Who Was Anna Delvey's Real-Life Boyfriend?

Anna Delvey eventually achieved her life-long dream of living like a celebrity baller. However, it's doubtful she'd envisioned being immortalized as the "Soho Grifter." In 2018, New York Magazine wrote about a shady alleged German heiress who was actually born in Russia and wasn't an heir to anything. Oh, and it was really Anna Sorokin, not Delvey. She used the privilege that comes with a title and her grifting skills to facilitate a meteoric rise through New York's elite art and fashion world — and to steal an estimated $285,000 from friends, associates, and banks.

Once the game was up, Anna was banged up behind bars. She was forced to swap her fabulous haute couture for a one-piece jumpsuit in a ghastly shade of orange and her shiny Louboutins for plastic Crocs. Well, they do say that orange is the new black. Shonda Rhimes realized it was a story way too good to miss out on. She snapped up the rights and turned the scamfluencer scandal into a smash hit Netflix series, "Inventing Anna."

Ozark star Julia Garner landed the role of Anna, which she played to perfection, even nailing the "consistently inconsistent" accent. "This is probably the hardest job I've ever done," Garner told Elle. Meanwhile, Anna's fake life was laid bare on the screen. One aspect of it was her tech boyfriend, the fictional Chase Sikorski. But the character actually had a lot in common with Delvey's real-life ex-boyfriend.

It's amazing there are still things you don't know about Anna Delvey. Like, who was the fake socialite's real-life boyfriend? In "Inventing Anna," he's called Chase Sikorski and is a tech dude creating an app. As is often with tech start-ups, what the app does is a little hazy. Sikorski's Wake app supposedly "records your dreams." As Parade notes, it's an uncanny parallel with Hunter Lee Soik, another tech dude with an app that he talks about but never gets made.

In 2013, Soik launched a Kickstarter for Shadow — an app that records your dreams — and raised $82,577. The New Yorker ran a profile of the Korean-born tech dude. Soik was adopted at two and a half and moved to the U.S. He dreamed of being a pro skateboarder but settled on studying photography. Soik quit the Brooks Institute after three days. However, he was scouted by a talent rep, starred in a Coke ad, and launched a production company. Next, he developed apps for Stella McCartney before the idea for Shadow hit after working with Kanye West and Jay-Z.

Soik said he learned about dream psychoanalysis from "Freud and Jung, and Allan Hobson." Then he whipped up a web page asking people to "sign up" if they dug the app concept. "Two hundred and fifty thousand people visited within four weeks," he claimed. "Thirty thousand said they would take part." As of August 2022, the app still hasn't materialized, leading many backers to leave angry comments on Kickstarter.

Anna Delvey was flying high thanks to scamming New York's elite. She lived the life she'd always dreamed of until suddenly, there was no Delvey, only Anna Sorokin. She was given a four to 12 years sentence for her frauds and falsehoods. "The thing is, I'm not sorry," Anna told The New York Times. "I'd be lying to you and to everyone else and to myself if I said I was sorry for anything."

Insider reported that Anna was released from prison in 2021 after four years. She'd served two years pre-trial at Rikers Island and two at the Albion Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Anna was finally free, but not for long. She was locked up by ICE a short time later for overstaying her visa, and she's also facing deportation. "I lived out most of my adult life in NY, and a lot of my friends and support system are based in the US," Anna told Fox News.

Meanwhile, at least Anna doesn't have to worry about money now. According to Insider, Netflix paid her $320,000 for the rights to her story. Who says crime doesn't pay? However, it's unlikely Anna will be watching the series. In an op-ed for Insider, she wrote, "Even if I were to pull some strings and make it happen, nothing about seeing a fictionalized version of myself in this criminal-insane-asylum setting sounds appealing to me."