Rabat – The life of the infamous scammer Anna Sorokin was intriguing to people, with many especially marveling at how she managed to get her way through unpaid bills in luxurious hotels.
The con artist, known as Anna Delvey, pretended to be a German heiress with a $60 million fortune and took a trip to Morocco in 2017 at the expense of her photographer friend, Rachel Deloache Williams.
“Inventing Anna,” the newly launched Netflix series, has revealed details about how Delvey stole the hearts of the New York elite — but also their money.
Born on January 23, 1991 in Domodedovo, 37 kilometers south of Moscow, Russia, Anna is the daughter of a truck driver father and a mother who owned a small shop before becoming a housewife.
At the age of 16, Anna and her family moved to Germany and after graduating from high school in 2011, she made her way to London to attend the Central Saint Martins art school; but she would later drop out of the art school to instead make her first steps in the much more exciting worlds of public relations and fashion.
Anna interned at a PR firm then moved to Paris to kick-start another internship for the fashion magazine Purple. During her time in Paris, Sorokin changed from the typical girl next door to a swindler, and started to go by the last name Delvey.
Anna the swindler
Delvey’s journey as a con artist began around 2013 when she attended the New York Fashion Week, slowly but steadily climbing into different social status while claiming to be a wealthy heiress.
Under the guise of starting her new business, a private arts club she called “Anna Delvey Foundation,” Delvey contacted several banks and associates to fund the business. In reality, they were funding her stays at luxirious hotels, her meals at expensive restaurants, and her countless trips abroad.
Among the victims who fell into the pitching of the catchy business trap were Aby Rosen, a German-American real estate tycoon and co-founder of RFR Holding, and Roo Rogers, a British-American entrepreneur, business designer and author.
Delvey swiftly broke into the circle of the New York socialite, leading a life full of luxury she funded with scammed cash.
In February 2017, she checked into the 11 Howard hotel in SoHo, a neighborhood in lower Manhattan and was known as a “generous cash tipper.”
The hotel management, however, found out there was no credit card on file for Delvey and urged her to settle the $30,000 bill.
In April 2017, she deposited $160,000 in fraudulent cheques into a Citibank account, from which she was able to retrieve $70,000 in usable funds and wired a portion of it to the hotel for the bill.
The 11 Howard decided to evict her as she refused to provide them with a credit card. A month later, she convinced Blade, an urban air mobility platform, to allow her to book a return flight to Omaha — without paying the $35,000 fee up front.
As Delvey had previously met with Blade’s CEO, Rob Wiesenthal, the executive team allowed her to extend credit. But in reality, she had sent them a forged wire transfer confirmation slip that was purportedly from Deutsche Bank.
After repeated failure to pay Blade’s bill, Wiesenthal reported Delvey to the police in August 2017.
The cursed trip to Marrakech
La Mamounia, a Moroccan hotel known for its courtly service and celebrity guests.
On May 13, 2017, Anna and three of her friends landed in Marrakech. Little did she know that her trip to Morocco would precipitate the end of her imaginary luxurious life.
Though she was the one who initiated the trip claiming that “all expenses are covered” at La Mamounia hotel, one of her friends, photographer Rachel Deloache Williams, ended up paying $62,000 on her behalf. Anna promised to pay her back, but of course, it never happened.
La Mamounia is a five-star luxury resort ranked among the best in the world. As of 2022, one night stay at La Mamounia starts at around MAD 5.000 ($534) and could amount up to MAD 80,000 ($8,555) for suits and riads.
Williams shared her misadventure with the con artist of Manhattan in an article she published in 2018, revealing that Anna had offered to cover for flights, hotel, and all other expenses.
“[Anna] reserved a $7,000/night private riad, a traditional Moroccan villa with an interior courtyard, three bedrooms, and a pool, and forwarded me the confirmation e-mail. Due to a seemingly minor snafu, I’d put the plane tickets on my American Express card, with Anna promising to reimburse me promptly,” Williams wrote.
With several events overlapping during their short stay in Marrakech, Delvey did not provide the hotel with a functioning credit card, resulting in Williams picking the tab alone.
The reality of Anna’s behind-the-scenes frauds was a shocking truth to Williams.
Read Also: Mamounia, the Hotel Where Anna Delvey Stayed is Real
Indictment
Anna was arrested in October 2017 and was accused of two counts of attempted grand larceny in the first degree, three counts of grand larceny in the second degree, one count of grand larceny in the third degree, and one count of misdemeanor theft of services.
She was also accused of falsifying documents from international banks, in addition to other charges related to the fraudulent loan application made to City National Bank and Fortress Investment Group, and the fraud incident in Morocco and unpaid hotels and restaurants bills.
Sorokin rejected a plea deal that offered three to nine years in prison in December 2018 and her trial began in March 2019.
She was found guilty of eight charges, excluding the attempted grand larceny in the first degree (of the loan application with City National Bank), and one of larceny in the second degree regarding the alleged theft of $62,000 from Rachel Williams in Marrakech.
She was given a sentence of 4 to 12 years in state prison with a $24,000 fine, and was ordered to pay restitution of about $199,000.
Anna Sorokin was released in February 2021 for good behavior. Six weeks later, she was detained by the Immigration and Customs Service (ICE) for exceeding the duration of her visa and is awaiting deportation to Germany.
Anna’s thoughts on ‘Inventing Anna’
In an interview with the New York Times, Sorokin said that her life changed immensely. Experiencing prison and being through the criminal justice system “exposed me to a whole different kind of a person, and my problems before just seem ridiculous,” she said.
Of the money she received from Netflix, Sorokin noted, “I paid $198,000-something for restitution, which I have paid off in its entirety and right away, and the rest of it to my legal fees.”
With much more to share about her story beyond what has been portrayed in the Netflix series, Sorokin revealed that she is working on multiple projects, mainly a documentary and a book about her time in jail.
