Fake heiress Anna Sorokin, 31, whose shameless fleecing of New York society to the tune of £51m was turned into a Netflix hit, is flogging ‘artwork’ she made behind bars for up to £18,000 a piece as she looks for ways to cash in after agreeing her release
On hearing the news this week of her imminent release from Orange County Correctional Facility in New York state, an excited Anna Sorokin wasted no time making plans.
Having spent more than three years behind bars after conning her way through New York high society by posing as a wealthy German-born heiress, the 31-year-old has finally been given permission to leave her prison cell and live on bail under house arrest while U.S. authorities decide whether to deport her.
But first there is the matter of finding a place to live. Not for Sorokin some down-at-heel New Jersey bail hostel. The Mail has learnt she has put her once Louboutin-clad foot firmly down and told her new ‘management team’ that her home must ‘preferably be in Manhattan’ and should have at least three bedrooms.
It’s an outrageous demand for a woman who, earlier this year, was granted ‘poor person’s relief’ by the U.S. judicial system on the basis that she was penniless and couldn’t afford her legal bills.
Not only that, but far from facing life as an outcast, we can reveal that Sorokin has an army of cheerleaders ready to come to her aid.
On hearing the news this week of her imminent release from Orange County Correctional Facility in New York state, an excited Anna Sorokin wasted no time making plans
But such hubris will come as no surprise to the dozens of victims she defrauded — not to mention the millions of TV viewers who watched her mind-blowing life of deceit unfold on screen in the hit Netflix series Inventing Anna. And with her regulation prison jumpsuit not yet consigned to the dustbin, there are worrying signs that the sociopathic conwoman is plotting a huge comeback.
This week, the Mail spoke exclusively to several members of her inner circle, all of whom paint a picture of a young woman who is determined to reinvent herself.
‘It’s frustrating when people still see her only as a scam artist because she’s more than that,’ says Chris Martine, Sorokin’s ‘art dealer’. More, later, of Sorokin’s ‘artwork’ — a collection of somewhat childish-looking pencil drawings — the originals of which are about to go on sale for up to £18,000 a pop.
Martine adds: ‘She acknowledges that some things she did were wrong, but now she wants to continue to pursue her vision in the world of art and fashion.
‘I think if you give her six months to a year, then you will see that she’ll prove all the haters wrong.’
There is no sign of Sorokin wanting to start afresh somewhere quietly.
Investigations by the Mail reveal that Sorokin has taken on the £27,000-a-month top ‘crisis management’ publicist who represents disgraced Hollywood director Harvey Weinstein.
A member of Weinstein’s legal team, former prosecutor Duncan Levin, is also representing Sorokin who, calling herself Anna Delvey, pretended to be an oligarch’s daughter before defrauding her elite victims out of £245,000.
Having spent more than three years behind bars after conning her way through New York high society by posing as a wealthy German-born heiress, the 31-year-old has finally been given permission to leave her prison cell and live on bail under house arrest while U.S. authorities decide whether to deport her
‘Some people, having been in jail for so long, would be chastened and want to keep a low profile, but that’s not the way Anna’s mind works,’ says another who has worked with her.
‘She remains completely delusional and thinks she’s a superstar.’
Perhaps one of the toughest conditions of Sorokin’s release is that she is forbidden from posting on social media, something she used prolifically for self-promotion.
While in prison, she has used a New Jersey DJ to post to her 1 million Instagram followers, but, according to her bail conditions, she can’t ask third parties to do that while on bail.
According to another former associate: ‘It’s like a drug to her. She’s utterly addicted to social media. It’s the oxygen that brings “Anna Delvey” to life.’
Nevertheless, her publicist Juda Engelmayer told the Mail that Sorokin is ‘excited and anxious’ about her impending release.
Her client had spent three years in jail for larceny and theft before being released early for good behaviour in February 2021.
She was re-arrested in March 2021 and has been in U.S. Immigration custody ever since, after refusing to accept that she overstayed her visa and must return to Germany. She grew up there with her parents Vadim, who runs an underfloor heating company, and Svetlana, and a younger brother.
‘She’s excited because she’s been fighting for this, but she’s also anxious because she still has to fight deportation,’ says Engelmayer.
‘She’s been in detention for 17 months, but she isn’t a threat, nor is she a flight risk and she deserves the chance to rebuild her life here.’
Not everyone will agree. Sorokin spent three years dressing in expensive designer clothes, dining at fine restaurants and helping herself to what she wanted.
In her wake, she left a trail of unpaid rent, hotel and credit card bills, bounced cheques and empty promises to the ‘friends’ who’d loaned her money, believing the ‘super-wealthy Anna Delvey’, who often claimed her credit card wasn’t working, could repay them.
She was arrested in October 2017 after Vanity Fair photo editor Rachel DeLoache Williams went to the police claiming she’d been swindled out of £55,000, and assisted with their sting operation.
Sorokin, she said later, had ‘an enigmatic otherness that was strangely captivating’ and ‘steel blue eyes that fixed like a snake on anything she wanted’. It was a demeanour that snared many.
As recently as March this year, California-based artist Julia Morrison says she put down around £7,000 of her own money to help stage a ‘Free Anna’ art show in New York and still has not been paid back.
The show featured sketches Anna drew in her cell that were adapted to large-format pieces by artist Alfredo Martinez. (Martinez was jailed for 21 months in 2002 for making and selling forgeries of works by the late U.S. artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.)
Morrison tells the Mail: ‘When the organisers failed to pay me back, I got in contact with Anna in prison and asked her to intervene, but she showed no empathy whatsoever.
‘Eventually she ghosted me and now, with interest, my credit card debt is around £9,000. I wanted to help her, but I don’t think she cares about anyone except herself.’
