Fake heiress who dazzled New York elite gets four to 12 years for fraud

By Jonathan Allen

 

Anna Sorokin, who a New York jury convicted last month of swindling more than $200,000 from banks and people, reacts during her sentencing at Manhattan State Supreme Court New York, U.S., May 9, 2019. Steven Hirsch/Pool via REUTERS

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A German woman who posed as a wealthy heiress to scam New York hotels, fashionable friends and banks with a blizzard of forged documents was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison on Thursday after a jury convicted her of fraud last month.

 

Anna Sorokin, 28, was better known to her Manhattan friends as Anna Delvey, a would-be socialite decked out in expensive clothes whose credit cards came back declined with unnerving frequency despite her talk of having a trust fund.

 

Before giving nearly the maximum possible sentence, Judge Diane Kiesel, of New York state Supreme Court, rebuked Sorokin as "blinded by the glitter and glamour of New York City."

 

"She wanted everything that big money could buy, except that Ms. Sorokin didn't have big money," Kiesel said in court, decrying Sorokin's taste for Sancerre wine and private jets. "All she had was a big scam."

 

Prosecutors say Sorokin stole $275,000 from others while pretending she had a fortune of 60 million euros ($67 million) through multiple acts of glamorous grifting in 2016 and 2017.

 

Sorokin has already spent more than 500 days in jail. She appeared in court in handcuffs wearing a black dress, black shoes and glasses with thick black frames.

 

Prosecutors pointed to her use of a stylist to pick out outfits for her trial as evidence that Sorokin lacked remorse.

 

"The only time she showed emotions was when she was crying because she was upset about the clothing she had received from the Department of Corrections," Catherine McCaw, a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney's office, told the court.

 

Sorokin, who was born in Russia before moving with her family to Germany as a teenager, spoke only to say she wanted "to apologise for the mistakes I made."

 

Moments later, the judge waved a letter of support from three of Sorokin's relatives, saying she did not know for sure if that document, too, was a forgery.

 

"THIS HAS CONSEQUENCES"

Prosecutors say Sorokin used forged bank statements to seek a loan of $22 million from a bank to fund a private arts club she wanted to open in Manhattan. She managed to get a $100,000 loan, which prosecutors said she never repaid. Sorokin used about $30,000 of that to cover her overdue bills at the fashionable 11 Howard hotel, where she was living.

 

Prosecutors said Sorokin also deposited bad checks amounting to $15,000 in an account with Signature Bank, managing to withdraw $8,200 in cash before the checks bounced, and used fake wire transfer receipts to trick victims.

 

A jury found her guilty on four counts of grand larceny and four counts of theft of services last month.

 

Sorokin's daily looks became the subject of a dedicated Instagram account with thousands of followers, which the judge nodded to in her sentencing remarks.

 

"I know she is a trendsetter and an influencer," Kiesel said, "so I think the message should be to the defendant and many of her fans out there that this has consequences."

 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that Sorokin was a German citizen who had illegally overstayed in the United States. The agency said it will seek to send her back to Germany once her sentence is served. Sorokin will be able to seek parole after she has served four years.

 

The writers Shonda Rhimes and Lena Dunham are separately working on adapting the Anna Delvey story for the screen, according to news reports.

 

This, too, did Sorokin no favours with the judge, who said that Sorokin, in jailhouse interviews, did not express remorse but instead "worried about who would play her in the Netflix series."

 

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Susan Thomas and Leslie Adler)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-05-10

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Maybe I'm missing something but really can't understand why this has been international news for the last few months.  It certainly wasn't for her model looks, that's for sure.

40 minutes ago, OneEyedPie said:

Maybe I'm missing something but really can't understand why this has been international news for the last few months.  It certainly wasn't for her model looks, that's for sure.

..fill up the page...may have a puppy story tomorrow.

Edited May 10, 20197 yr by tandor

1 hour ago, car720 said:

Man, this says it all.

For murder, you would get a smack on the wrist but if you steal money from rich people then you are done like a dinner.

I am not in any hurry to die but I will be glad when I'm dead.

me too

Fantasist and psychopath. 

Wonder how many crooked fake Businessman-in-Chief will get?!? 

5 hours ago, OneEyedPie said:

Maybe I'm missing something but really can't understand why this has been international news for the last few months.  It certainly wasn't for her model looks, that's for sure.

And yet another gratuitous and irrelevant insult at a woman on account of her looks.

Hope they have shampoo in detention.  

This is how proper a sentence is given, and hence justice is served for the crime committed.

 

In Snowflake Europe, this would have been a smack on the hands and a short stay in a luxury hotel (prison).

 

The USA leads the way to demonstrate by example, what proper justice should be. Take note; the USA is by definition the wrong place to commit serious crime, and a hard deterrent. 

A romantic at heart.  Go off to a far away country, re-invent yourself, maybe a little larceny on the side, just don't make the claims to royalty or the larceny too grand. 

Can't do that any more, even in a country where most people don't know Austria from Australia. 

Those Russians, though: big, brass ones.

 

 

Silly girl.  She should have just incorporated, refused to pay back the corporate debts, then declared bankruptcy. 

 

Rinse and repeat often enough and she may have strung it out for a lifetime, like some other folks in the news.

 

Her hair is kinda stringy

Hey maybe after 2020 she and Ivanka can be cellies

Looks a lot like a "Mrs Ford" of Supreme Court fame.