Fake heiress Anna Sorokin reveals how she effortlessly conned New York’s high society

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Fake German heiress Anna Sorokin has claimed she ‘never told a senseless lie’ and revealed how she effortlessly conned New York’s high society in a podcast recorded from an immigration holding facility.

During an interview with Alexandra Cooper, host of the sex and relationship advice podcast Call Her Daddy, released Wednesday, Sorokin also said she has been flooded with marriage proposals, finds murderers ‘normal’ and hates being controlled by money.

The video interview was recorded on March 7 and features Sorokin, who remains at the Orange County Correctional Facility in upstate New York, in a yellow prison jumpsuit and her signature Celine glasses.

The Russian-born scammer – whose story inspired the newly released Netflix series Inventing Anna – swindled banks and New York’s downtown socialite scene out of thousands of dollars between 2013 to 2017 while she lived in Manhattan, a German heiress who had a $67million trust fund back in Europe.

Sorokin skipped out on exorbitant restaurant and hotel bills, and in one case, put a friend in an awkward position putting $62,000 – more than she made in a year – on her credit card to cover a stay at a lavish hotel in Marrakesh.

In April 2019, Sorokin was convicted of four counts of theft services, three counts of grand larceny, and one count of attempted grand larceny. She was sentenced to a minimum of four years in prison, but was out in February 2021.

With the background blurred, the 31-year-old comes across as friendly and easy to talk to, but also reluctant to paint herself as a mastermind con-artist.

Instead, she insisted that she was just being herself during her time in the Big Apple – which could soon finally come to an end.

During the interview, Cooper tries to get to the bottom of what Sorokin thinks she is guilty of.

‘Absolutely not,’ Sorokin told Cooper when asked if she thinks of herself as a con artist. ‘I never intended criminally to harm anybody you know. 

‘I literally cannot come up with a single example where I’m like ‘let me f*** this person over and they will never see their money again’,’ she adds.

Later in the podcast, Sorokin says she never intended to evade police and was surprised by the vigour with which officials came after her.

‘My goal was never to get away or not to get caught. Even like I hear people in jail saying you’re not that good of a criminal.

‘I never tried to be that way. I was never like hiding from the police. I thought I’d just go back to New York, I thought I’d resolve it with my lawyer. I didn’t know they would be so violent about it. 

‘I didn’t know they were after me,’ she says. 

Sorokin dodges questions about whether she tricked people into believing that she came from money.

‘Did you ever tell people that you were a German heiress?’ Cooper asks. 

‘What kind of sentence is that. It’s completely ridiculous,’ she says of the prospect of introducing herself as such, as the host continues to probe.

‘I think people put together this story after the DA’s office released the original press release from when I got arraigned in October 2017,’ she says. ‘I guess that would be my assumption. It’s hard to track this because I was just in jail that whole time.’ 

When asked about what else she lied about, other than her name, Sorokin says that she would never tell a ‘senseless’ lie – unless speaking to a bank. 

‘I guess I did [lie],’ she says. ‘I can’t tell an exact instance. But, I’m sure, I never told any senseless lies… unless they were like, a bank,’ she adds, giving a short giggle.

She claims she wouldn’t lie to people she met socially. ‘It’s like if I were just to meet some girl in a social situation, I really didn’t care what someone thought. First of all it’s none of their business. Second of all there’s nothing you can do for me.’

Her accent, she says, is 100 per cent genuine. Some have suggested its put-on and part of the Delvey she has created.

‘Did anyone hear me speak any different,’ she asks Cooper. ‘Then they should come up with the evidence? Whoever said that, I’d like to see the proof.’ 

On whether she sees Anna Sorokin and Anna Delvey as different people, she hits back: Absolutely not. There’s absolutely no difference. In jail they always call by my government name which is Sorokin. I don’t have an attachment to any country or any name, it’s just not the way I see myself or define myself.’

In the podcast, Cooper asks Sorokin to take her through how she would approach banks when asking for fraudulent loans, and how she felt the narrative that built up around her benefited her life.

‘I think I was the same I am right now, with you,’ she says. ‘There’s just like no other mode. I’m not like a performer.

‘I would always show up underdressed. ‘[I would not] show up in heels, or with a tight dress. I gave them this – I don’t give a f*** vibe.

‘Which was pretty much accurate, because if it wouldn’t be them it would be somebody else. Because in the end, they are all disposable. There’s just so many financial institutions in New York.’

On how she felt the narrative that she was rich benefited her, Sorokin told Cooper: ‘I guess it’s just easier to ask somebody for I don’t know, 20 million,’ when they already think you have money.

It’s unclear if Sorokin was paid to appear on Cooper’s podcast, which has 2.3 million followers and is the second most popular female hosted podcast. The most popular is The Michelle Obama Podcast, featuring the former First Lady. 

The Russian-born scammer was paid some $200,000 from her Netflix show – Inventing Anna – and used at least some of the money to repay her victims.

Asked about her time in prison, Sorokin said that she was allowed to do whatever she wants within the confines of the prison. She also said that she receives more mail than she ever did before she went to prison.

‘[I] definitely get more marriage proposals than I ever did before my criminal career started,’ she jokes with Cooper.

She also said that she became popular in prison, and spoke to other prisoners – including murderers.

‘I guess the most revelatory thing about them is that they’re just normal, they’re just like you and me,’ she said.

‘So many times things can happen in a moment – just like that – and then your life is never the same. As opposed to mine, which was kind of like a build up – and it was years in the making – that’s the difference.

‘I imagine would have been so much more upset, and just like – got mad and shot my boyfriend – and then just all my life would be taken away,’ she told Cooper.