A spokesperson for Sorokin stressed she had not made any agreement with Morrison, and stopped communicating with her because there was nothing she could do to assist. Martinez has said she will get paid in due course.
Sorokin’s chequered past is also causing problems for those attempting to help her find somewhere suitable to stay — a strict condition of her bail.
A German TV company is said to have put down a deposit on a place and offered to pay her rent — likely to be around £8,000 a month in Manhattan. But the owner, having discovered the identity of the prospective tenant, swiftly backed out of the deal.
Once her accommodation woes are sorted, Sorokin will be out — fitted with an electronic tag.
Then she will have the biggest fight of all; for she is desperate to avoid being deported to Germany, where her family moved from Moscow when she was 16.
So desperate that until now she has preferred to fight deportation from a U.S. prison cell rather than return to Europe, where she would be free.
Born in 1991, the same year the Soviet Union collapsed, she is, in many ways, the product of the ruthless and chaotic scramble for wealth and riches which followed as communism collapsed.
Sorokin’s 59-year-old father, Vadim, told the Mail last year that he moved his family to Germany for a better life but encountered a culture of ‘mass consumption’.
His daughter got the best of everything: private dancing lessons, French and English lessons and, as she grew older, expensive clothes.
‘She always wanted to make herself beautiful,’ he said. ‘She attached a lot of value to clothes.’
It was only a matter of time before Anna outgrew the small town of Eschweiler near Cologne.
Sorokin’s chequered past is also causing problems for those attempting to help her find somewhere suitable to stay — a strict condition of her bail (Pictured: Julia Garner)
Perhaps one of the toughest conditions of Sorokin’s release is that she is forbidden from posting on social media, something she used prolifically for self-promotion
First, she set her sights on Berlin, where she was taken on as an intern for a fashion PR agency in 2012. Last year, her former boss Janine Fischer described how Anna quickly became captivated by the fashion world.
‘She soaked it all up. I think she tasted blood and realised that this was what she wanted to go into.’
From Berlin she went to Paris, where she interned for a fashion and art magazine. Then, in 2013, Sorokin travelled to the U.S. on a three-month visa to attend New York Fashion Week and never left. Her father told the Mail that if his daughter is deported, there is a place for her back at the family home.
‘She can come here,’ he said. ‘I just don’t know what she will do exactly.’
Returning to Germany is the last thing Sorokin wants. She has in the past claimed asylum in the U.S., insisting her life would be at risk in Germany following death threats.
Yet given her criminal record, it is hard to see how Sorokin will win her appeal against deportation. She has shown little remorse for her crimes.
The day after her fraud conviction, she told the New York Times: ‘The thing is, I’m not sorry. I’d be lying if I said I was sorry for anything.’
On another occasion, she bragged: ‘Crime pays, in a way.’
In an interview given to the Mail while she was on release last year, she boasted: ‘Kim Kardashian got famous for a sex tape and I got famous for being smart and doing something.’
But in the same conversation she also admitted: ‘I’m not proud of what I did. I thought I was so smart and everyone else was so stupid.’
And she claims she used the £300,000 paid to her by Netflix for her life story to repay some of her victims.
Arguing against her deportation, her previous lawyers have gone so far as to say she is ‘truly a force of change that Americans can believe in and a source of inspiration for those who have fallen to believe they can get back up again’.
On deportation matters, Sorokin is being represented by Washington-based lawyer John Sandweg, himself a former director of Immigration and Customs enforcement. His eye-watering fees, believed to be around £900-an-hour, raise further questions about who is bankrolling Sorokin and why?
For given how keen those around her appear to be when it comes to putting their hands in their pockets to save her, they clearly believe she has a future — and a lucrative one at that.
‘She’ll have to work, but she’s not going to be a barista at Starbucks or work in a supermarket,’ says Sorokin’s former associate.
There is no doubt she’s retained her ability to beguile — and it’s unlikely her ambition will be dimmed.
Art dealer Chris Martine describes her as a ‘warrior and an inspiration’. He says the 21 original artworks Sorokin created in prison are going on sale for between £13,000 and £18,000.
While in prison, she has used a New Jersey DJ to post to her 1 million Instagram followers, but, according to her bail conditions, she can’t ask third parties to do that while on bail
Prints of sketches with titles such as ‘No Regrets’, ‘Not Guilty’, ‘Delusions of Grandeur’ and ‘You’re Not Who You Pretend To Be Either’ are being sold in print runs of 500 for £250 each.
Martine insists that many of her admirers have already bought prints.
‘We’ve sold thousands,’ he claims. ‘She’s very talented, but these artworks were created in prison where she only had water-colour paper and pencils. When she’s out, she’ll have better opportunities at making more art.’
He said that he had spoken to Anna on the phone shortly after she heard she was to be released.
‘I could hear the relief in her voice. She said words to the effect that things were finally going her way but that she wouldn’t believe it until she was out.’
Sorokin’s lawyer Duncan Levin says that his client is ‘extremely gratified’ by the court’s decision to release her this week and praised the judge for recognising that she was ‘not a danger to the community’.
But as with everything to do with Sorokin, the future for those who put their faith in her is a gamble.
On the one hand, the high drama of recent months has provided ample fodder for another Netflix series.
On the other, as one of her former associates told the Mail: ‘She’s burned a lot of bridges in New York. It will be interesting to see how the art world and the social circuit regard her now. I think most of them will run a mile.’
Yet it would be unwise to underestimate Sorokin. When asked last year if she intended to make more money legally than she had fraudulently, she insisted: ‘I’d be stupid not to.’
As she observed of her business acumen: ‘I still have the same skill-set. I just didn’t apply it the right way.’
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