The Week UK: Anna Sorokin: The story of the fake heiress who stole thousands

The Week UK                                                      
The Russian-born 28-year-old has been jailed for up to 12 years for elaborate scams         
 
    

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A wannabe Manhattan socialite has been sentenced to a minimum of four years in prison for conning businesses out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a series of scams.
Russian-born Anna Sorokin, 28, spent almost four years posing as Anna Delvey, a fictional German billionaire heiress. She “falsely claimed she had a multimillion-dollar trust fund at her disposal” as she hired a private jet, attended elite parties and lived in a luxury New York hotel, the BBC reports.

During her month-long trial, assistant district attorney Catherine McCaw told a Manhattan court: “The defendant didn’t want to live an ordinary life, and she was willing to steal in order to get that.”

The jury found her guilty of grand larceny in the second and third degrees, as well as a number of other charges, for which Sorokin will service a maximum of 12 years.

The case has prompted much online debate over the severity of the sentencing, with some complaining that Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr was especially hard on Sorokin because she is a woman.

But who is Anna Sorokin, and what can we read into her sentence?
Who is she?

Sorokin was born in Domodedovo, a suburb of Moscow, in 1991. She emigrated to Germany in 2007 at the age of 16, before moving to Paris in the early 2010s. The Cut says that it was around this time that she began calling herself Anna Delvey, and also claimed to be a German heiress to a fortune of billions.

Upon moving to New York in 2014, she began attempting to convince others of her wealth. She adopted the mantra of - as her lawyer put it during her trial - “fake it until you make it”, says The Guardian, and dressed in Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent.

In 2017, she convinced a close friend, Vanity Fair photojournalist Rachel Williams, to holiday with her in Morocco. The pair stayed in a five-star resort for $7,000 (£5,300) a night and racked up a $62,000 (£47,000) bill, but when it came to settling up, all of Sorokin’s cards were declined and she convinced Williams to foot the cost. Sorokin’s promise of repayment was never fulfilled.

Perhaps her most controversial move came when she allegedly attempted to obtain $22m (£17m) in loans using forged foreign documents in order to open an “arts and culture” club, which she said was her dream. Her application was rejected because the bank could not determine the source of her wealth, but she still managed to obtain a $100,000 (£76,000) loan, said prosecutors at her case.

Using the loan, she “hired a private jet, went to all the best parties, and threw cash at everyone she saw”, reports the BBC, which adds that she would often give a “$100 (£78) tip if you carried her bag or were her Uber driver”.
How did the scam end?

According to BuzzFeed, when the money ran out, Sorokin’s scam fell apart. She began to “rack up massive bills on rooms and restaurants, which she promised to pay for with wire transfers that would never actually show up”, the news site says.

In July 2017, at the Le Parker Meridien hotel, Sorokin ate and drank for up to six hours, before all her credit cards were rejected when she tried to pay, says The Independent.

“She then told hotel staff members that her aunt was on her way from Germany and would cover the bill,” the paper adds. “The police showed up instead and arrested her for nonpayment of a bill that was less than $200 (£153).”
What does her sentencing mean?

Sorokin was sentenced to between four and 12 years in prison this week. She was also fined $24,000 (£18,400) and ordered to pay roughly $199,000 (£139,000) in restitution, according to The Cut.

However, the site notes that she was found not guilty of the “most serious charge brought against her” - the allegation that she had faked records in an attempt to secure the multimillion-dollar loan. She was also found not guilty of stealing the $60,000 (£46,000) from Rachel Williams for the Morocco trip. Sorokin has been held at Rikers Island prison since October 2017.

Although Sorokin received her share of criticism for the scheming, some argued that her conviction was evidence of “women being punished more harshly than men for white-collar crimes”, Bustle says.

“For instance, Sorokin’s sentence is much longer than that of Kareem Serageldin, the only Wall Street banker who went to jail in conjunction with the 2008 financial collapse,” the news site adds. In 2013, Serageldin was sentenced to 30 months in prison after being found guilty of hiding $100m (£77m) in losses at Credit Suisse.

Writing in The New York Times, Ginia Bellafante points out that Manhattan district attorney Vance, who sentenced Sorokin, had opted not to press charges against Harvey Weinstein or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, two men who had been accused of sexual crimes.

Bellafante quips that Vance can now “claim victory in a high-profile case against a 28-year-old female immigrant who went after the things so many other people also seemed to acquire unscrupulously”.

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