Move over, Simon Leviev: meet the real Chagit Leviev-Sofiev, daughter of oligarch Lev Leviev, the Israeli diamond billionaire Netflix’s Tinder Swindler claimed was his dad
- Leviev-Sofiev has been pictured hanging out with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, while her dad Lev Leviev is said to be friends with Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump
- The diamond heiress moved to New York with her family to manage the Leviev Group USA as well as her dad’s prominent real estate firm Africa Israel USA
These days, the world can’t seem to stop talking about con artists thanks to Netflix’s back-to-back jackpots: The Tinder Swindler and Inventing Anna. The first is about Israeli con man Shimon Hayut, who is shown to have conned several European women he met on the dating app, leaving them with harrowing debts after posing as the son of Israeli diamond conglomerate Lev Leviev. While Shimon’s isn’t really a relation, the Leviev family is a real deal with businesses that span worldwide and their American branch is currently helmed by his daughter and businesswoman Chagit Leviev-Sofiev.
The diamond heiress is one of the nine children of oligarch Lev and Olga Leviev. Her father is known as the “King of Diamonds” and has a reported net worth of US$1 billion dollars. He owns “an integrated diamond outfit” with mines in South Africa and a jewellery boutique in New York, according to Forbes. His company Lev Leviev Diamonds (LLD) is one of the world’s largest diamond manufacturers and distributors.
Leviev-Sofiev currently resides in New York City and heads the Leviev Group USA, among other side businesses and philanthropic acts under her belt. So, what do we know about her?
She wants to make it on her own
The businesswoman grew up in Israel and Belgium before relocating to New York City in 2012. She started her career as a financial adviser at Deloitte Brightman Almagor in Israel and had a stint at the board of directors of Fox-Wisel.
“I knew that I was eventually going to join my father, but I didn’t want to run right in and people were telling me, ‘This girl came from college. She doesn’t know anything. She expects everything’. I wanted to avoid that,” she said during a podcast interview with PTex Group in 2020.
Before relocating, Leviev-Sofiev has already worked for her father as a CFO for another holding company. She was asked to expand the family business in the states, however, things didn’t start out smoothly as she needed some time for adjustment.
“Unfortunately, I was not welcomed in the businesses and that’s when I understood that they were not run in a certain way that we assumed they were,” she told PTex. She marched on and said that she learns the business market as she goes. “There’s no school in the world that can train you running an empire or running a small company or becoming a real entrepreneur.”