PicoBlog

Polina Pushkareva, who goes by Polina Nioly online, describes herself as a movie producer, millionaire, and immigrant who has “built a life Anna Delvey wished for”. Her IMDb page describes her as an influencer, model and actress who is “professionally competent in building a personal brand on social media”. In a video posted in September, she claimed her net worth was $8 million.

Critics describe her as a scammer and the next Anna Delvey. But who exactly is she, and what has she done to draw so much negative attention?

Her claims of being an influencer check out; she has over a million followers on Instagram and over 400,000 on TikTok, and her videos regularly receive hundreds of thousands of views, although many of the comments across her social media accounts read more than a little… bot-like. Her Hollywood bona fides, on the other hand, are significantly less substantial. Her sole acting credits are as “Female Radio Operator” in a recent Mickey Rourke movie nobody’s heard of, and Amy in an upcoming Ed Westwick thriller that she also executive produced. Unfortunately, zealous Wikipedia editors agreed that these credits did not render her a public figure, and her Wikipedia page was removed for “self-promotion without significance”. Ouch.

She also works as the CEO of Nioly Media Group, a social media marketing agency that she claims has over 150 employees; let’s ignore the fact that I could only find 4 on LinkedIn, one of whom is Polina herself. The company’s clientele includes “Hollywood actors, musicians, millionaire bloggers, aspiring influencers, and experts who sell their services online”. The primary case study it highlights on its website is Polina’s own social media empire.

In a recent interview published on the incredibly legit sounding Time Business News, a Vegas-based website that purports to cover business and entertainment news but that primarily seems to exist to allow people to publish their own articles or press releases, she shared the story behind her decision to establish Nioly Media Group. Brace yourselves:

“Last year on Richard Branson’s Island, I met the members of OneRepublic. We followed each other on Instagram and I ended up having more followers than them. I thought to myself, “How is this possible if the guys and their songs are known all over the world?”

I was very surprised and did some initial research on their social accounts as well as other major artists and celebrities. It turned out that many well-known people do not put effort into managing their social media presence. For those who care, it means they are leaving a lot of money on the table.”

Last year on Richard Branson’s Island, I met the members of OneRepublic. Last year on Richard Branson’s Island, I met the members of OneRepublic. Last year on Richard Branson’s Island, I met the members of OneRepublic.

What a sentence.

As of next year, it looks like Polina can add fashion designer to her resume, as she’s planning on releasing a line of underwear. The selling point of this underwear is that it comes in a box that unfolds into a rose, like one that she saw in a dream. Yes, really.

She also claims to be opening a restaurant next year in New York’s Financial District, something she was inspired to do after her personal chef took the weekend off, leaving her to fend for herself at 9am only to find nowhere was open. Doesn’t New York have a significant number of coffee shops? Starbucks and the like? Just get a coffee and a croissant mate, don’t open a restaurant about it.

Polina first made her way onto my For You Page in October, after a video showing her spending $7500 in Hermes without a care, because she “knew [she] could earn it back in two hours”, made waves, with several users suggesting she had to be involved in a multi-level marketing scheme.

Posts flaunting her wealth are standard for Polina, as are standard "here’s how you too can become a girlboss” type posts peppered with life advice like:

I have 5 life rules that made my life the way it is right now. Read the post and save them.

1. Always increase your income

Every month I need to earn at least a bit more than a month before. I have been following this rule since 2019, that is why my income is increasing so quickly.

4. Delegate

I delegate everything I can. I have a dog sitter for my dog, I have a chef, I don't iron or do all housework stuff. I completely free my time to work and create something new.

God! Why didn’t I think of simply increasing my income and getting a personal chef? This is why I’m not a millionaire by 29, I’m too stupid.

A user who specialises in TikTok influencer tea did some digging and found that one of Polina’s former employees, a personal assistant, filed a lawsuit against her earlier this year, alleging:

• That he was never given any paperwork stating his expected salary, the hours he was to work, the schedule or method of payment, notice in accordance with Federal or New York State labor laws, a W-2, or tax forms

• That he was promised a salary of $3500 per month, but received $2500 and $3000 in February and March of 2021 respectively, and was not paid at all for his work in July and August of 2021 (he received the agreed amount for his work during April, May and June)

• That when he was hired, he understood he would be working six days a week from 10am to 5pm, but was instead often asked to work until 8 or 9pm

• That he was not paid overtime, or given sick leave, either paid or unpaid

• That Polina committed acts of fraud while trying to purchase a house, including “altering bank statements to make it appear as though she was wealthier than she actually was”

• That he was asked to sign an NDA, but was advised by his lawyer not to as it contained bizarre conditions like a $200,000 fine any time he spoke about Polina in public

• That he had knowledge of her forging documents in her mortgage application for her home in Los Angeles

• That her finances were precarious, that she had asked to borrow money from him, and that she failed to pay other employees

• That she told him she had the money to pay for lawyers and he didn’t, that she would ruin his life, that he would be sent to jail and that he would be deported - he claimed to have recorded all of these statements

As of October 26, the parties have reached a settlement, but as the case involved claims arising under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the settlement needed to be approved, and the parties needed to make an application to that end by November 16. I cannot find any further filings regarding this case online, so I don’t know if they met that deadline or not.

