NOTHING WHO WANTED IT ALL F LUXURY
A BOGUS heiress jailed for conning pals, hotels and banks out of hundreds of thousands of pounds has landed a lucrative TV deal.
The outrageous life and lies of charismatic Anna Delvey are almost stranger than fiction and have proved irresistible to programme makers.
Top TV producer Shonda Rhimes – the woman behind period drama Bridgerton – is turning the tale into a Netflix series.
Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, was paid £230,000 in the deal.
She is now out of jail and again enjoying a champagne and caviar lifestyle.
When asked by the BBC if crime pays, she replied: “In a way, it did.”
Netflix has acted within the law and Sorokin has had to use much of the money to pay her debts to victims and the banks.
Imposter Sorokin, 30, began spinning her extraordinary web of lies when she moved to New York in 2013.
She posed as a superrich German socialite and she led an extraordinary life of luxury.
Deceptions
She pretended to be the daughter of a billionaire and claimed to have a $60million trust fund.
She partied with millionaires, artists and stars such as Home Alone’s Macaulay Culkin and travelled to Marrakesh, Morocco, in a private jet.
Sorokin stayed in fivestar hotels and would tip staff with hundred dollar bills. She looked like she had it all but, in fact, had nothing.
For several years she tricked money from businesses and even friends.
As her lawyer would say at her court hearing, she had tried to “fake it until she could make it”. The truth about Sorokin was far more mundane than she led people to believe.
Born in Russia and moving to Germany in 2007, she did not come from money. Her dad Vadim worked as a truck driver before running his own electric heating business in the small town of
Eschweiler near Cologne. He has now disowned her after her exploits.
In 2017, her deceptions caught up with her and she was arrested for leaving thousands of dollars of unpaid bills at two swanky New York hotels.
She was locked up in the city’s notorious Rikers Island jail, which has held the likes of sex offender film producer Harvey Weinstein and Beatle John Lennon’s killer, Mark Chapman.
Imposter
At her 2019 trial she was found guilty of theft of services and grand larceny, having scammed more than £145,000 from banks and luxury hotels.
Her lawyer, Todd Spodek, argued in court that Sorokin had tried to “fake it until she could make it” and had been “easily seduced by glamour and glitz” of life in New York.
She tricked pal Rachel Deloache Williams out of £45,000, money she borrowed on a trip to Morocco but would not pay back.
Rachel, who tells the story in book My Friend Anna, said: “I really liked Anna. And so it took me six months to realise that my dear friend was an imposter. Yet it was all happening right in front of me.
“She was so captivating. There was something about her, an enigmatic otherness.
“Those steel blue eyes that fixed like a snake on anything she wanted. Anna wanted it all. And she wanted it now.”
Sorokin was released from Albion Women’s Prison early in February after serving 20 months.
She plans to publish her jail diaries in book Life Is Hard, where she complains about the standard of food. In one extract she moans: “As if it wasn’t punishment enough – there are no organic vegetables here.” The Netflix series, called Inventing Anna, is expected to be released later this year. Emmy award-winning actress Julia Garner, who starred in Netflix crime drama Ozark, will play Sorokin.
Sorokin has revealed much of her fee from Netflix has gone to pay her debts, after being ordered to by a New York judge.
After her release from US prison in February, the con artist is already indulging in luxury again.
She has been posting photos of caviar and champagne parties with friends on social media.
A recent post shows a black leather purse full of dollar notes on the silk hotel bed of her luxury suite in the posh Flat Iron District of New York.
She is now regularly seen shopping and in hair salons – with outlets reporting she has been having her hair restyled every week since her release.
Sorokin was famously unrepentant for her crimes. The day after her sentencing, she said: “I’d be lying to everyone else and myself if I said I was sorry for anything.
I was taking shortcuts, in my mind I was not a
criminal
Those steel blue eyes fixed like a snake on what
she wanted
Outraged
“I haven’t met that many people who are like me.
“My ability to deal with stress is pretty high.
“People who freak out and are dramatic for no reason just annoy me.”
To this day, she does not consider herself a criminal.
She said: “I didn’t think everyone would be so outraged. I understood that I was taking shortcuts, but in my mind I never did anything criminal.
“It was unorthodox, but I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I’m probably going to go to jail’.
“At the time I thought it was a good decision and now it’s clear it wasn’t.
“I just have to deal with the consequences of my actions now. What else am I going to do?”
“If Rachel Williams feels I have to pay her back, she knows how to find me.”
But during a parole hearing last year she is reported to have finally apologised for her crimes.
“I just want to say that I’m really ashamed and I’m really sorry for what I did,” she said.