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Sorokin is still on U.S. soil despite a chaotic deportation mix-up that had many thinking the con artist was finally on her way out of the country on Monday.  

The convicted scammer remains at the Orange County Detention Center in Goshen, upstate New York, where she has been for the last seven months for overstaying her visa. She is due to be deported to Germany although it’s not exactly clear when.  

On Monday, her lawyer and friends sparked chaos when they couldn’t get a hold of her. The texting system from the jail she is being held in also changed her status to say that she had been released.

A rush of European reporters flocked to Frankfurt Airport to await her arrival and her deportation attorney, Manny Arora, told Good Morning America that he thought Sorokin was on her way back to Germany, where her Russian family lives.

However, it appears the scam artist’s luck has not run out. Whether it was a mix-up by the jail and her attorneys, or an 11th hour reprieve to keep her in the country, Sorokin is still in the U.S. 

On the podcast – speaking a week before Tuesday’s chaos – she said that she had recently fired her lawyers, saying they were not ‘adequate’.

‘I just fired my lawyers and I got somebody new. Hopefully they will get me out of jail,’ she said.

On a timeframe, she said that she hopes that she will be out of the ICE detention facility in the coming weeks. ‘It’s definitely not going to be years,’ she tells Cooper.

When asked what the first thing she will do when she is finally released, Sorokin tells the podcast host she will get laser eye surgery – saying her now-iconic glasses are not just a fashion accessory and that she’s ‘half blind’

A source from the detention center told DailyMail.com on Tuesday morning that she has not left the facility at all, despite reports she may have been on her way to the airport Monday. She will stay there until ICE agents come to collect her.

‘They don’t give us a heads up, she’s with us until they come to collect her,’ the insider said. 

Arora told DailyMail.com that he filed an emergency stay Monday to block a deportation order that was filed on February 17. It gives Sorokin another 30 days in the country. 

It’s unclear what her grounds for appeal are, or what kind of visa she hopes to obtain that would allow her to stay in the U.S. 

An ICE spokesman said Tuesday morning: ‘In November 2021, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) granted Sorokin’s emergency stay request; she remains in ICE custody pending removal.’ 

Speaking overnight on Monday, Arora said that he had been unable to contact his client on Monday, and presumed she was leaving the country. He also said the appeals deadline had not yet passed.

‘I haven’t heard from Miss Sorokin this afternoon, and so I am working under the presumption that she is being deported,’ the attorney told Today on Monday.

‘Legally, they should not be able to deport her until the 19th. That is due to the deportation order being signed on February 17 and that allows us to have 30 days to file an appeal,’ he said. 

Sorokin made headlines around the world after pretending she was a super-rich heiress called Anna Delvey with a $60million trust fund to gain access to her wealthy targets, and to take our tens of thousands of dollars in bank loans.

She was convicted of fraud in 2019 over the long-term scheme that has since been depicted in the Netflix series ‘Inventing Anna’, starring Julia Garner. 

The Shonda Rhimes-produced series was based on journalist Jessica Pressler’s New York magazine story, which brought Sorokin’s scheme to light.

After serving nearly four years of her sentence of between four and 12 years, Sorokin was released from jail in February 2021, and went about returning to her previous life of luxury by renting a swank apartment in Chelsea.

Weeks later, after bragging in a TV interview that ‘crime pays, in a way’ she was arrested by immigration agents for allegedly overstaying her visa and has been in ICE custody at the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, New York ever since.

Sorokin tried to apply for asylum in the United States – but German newspaper Spiegel Panorama reports that her plea was denied.

Capable of weaving skillful lies with extraordinary aplomb, the young woman posed as a German heiress with a fortune of $60million, allowing her to obtain tens of thousands of dollars in loans from several banks.

Sorokin did not have a college degree or a substantial amount of wealth. 

Between November 2016 and August 2017, she traveled for free by private jet, lived on credit in Manhattan hotels, without ever paying anything, according to the New York justice department, which estimated her frauds were worth around $275,000.

But before she acquired a taste for the glamorous lifestyle, Sorokin grew up in a working class suburb of Moscow as the daughter of a truck driver whose mother ran a small convenience store. 

The family emigrated to Germany when she was 16.

Her father, Vadim, has said that Anna did manage to make friends in Germany and was often out socializing with them or staying over for parties – regardless of how she was portrayed in the Netflix series. 

Despite her seemingly budding social life, Vadim said his daughter really struggled to cope with two main issues.

Firstly, in Russia, though she had already been given private dancing lessons and French lessons, she soon demanded her parents supply her with fancy clothes.

But instead of then being grateful, Sorokin would then often not even bother to wear the items, even though these items were often very hard to come by in the stores. 

This did not sit well with her father, who had been raised to never waste anything – even scraps of bread. When she arrived in Germany, the problem became far worse.

Suddenly she was confronted with the massive selection of fashion items on offer, compared to in Russia, and now she wanted to have absolutely everything.

She then became frustrated with how those around her in Germany did not share her desire to always only wear the fanciest clothes on sale.

She quickly became dismissive of her social circle, of Düren where her father worked and of Eschweile, the town near Cologne where the family lived.

Instead she started setting her sights on the bustling metropolises of Berlin and Paris – always turning to her father for cash when she ran out.

In 2013, Sorokin traveled to New York City to attend New York Fashion Week, and ultimately stayed, as she scammed her way into expensive trips and hotel stays, ripping off her best friend along the way.  

Her scheme ultimately came crashing down in October 2017 when she was arrested by Los Angeles police in a sting operation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. Three weeks later she was indicted for stealing approximately $275,000 through various scams.