story, however, lies plenty of fake names to protect identities or pseudo-real characters created to fill in gaps. So who was the real-life blueprint for the character of Chase? Enter Hunter Lee Soik.
Keep scrolling to learn more about the character — and his real-life counterpart:
In Inventing Anna, Delvey first sees the character when he gives a TED talk about Wake, a proposed start-up that tracks people’s dreams. Sparks flew, and the two entrepreneurs started a relationship. The two schemed together to use each other’s influence for their own gains, including a lie about being in Ibiza — and then purchasing tickets the next day to make the lie a reality. After convincing a prominent tech mogul to invest $100,000 in Wake, Delvey became Sikorksi’s partner in business and in love. However, when Sikorski snoops into the fake heiress' background, he learns that her name is Sorokin, not Delvey. For her part, Delvey wasn't too happy about her boyfriend's own lies, which included fabricating much of his past and not having the technology to make his business a reality … despite all the money he was taking from investors. The conning couple soon called it quits and Sikorksi fell off the grid in 2016 until reporter Vivian Kent (the fictionalized version of New York Magazine reporter Jessica Pressler) tracked him to Dubai to get his side of the story. WikiBiography/YouTube; poptech/YouTube
When Inventing Anna came out in February 2022, the real Anna Sorokin offered to divulge the identity of her real-life ex-boyfriend, teasing via Instagram, "Want to know who the real ‘Chase’ is? The media outlet with the highest bid gets the exclusive. Bid starts at 10K. DM to bid," she posted at the time. The man behind the curtain is Hunter Lee Soik, according to Page Six. In the New York Magazine article, Pressler refers to the boyfriend as a futurist who participates in TED Talk circuits. Courtesy of TED Archive/YouTube
The Korea-born, America-bred tech entrepreneur made his way to Wisconsin at the age of 2, according to a 2013 New Yorker profile on Soik. With initial dreams of skateboarding professionally in Los Angeles, California, he quickly realized his passion lay elsewhere. After short ventures in photography school, acting in a Coke commercial and producing for Vans, Soik finally wound up across the United States in New York for a job he landed with Stella McCartney’s company developing iPad apps. This experience led to the idea that made him famous. Courtesy of BBC News/YouTube
No, but it almost did. The actual name of the application was "Shadow," and was intended to "archive dreams of people around the world," Soik told The New Yorker. The idea for the app apparently arose a couple of years after Soik started working with McCartney. Soik worked for the team that put on Jay-Z and Kanye West’s "Watch the Throne" tour in 2011. After many sleepless nights, he took a much-needed vacation in Mexico — which is where he realized he wanted to save the dreams he was having on the trip in order to have them when his busy schedule resumed. After he searched for an app that could do just that and not being able to find one, he spent months researching everything he could about dreams. The idea for the Wake app began to garner interest and hundreds of thousands of people signed up on Soik's website. The app was set to be a combination of an alarm clock, a dream recorder and a data collector: A special alarm slowly wakes you up, then records your words or text and compares them to other peoples’ dreams all over the world. The purpose of this app was not only entertainment but research-driven. Goals involved concepts such as groundbreaking innovation, psychological analysis, and even premonition. Courtesy of BBC News/YouTube
New York Magazine wrote that Delvey’s mystery boyfriend ended up relocating to the United Arab Emirates after the two split in 2016. As depicted in Inventing Anna, Soik was residing in Dubai when journalist Jessica Pressler tracked him down for her 2018 New York piece. According to his LinkedIn page, Soik is now the Founder and Executive Chairman for ensō Group, a Hong Kong-based investment firm that invests in "breakthrough product experiences." While the futurist lists ensō Group as his current company, the website for said company no longer exists. Courtesy of poptech/YouTube
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