Between documentaries, fiction series and based on real cases, the niche of fictions that revolve around scammers has become a real streaming boom. In times of social networks, where reinventing oneself and even creating a distorted image of oneself for the world is common, and where claiming the self above the rest is a mantra, these characters that give an extra twist to fantasy to become into criminals, manipulating and robbing everyone who crosses their path, they have managed to become stars.
advanced
The above is the coincidental engine of the documentary directed by Felicity Morris, “The Tinder Scammer”, and the series “Inventing Anna”, based on the case of Anna Delvey, the new Netflix hits. Produced by Raw TV in conjunction with AGC Studios and Gaspin Media, “The Tinder Scammer” revolves around the female victims of Simon Levyevthe Israeli Shimon Hayut, who pretends to be the son of a diamond industry tycoon (Lev Leviev), and seduces Scandinavian women from whom he ends up asking for money to “save his life”, alleging that they persecute him and that he needed your help to survive.
But Shimon used that money to live large (it is estimated that he stole more than US$10 million with his Ponzi scheme), until his victims discovered the truth and denounced him: he was sentenced to 15 months in prison (of which he turned just over five) and today he lives from his world fame: his Instagram is still active and he swears that he will soon tell his version of the story.
Back in his native Tel Aviv, he grants paid interviews to different channels, swears that he has become rich by investing in bitcoin, and announces that he will start his own dating program -today he already offers his coaching tips to win the world – and will present a podcast with their stories. While a spinoff is expected: “The Instagram scammer”, which an Argentine director would be ready to shoot.
Heiress
Like Hayut, Anna Sorokina twentysomething German born in Russia, pretends to be the millionaire heir to a fortune of 60 million dollars, to live in style in New York, staying in five-star hotels and traveling the world, attending exclusive parties and luxury restaurants without paying a single peso, while seeking to create a supposed art foundation so that the banks would make millionaire loans to him.
“Inventing Anna” follows Anna Delvey, played by Julia Garner who had already been a scammer in “Ozark”, and the journalist Jessica Pressler, who interviewed the scammer for New York Magazine in 2018, telling how the young woman had managed to defraud the most important branches of business and New York society . Produced by Shonda Rhimes (“Scandal”, How to Get Away with Murder” and “Bridgerton”, among others), “Inventing Anna” counts, unlike “The Tinder Swindler”, with the permission of Delvey, who even interviewed with Garner in jail to build the character.
“It became clear to me that Anna is a very private person. He keeps his cards extremely close to his chest. And I didn’t expect her to answer any of the questions I asked her, so I just wanted to get her spirit and energy and bring it into the show,” Garner said, changing her hair, getting false teeth and other prosthetics, and carefully crafting an accent. German in the Russian way but Americanized to look like.
Sentence
Sorokin was convicted in May 2019 on eight counts, and was sentenced to twelve years in prison. She was fined $24,000, she was ordered to repay another $200,000, and she served just under four years when she was released for good behavior in February 2021.
But she was arrested again for violating the times of her visa in the United States: from prison she wrote an essay for Insider reflecting on her time in prison and her opinion on the Netflix program. “After nearly four years of preparation and hours of phone conversations and visits, the program is told from the perspective of a journalistSorokin muttered.
“I can’t help but feel like an afterthought, the grim irony of being confined to a cell in another horrible prison lost between the lines,” concluded the scammer who felt cheated by Jessica Presslerthe journalist to whom he told his ruse, and who appears in the series reverted as Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky).
Pressler, who also wrote the story that inspired the 2019 film “Hustlers” with Jennifer Lopez, also served as a producer on “Inventing Anna”, where he reflects his “drive to satisfy the endless curiosity that is in his brain”. And a certain attraction to Sorokin who was “very, very close to getting the funding to launch the art of the Anna Delvey Foundation.” “He’s smart,” says Pressler.
“And she wants people to see her as a real business person. She is also driven by a deep fear of failure, and behind that is a person struggling with her identity. She is something on a large scale that she sees every day with social networks, ”summarizes the journalist.
Scale
The story of elizabeth holmesformer director of the company Theranosbecame world famous last month when she was sentenced to 20 years for taking the scam to another scale: she raised more than $1 billion from investors in a startup that promised to revolutionize medical services.
AND “The Dropout“, the series that will arrive on Star+ on March 3, recounts the path of the supposed visionary, and how she managed to convince the most powerful players in Silicon Valley that she was the possessor of artificial intelligence that would transform the health industry.
Produced by Hulu and based on research from the abc podcast About Holmes and Theranos, the miniseries follows Holmes (Amanda Seyfried of “Mamma Mia!”) from her teenage years as the ambitious daughter of a disgraced Enron executive (Michael Gill) to her rocky days at Stanford, her meeting with manipulative businessman Sunny Balwani (Naveen Andrews) and building her company.
Showrunner Elizabeth Meriweather (“New Girl”) and director Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick”) dig into both the pathos and absurdity of each wild story twist convincingly covering nearly 20 years of episodic material. that do not exceed the hour (at least in seven of the eight: the end reaches 90 minutes).
Hook
Unlike “Inventing Anna”, “The Dropout“Resists the urge to hold a giant mirror up to its viewer to demand that they examine themselves too, and succeeds where the Netflix series doesn’t: by creating a razor-sharp portrait of a haunting woman.
At the same time, Theranos becomes a runaway train perfectly set to music: Alabama’s song “I’m in a hurry” (And I don’t know why) and Amy Winehouse in “Back to Black” set the mood, from adrenaline to fall And Seyfried manages to embody that manic drive and desperation to win that makes every scene viscerally effective: he manages to make the character’s evolution believable, from the young woman who worships Steve Jobs to the trickster who fleece the most powerful men in the world selling them his vision with a religious fervour.
A captivating story of which HBO would already prepare its own version, while awaiting the premiere of Theranos’s film, starring Jennifer Lawrence and directed by Adam McKay, the new “Grand Swindle” that Hollywood doesn’t want to miss.
by RN
Image gallery
