The fake German millionaire Anna Sorokin, released from prison, wants to stay in New York

AFP, published Sunday 09 October 2022 at 17:26

Fake Russian-German millionaire Anna “Delvey” Sorokin, fresh from prison in New York after betraying the financial elite, said this weekend that she would fight not to be deported to Germany and remain in the American megacity.

This incredible 30-year-old, who inspired a drama series on Netflix and is a social media phenomenon, was released on bail Friday night and placed under house arrest with an electronic bracelet in a Manhattan apartment.

Anne Sorokin had been detained for a year and a half in a Federal Immigration Police (ICE) detention center, 100 kilometers north of New York, for delaying her tourist visa.

She was arrested in 2017, sentenced two years later for fraud and jailed in a New York prison from which she was released in 2021 for good behavior, before being immediately arrested again by ICE. You free under certain conditions, since February you are subject to an expulsion order in Germany, against which you have repeatedly challenged.

Interviewed at length by the New York Times on Saturday at her Manhattan home, Anna Sorokin said she refused to be sent back to Germany by immigration authorities.

“Allowing them to deport me would have sounded like a sign of capitulation, confirming that I was perceived as a frivolous person who only thinks of obscene riches, which are simply not reality”, assured the young woman.

“I could have left, but I chose not to because I am trying to make amends for my mistakes. I have such a history in New York that I feel like I was in Europe I would run away from something,” he insisted.

Anna Sorokin, aka Anna “Delvey”, had managed from 2016 to 2017 to deceive New York’s financial elites and celebrities by posing as a wealthy German heiress in charge of a fictitious $ 60 million fortune.

Able to construct clever lies thanks to an extraordinary bearing, the young woman – recognizable thanks to her large designer glasses – had obtained bank loans for tens of thousands of dollars, traveled for free on private jets and lived in the Hook buildings of Manhattan. A list of $ 275,000.

German, born in Russia near Moscow, Anna Sorokin is the daughter of a truck driver and shopkeeper who emigrated to Germany in 2007. She attended the world of fashion in London and Paris before arriving in New York in 2013 for Fashion Week.

Her story inspired producer Shonda Rhimes (“Grey’s Anatomy”, “Scandal”) to turn her into a Netflix miniseries, “Inventing Anna,” starring Julia Garner.