Turns Out, the Price for Scamming Is Prison

Anna Sorokin, the fake German heiress who, under the pseudonym Anna Delvey, scammed her way into Manhattan’s social elite—expensing weeks-long stays at posh hotels—has been found guilty on several counts, including felony larceny. She now faces up to 15 years in prison; she will be sentenced on May 19.

On Thursday, a jury convicted Sorokin, “of most of the charges against her,” the New York Times reports, including “second-degree grand larceny, theft of services and one count of first-degree attempted grand larceny.” She was acquitted, however, on one count: a charge of attempted grand larceny for trying to obtain a $22 million loan, and was not charged for failing to reimburse her friend $60,000 for a trip to Morocco.

Sorokin who reinvented herself as the vaguely-European heiress of a multi-million-dollar trust fund, is, in reality, a middle-class Russian immigrant; her father now runs a heating and cooling business in Germany. She moved to New York in 2014, where she soon became a staple in New York’s elite social scene. During a stint at a boutique hotel in Soho, Sorokin befriended hotel concierge Neffartiti Davis, whom she routinely bestowed $100 tips in cash. “The way Anna spent money, it was like she couldn’t get rid of it fast enough,” New York magazine reported.

She readily used her newfound social circle to jumpstart ambitious (and costly) projects. One friend, architect Gabriel Andres Calatrava, son of the architect who designed New York’s Oculus, joined Sorokin to design a new Soho-house-like start-up—a $40 million project. Yet funds for the project never materialized, per the Times:

She forged financial statements and lied about her family and her name, evidence at the trial showed. She even made up a fictional accountant and a fake financial adviser with email addresses that were traced back to Ms. Sorokin, prosecutors said. Whenever discussions about money would arise, she would vow to wire funds from her account in Germany. Yet no money was ever transferred.

Sorokin has continued to generate headlines even within jail, where she seemingly holds herself above other inmates. “This place is not that bad at all actually,” she told New York Magazine of Rikers. “People seem to think it’s horrible, but I see it as like, this sociological experiment.” It’s great that she likes jail, because it looks like she might be spending more time there.