1. The Girl in Question
Anna Sorokin – AKA Anna Delvy – tricked New York City’s elite into thinking that she was a billionaire heiress. In real life, Sorokin had no multi-million-dollar trust fund. According to New York Magazine, her father is a former trucker, who runs a heating-and-cooling business. Nevertheless, She hired a private jet, went to all the best parties, and threw cash at everyone she saw; a $100 tip if you carried her bag or were her Uber driver. Anna was not afraid to live lavishly, even though she never actually had any money.
Image Credit: Rolling Stone
2. The Story
“Wannabe socialite busted for skipping out on pricey hotel bills”, read a July 2017 headlines in the New York Post. This was followed, in April 2018, by a confessional first-person piece in Vanity Fair by one of the magazine’s photojournalists, saying she had been hoodwinked by Anna. Anna first came to New York City to start an arts center. According to court documents, Sorokin represented herself as a German heiress with $60 million in assets to try to get a loan of $20 million for her foundation. She presented forged bank statements and deposited bad checks, then would withdraw the money before the checks bounced. Prosecutors said that, while she never managed to secure millions, she did get a temporary $100,000 overdraft with City National Bank, based on forged proof of foreign assets, but she failed to repay it. Instead, she went on a one-month shopping spree, spending $55,000 on a luxury hotel, high-end fashion purchases, sessions with a personal trainer, Apple, and other personal expenses. After her credit cards began to fail, repeatedly, she was kicked out of the luxury hotels she lived in and other people were left to pick up the bills.
Image Credit: The Cut
3. The Case
Anna’s lawyer claims that she never intended to commit a crime. “In her world, this is what her social circle did,” the lawyer told the jury. “Everyone’s life was perfectly curated for social media. People were fake. People were phony. And money was made on hype alone.” Following a month-long trial, Sorokin has now been found guilty of multiple offences, including stealing more than $200,000 after racking up debts and fraudulently trying to secure major bank loans. “As proven at trial, Anna Sorokin committed real white-collar felonies over the course of her lengthy masquerade,” District Attorney Cyrus Vance said in a statement announcing the conviction. Sorokin, who chose not to testify and pleaded not guilty, now faces up to 15 years in prison and will be sentenced on 9 May.
Image Credit: Rolling Stone
Anna Sorokin’s is the real-life version of the Leonardo Decaprio/Tom Hanks movie “Catch Me if You Can”. It’s clear that Anna must be very smart to be able to orchestrate this whole situation and it’s a shame that she hasn’t used that brilliance towards a legal way of increasing her quality of life. Anna seems like she could get a lot done if she “used her powers for good”. Hopefully this is a learning lesson for her and everyone involved with Anna. I hope that everyone who has been wronged by Anna receives a refund for the money spent and are not too terribly emotionally scarred from being taken advantage of in such an egregious way. This case is extremely interesting and I will be watching for what happens next at sentencing.