Anna Sorokin

Profile Overview

Anna Sorokin (Russian: Анна Вади́мовна Сорокина, romanized: Anna Vadimovna Sorokina, pronounced [ˈanːə sɐˈrokʲɪnɐ]; born January 23, 1991), also known as Anna Delvey, is a Russian-German former socialite who gained notoriety for posing as a wealthy German heiress and was convicted in New York of grand larceny, attempted grand larceny, and related offenses.
Born near Moscow, Delvey emigrated from Russia to Germany with her family as a teenager. In 2011, at the age of 20, Delvey left Germany to live in London and Paris. In 2013, Delvey relocated to New York City, where she interned for the French fashion magazine Purple. She conceived of a private members' club and arts foundation, which included leasing a large building to feature pop-up shops and exhibitions by notable artists she met while interning. She later created fake financial documents to substantiate her claims of having a multi-million-euro trust fund and forged multiple wire transfer confirmations. She used these documents, as well as fraudulent checks, to trick banks, acquaintances, and realtors into paying out cash and granting large loans without collateral. She used this to fund her lavish lifestyle, including residencies in multiple upscale hotels.
Between 2013 and 2017, Delvey defrauded and deceived major financial institutions, banks, hotels, and individuals. In 2017, the NYPD arrested Delvey in a sting operation with the help of her former friend, Rachel DeLoache Williams, who accused Delvey of defrauding her of US$62,000. In 2019, a New York state court convicted Delvey of attempted grand larceny, larceny in the second degree, and theft of services, and she was sentenced to 4 to 12 years in prison. After serving two years, she was released on parole. Six weeks later, she was taken into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation to Germany. In October 2022, after 19 months of detention, Delvey was granted a $10,000 bail bond and released to house arrest.
Delvey's story gained publicity when Williams wrote a lengthy article in Vanity Fair about her experiences with Delvey in 2018. She expanded on the story in her book My Friend Anna (2019). The same year, journalist Jessica Pressler wrote an article for New York about Delvey's life as a socialite; Netflix paid Delvey $320,000 for the rights to her story and developed it into the miniseries Inventing Anna (2022). Delvey's life story has been the subject of multiple other television shows, interviews, podcasts, and theater productions.