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Many people dream about the NYC socialite lifestyle: the riches, glamour, A-list parties — but infamous faux heiress Anna Delvey took it a bit overboard on her quest for the high life. Chances are binged Netflix’s original series Inventing Anna — created by the queen of juicy TV, Shonda Rhimes, starring Ozark’s Julia Garner. But did you know the TV series is based on an even crazier real-life story of glamour and scamming?
Anna Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, came from the small Russian village of Domodedovo before she got caught up in the glitz and glam of the elite world, starting with a Paris internship at the magazine Purple. Instead of working hard and climbing her way to the stop, she skipped a few steps. The phrase “Fake it until you make it” was truly her motto as she convinced everyone she knew that she was a millionaire heiress, about to be the next big thing in the socialite world, sharing her wealth with anyone who listened.
The only problem? She truly didn’t have a dime to her name and got her “wealth” from cheating both banks and people out of thousands of dollars. And it took years for anyone to catch on. If you want to do your homework since Delvey is now on Dancing with the Stars, let’s look back at the true story of Anna Delvey and her years of scamming.
Simple Beginnings
Born Anna Sorokin in Jan. 1991, Anna Delvey fell in love with the socialite life after her internship with the French magazine Purple, where she was invited to slews of A-list parties. Before this, she grew up in a small town near Moscow, Russia. Her father worked as a truck driver, later rising to executive positions in transportation and heating-and-cooling businesses, per Insider. He did this while her mother owned a convenience store before becoming a full-time housewife. They moved to Germany when Delvey was 16, but she quickly left the country when she could.
After a few parties while interning with Purple, she chose the name Anna Delvey for herself, and her parents have said they have no idea why she chose that name, according to the New York Times.
Her Beginning of High Life & Scamming
After some time in Paris, Anna Delvey went on to work at Purple’s office in NYC. NYC became her home, where she told everyone she was a German heiress whose family money was either in oil, technology, or solar, depending on who she was talking to. She shelled out hundreds of dollars for tips, events, and so forth. But how did she get this money? She created fake bank accounts, wrote bad checks for huge lump sums, and grifted whomever she could.
When it came to grifting, she’d take someone out to an expensive restaurant or trip, stick them with the bill, promise to pay them back later, and then give them a story about money being tied up.
The Anna Delvey Foundation & Bank Scamming
But how did she get this exorbitant amount? From the banks. She lied to different banks, saying she had millions in a Swiss bank account overseas, which led to her getting a $70,000 loan from Citi Bank, a $100,000 loan from Fortress Investment Group, and attempts at getting an additional $22 million from City National Bank, per Buzzfeed News. But once people started getting bad vibes, she’d pull out immediately.
Now, why did she want the $22 million in the first place? While thousands of dollars she stole covered her extravagant lifestyle, she wanted to start the “Anna Delvey Foundation” — also known as the ADF — which was her dream of making an organization to use as a restaurant and art space, according to Insider. Delvey was briefly working with Michael Xufu Huang on this, a millionaire art collector who originally said he’d help her open the ADF and get her into these extravagant parties. But more than once, she didn’t pay up, which planted the seeds of doubt, according to ArtNet News.
Karma Caught Up To Her
Delvey’s world started to crash when people started to catch on that she was never going to pay them back. Not only did Huang catch on, but so did the places she resided. It all started when she couldn’t pay her tab — upwards of $30,000 — from Soho hotel 11 Howard, and they kicked her out. She started jumping from hotel to hotel like the Howard Deluxe, the Beekman, and the W. But the breaking point was a trip to Morocco.
Delvey invited close friends of hers — a personal trainer, Vanity Fair‘s Rachel Williams, and a videographer hoping to create a documentary about Delvey setting up the ADF — for an “all-expenses-paid” trip to Morocco. As Williams later recounted in her explosive Vanity Fair article, Anna convinced her there was an issue with her cards and asked her to put down her own credit card to cover their stay in Marrakesh — assuring her the card wouldn’t be charged and Delvey would ultimately foot the bill as usual. But this time, that didn’t happen.
So Williams ended up paying the $62,000 bill — which was way more than her annual income. As Williams furiously tried to track down a reimbursement, she witnessed firsthand Delvey’s scam falling apart as unpaid bills mounted and Delvey had to run from her creditors.
Convicted & Justice for Victims
In July 2017, Anna Delvey was arrested for the first time for her failure to pay her huge outstanding hotel and restaurant bills. After an initial arraignment, she briefly left for California but was arrested a second time in October and extradited back to New York City to be held at Rikers Island Jail, where she stayed for 19 months.
In April 2019, Delvey was charged on eight counts including grand larceny, attempted grand larceny, and theft of services, and was sentenced to four to 12 years in state prison, owing around $200,000 in restitution to her victims. In Feb. 2021, Delvey was released from prison and a month later, was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) due to Visa issues. As of Sept. 2021, she’s still awaiting deportation back to Germany.
As for her victims: Rachel Williams ended up writing a bestselling memoir about her experiences with Delvey called My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress. And according to Insider, Delvey received over $320,000 from Netflix for her life story to be shown in Shonda Rhimes’ Inventing Anna, which went straight to all of her victims.
‘Inventing Anna’
Back in 2022, the show Inventing Anna hit Netflix, based on Delvey’s life, becoming the most-watched show that week with positive reviews. Along with that, there was a play called Anna X, starring Emma Corrin and Nabhaan Rizwan, which also told her story. The public grew even more fascinated with her.
Released on Bail & Her Legal Troubles Today
In a wild turn of events, in Oct 2022, she was granted a $10,000 bail bond and released from prison. Since then, she was placed on house arrest and electronic monitoring and was allowed no access to social media. However, she’s still fighting deportation and seemingly has to run any public events by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and she even has social media, so it’s not exactly gone according to plan, per The Hollywood Reporter.
Re-Enterting the Entertainment Industry
Since 2022, Delvey has gone to numerous New York Fashion Week events, and has even hosted parties on the roof of her NYC apartment during so. Along with that, she’s been working on collaborations with Julia Fox, per the New York Times, as well as appearing with Paris Hilton and Nicky Rothschild on an episode of This is Paris.
She’s done art shows, NFTs, and even signed with Bunim/Murray Productions to create a reality TV show, podcast, and a book, per Town and Country.
‘Dancing with the Stars’
In a turn of events that no one saw coming, Anna Delvey is on the 33rd season of Dancing with the Stars. She was granted permission once again from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be a part of this project, per the Hollywood Reporter. (Peep the ankle monitor!)
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