In the aforementioned Time Business News interview, she said of claims online that she has “problems with taxes and with money in general”:

“It’s very hard for some people to accept that someone can be very successful at a young age, especially if they themselves are insecure about their own level of success.

I am absolutely calm about online criticism, I have nothing to hide. I am not faking my life or lifestyle, it would be impossible for me to do so. However, I don’t like to spend my time trying to convince strangers on the internet, it tends to be a lost cause.

It’s true that there are people who put out fake content or make money in questionable ways; however, that is none of my business and I simply try to focus on my company and my goals.

When it comes to online haters, I treat it as a tool. Similar to Google searches, the more people who talk about you, the faster your recognition and media exposure grows. While it can be uncomfortable, I see it as an opportunity.”

As for the comparisons to Anna Delvey, she says:

“To be honest, this doesn’t surprise me, since the Netflix show was such a hit. I tend to get a lot of comments from people who are suspicious about my standard of living and success. A lot of people don’t believe 25-year-old girls are capable of earning millions of dollars. To them, they assume there must be some sort of “sugar daddy” or fraud. This is pure misogyny. Some people are triggered by my success and feel better by saying that it is all fake. It’s much easier to continue sitting on the couch, criticizing a successful person because of envy and insecurity.”

So… is she legit? The answer, from what I’ve seen, is: it’s complicated.

If we learned anything from Inventing Anna, it’s that the appearance of wealth is almost as important as the actual existence of it - Anna Delvey got away with so many of her lies for so long because people believed she had the money to pay them back. It wouldn’t surprise me if the situation were similar not just with Polina, but with countless other influencers desperately flaunting their supposed wealth on TikTok and Instagram (if there’s one thing I learned from attending a private school, it’s that legitimately wealthy people are typically far more subtle than self-proclaimed millionaire influencers on Instagram).

She does run a social media agency, but can only point to one case study besides her own, which doesn’t inspire much confidence. Earlier this month, she posted a video where she claimed her company brought in $46,700 in one day:

Obviously, there’s no way to verify this, but I do find her self-congratulatory transparency an interesting strategy for getting ahead of any claims of nepotism or generally unearned wealth.

Much of her money seems to come from online courses aimed at her Russian audience; her most expensive offering, a course on promoting blogs on social networks, currently costs $165USD with a discount, and her cheapest, a personal branding intensive, costs just $20USD. Courses are an incredibly popular way for influencers to make money — much of Andrew Tate’s income comes from his Hustlers University courses, for example.

Many people assume she comes from money, but her narrative is that she’s entirely self-made; not just that, but that her parents (or at least her mother) were unsupportive initially but are now reliant on her as a breadwinner.

I think that unlike Delvey, Pushkareva does have sources of income; it’s just that despite being based in the US, much of Polina’s money comes from elsewhere - Russian influencer hopefuls, for example, and social media clients based in the UAE and Switzerland. Earlier this year, she was hiring people to create accounts for her in other markets in order to extend her reach, and she recently gave a lecture and threw herself a birthday party in Paris attended by fans that apparently cost $18,000USD. Whether her courses, lectures and strategy sessions are genuinely helpful is another matter entirely, however, but I would ask the same of most online courses and ‘inspirational’ lectures.

I also think that, like Delvey and many influencers who have made being wealthy part of their brand, it is entirely possible that she is exaggerating how wealthy she is in order to appear more successful and thus sell more online courses and bring in more clients. If the lawsuit filed by her former assistant is to be believed, this is indeed the case, although considering the lawsuit was settled and no criminal charges regarding any allegedly forged financial documents have been made, I can’t really make a definitive declaration, nor would I want to lest I run the risk of being sued.

I think that rather than speculating about whether or not she’s as rich as she claims, the focus should be on the allegations of worker exploitation and mistreatment. She claims to have over 150 employees around the world - are these employees being paid fairly and on time? Are they working normal hours and getting sick leave? Are they being threatened with deportation and asked to sign incredibly restrictive NDAs?

Perhaps these are questions that only an eventual Netflix miniseries can answer. It only took four years for Anna Delvey’s house of cards to come crashing down; whether Polina’s increasingly vast #girlboss empire was built to last remains to be seen.

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