Fake millionaire Anna Sorokin, inspiration for Netflix series Inventing Anna, released on conditions
Steph Deschamps / October 9, 2022
Fake Russian-German millionaire Anna "Delvey" Sorokin, who fooled New York's financial gotha by posing as a wealthy heiress, inspiring a Netflix series, was released Friday night from a detention center and could be deported from the United States.
The 30-year-old with a rocky life, sentenced in 2019 in New York to years in prison for swindling 275,000 dollars to hotels, banks and relatives, has been released on bail and under certain conditions, a spokesman for the federal immigration police (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE) told AFP.
The young woman had been detained since March 2021 in an ICE detention center in Goshen, 100 kilometers north of the megalopolis of New York, for overstaying her tourist visa after being released from jail a first time, for good behavior, in February 2021.
An immigration judge on Tuesday ordered Anna Sorokin to be released on bail from ICE," the immigration police said in a statement.
According to U.S. media reports, the young woman was required to post $10,000 bail and will be confined to her home in New York City for a period of time, wearing an ankle monitor.
Anna Sorokin has been fighting for 18 months not to be deported from the United States. A deportation order to Germany was issued in February, but she appealed and was allowed to remain in her detention center, which has much more flexible conditions than a prison.
Anna Sorokin, alias Anna "Delvey", had managed from 2016 to her arrest in 2017 to deceive New York elites by posing as a wealthy German heiress with a fictitious fortune of $60 million.
Able to craft clever lies with uncommon aplomb, the young woman had obtained tens of thousands of dollars in bank loans, traveled for free on private jets and lived off Manhattan palaces.
Arrested in 2017 and convicted two years later, Anna Sorokin had inspired television producer Shonda Rhimes ("Grey's Anatomy," "Scandal") to turn her into a hit Netflix miniseries, "Inventing Anna," with Julia Garner in the title role.