Anna ‘Delvey’ Sorokin: the real story of Netflix’s fake heiress
Socialite who conned businesses out of millions denied payment for TV series rights
Fake heiress Anna Sorokin will not be allowed to cash in a Netflix dramatisation of her life story, according to reports.
The wannabe Manhattan socialite has been jailed for to up to 12 years for conning businesses out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a series of scams, while posing as Anna Delvey, a fictional German billionaire heiress.
Russian-born Sorokin, 28, “falsely claimed she had a multimillion-dollar trust fund at her disposal” as she hired a private jet, attended elite parties and lived in a luxury New York hotel, the BBC reports.
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The case sparked interest worldwide following her arrest, in 2017, with TV companies vying to secure the rights to her story.
In June 2018, while awaiting trial at the Rikers Island jail complex, Sorokin struck a deal with Netflix worth an initial $100,000 (£80,000), plus tens of thousands of dollars for “consulting services” and royalty rights, The Times reports.
However, Vanity Fair reports that $30,000 (£24,000) paid to Sorokin up front went to her lawyer, Todd Spodek, for fees.
Now, prosecutors have asked a New York judge to stop Sorokin from getting any of the outstanding cash, invoking a state law that bans criminals from profiting off their own notoriety. The so-called Son of Sam law was enacted in 1977 to prevent serial killer David Berkowitz from selling his story.
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The state Attorney General’s Office argues that the money from Sorokin’s Netflix deal should instead go to those whom she conned.
“It has always been Ms. Sorokin’s intention to pay back her victims,” her lawyer told The New York Times. “I anticipate resolving the issue without further litigation.”
Vanity Fair adds that Justice Diane Kiesel - who handed down Sorokin’s prison sentence earlier this year - has already signed a restitution order “to the tune of $198,956.19, which would go, in part, to City National Bank, the bank that loaned her tens of thousands of dollars based on fake bank statements”.
As well as the issue of such restitution, there has also been much online debate over the severity of Sorokin’s sentence, with some complaining that Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr was especially hard on Sorokin because she is a woman.
But who is Anna Sorokin, and what can we read into her sentence?
Who is she?
Sorokin was born in Domodedovo, a suburb of Moscow, in 1991. She emigrated to Germany in 2007 at the age of 16, before moving to Paris in the early 2010s. The Cut says that it was around this time that she began calling herself Anna Delvey, and also claimed to be a German heiress to a fortune of billions.
Upon moving to New York in 2014, she began attempting to convince others of her wealth. She adopted the mantra of - as her lawyer put it during her trial - “fake it until you make it”, says The Guardian, and dressed in Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent.
In 2017, she convinced a close friend, Vanity Fair photojournalist Rachel Williams, to holiday with her in Morocco. The pair stayed in a five-star resort for $7,000 (£5,300) a night and racked up a $62,000 (£47,000) bill, but when it came to settling up, all of Sorokin’s cards were declined and she convinced Williams to foot the cost. Sorokin’s promise of repayment was never fulfilled.
Perhaps her most controversial move came when she allegedly attempted to obtain $22m (£17m) in loans using forged foreign documents in order to open an “arts and culture” club, which she said was her dream. Her application was rejected because the bank could not determine the source of her wealth, but she still managed to obtain a $100,000 (£76,000) loan, said prosecutors at her case.
Using the loan, she “hired a private jet, went to all the best parties, and threw cash at everyone she saw”, reports the BBC, which adds that she would often give a “$100 (£78) tip if you carried her bag or were her Uber driver”.
How did the scam end?
According to BuzzFeed, when the money ran out, Sorokin’s scam fell apart. She began to “rack up massive bills on rooms and restaurants, which she promised to pay for with wire transfers that would never actually show up”, the news site says.
In July 2017, at the Le Parker Meridien hotel, Sorokin ate and drank for up to six hours, before all her credit cards were rejected when she tried to pay, says The Independent.
“She then told hotel staff members that her aunt was on her way from Germany and would cover the bill,” the paper adds. “The police showed up instead and arrested her for nonpayment of a bill that was less than $200 (£153).”
What does her sentencing mean?
Sorokin was sentenced to between four and 12 years in prison in May this year, after a jury found her guilty of grand larceny in the second and third degrees, as well as a number of other charges. She was also fined $24,000 (£18,400) and ordered to pay roughly $199,000 (£139,000) in restitution, according to The Cut.
However, the site notes that she was found not guilty of the “most serious charge brought against her” - the allegation that she had faked records in an attempt to secure the multimillion-dollar loan. She was also found not guilty of stealing the $60,000 (£46,000) from Rachel Williams for the Morocco trip. Sorokin has been held at Rikers Island prison since October 2017.
Although Sorokin received her share of criticism for the scheming, some argued that her conviction was evidence of “women being punished more harshly than men for white-collar crimes”, Bustle says.
“For instance, Sorokin’s sentence is much longer than that of Kareem Serageldin, the only Wall Street banker who went to jail in conjunction with the 2008 financial collapse,” the news site adds. In 2013, Serageldin was sentenced to 30 months in prison after being found guilty of hiding $100m (£77m) in losses at Credit Suisse.
Writing in The New York Times, Ginia Bellafante points out that Manhattan district attorney Vance, who sentenced Sorokin, had opted not to press charges against Harvey Weinstein or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, two men who had been accused of sexual crimes.
Bellafante quips that Vance can now “claim victory in a high-profile case against a 28-year-old female immigrant who went after the things so many other people also seemed to acquire unscrupulously”.