The hit Netflix series Inventing Anna is based on the true tale of Anna "Delvey" Sorokin, who defrauded friends and banks out of hundreds of thousands of dollars before getting convicted of fraud and grand larceny.
The series dramatized genuine reports that Sorokin pretended to be a German heiress to deceive her friends, with other characters guessing about the source of her seemingly vast riches.
Anna Delvey was found guilty of defrauding over $200,000 from hotels, banks, and other institutions during her trial in 2019. She swindled additional funds from associates and people she met under false identities.
Delvey's New Remarks
In a recent episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, Sorokin was interviewed by host Alex Cooper via video call from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in New York. She has been detained for a year following her release from prison, The Cut reports.
Sorokin had been detained in Goshen since March 25, 2021, as she fought to remain in the United States after overstaying her visa. As per New York Post, Sorokin was outraged about the deportation measures, as she is set to have an appeal hearing on April 19.
Through the podcast, Sorokin had the opportunity to clarify if she had pretended as a German heiress to scam people or if that was a fictional part of the story. Sorokin was questioned if she mentioned to anyone that she would inherit a large sum of fortune, she answered "No." She also claimed that nobody "introduces themselves like that."
"Like, what kind of sentence is that? It's completely ridiculous," Delvey remarked, according to a report from The Independent.
Sorokin believes someone stitched together this story after the DA's office posted the initial press release from when she got arraigned in October 2017," when asked how she feels the narrative about her German heiress background arose. Adding that it is "hard" for her to "track" the roots of the story because she "was just in jail that whole time."
The fake heiress went on trying to justify her actions. "I never was doing anything so super-crazy," Sorokin said, noting that there are people "spending way more money" than she did.
Though, she even said that "people assumed" that Sorokin was trying to make an impression. "There's so many rich people there, you can't even impress anybody," Anna Delvey said.
But at the end of the interview, Sorokin admitted that she saw what she did wrong. "But so many people are doing worse things."
Did Delvey Earn From The Hit Series?
However, there are indications that she has not learned her lesson, as she disclosed in the podcast that she pretended to be rich to convince her fellow inmates at Rikers to do chores for her. "They think I'm super-rich," she said.
Netflix reportedly offered Delvey $320,000 for the rights to her life story after journalist Jessica Pressler wrote a piece on her for New York magazine in 2018.
The New York Attorney General's office subsequently filed a lawsuit against Sorokin, invoking the state's Son of Sam law, which prohibits convicts from earning from publicity.
Although there have been rumors that Delvey has inked deals for a biography, podcast, and her TV show, the money is believed to have mostly gone towards restitution and fines, according to a Tatler report.