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Even while going to jail, even after a jury found him guilty of having swindled almost all the people that she knew and that a judge had accused her of to have committed "a big scam", Anna Sorokin was sticking to her story.
For years, Ms. Sorokin claimed to be Anna Delvey, a German heiress with a trust fund who paid for a glamorous and easy life. She lived in boutique hotels, wore designer clothes, and wandered around Manhattan's high-end party circles.
In reality, Ms. Sorokin, 28, was a Russian immigrant who had dropped out with bills, launched herself into luxury and persuaded a bank employee to give her $ 100,000 that she n & # 39; He had never wanted to repay, the jury decided to condemn him last month.
But in two interviews with the New York Times at Rikers Island Prison, where she has been detained since October 2017, Ms. Sorokin was eager to explain her actions as naïve faux pas of a young woman worried about not to be taken away otherwise. seriously.
"In reality, I'm not sorry," she said Friday, one day after being sentenced to four to twelve years in prison. "I would lie to you and to everyone and to myself if I said I'm sorry for anything. I regret the way I approached some things. "
She said that she had always had the intention of paying off her creditors, including two downtown hotels, a private jet company, and banks. In all, the jury concluded that Ms. Sorokin raised more than $ 200,000 in these locations and attempted to trick a hedge fund into a $ 25 million loan.
In an interview about a week before her sentencing, Ms. Sorokin acknowledged that her friends knew her as Anna Delvey. But it was just her mother's maiden name, she said.
(His attorney, Todd Spodek, later told The Times that he did not believe that was the case, and his parents had told him New York magazine, they did not recognize the name.)
It was true, she said, that she had falsified some bank statements, but only because she had made a big dream. She wanted to create a $ 40 million private club and potential investors encouraged her to open it before they put their own money.
Ms. Sorokin emphasized that she was concerned that she was vulnerable to the men who "would support me" and would then take control of her vision of the club, which she called the Anna Delvey Foundation. The attention of influential men in finance and real estate has validated it, she said.
"My motive was never money," she said, wearing a combination of khaki jail and Celine glasses. "I was hungry for power."
Friends may have thought that she had millions of dollars, she said, but it was a misunderstanding. She said that she never told anyone that she had that kind of money – they simply assumed it.
Yet, although Ms. Sorokin pretended her actions, she did not apologize for her character: "I'm not a good person."
From striver to grifter
Sorokin said she was born in Russia and grew up in Eschweiler, Germany, where her father worked as a manager in a transport company, which later became insolvent. At 19, she leaves her parents and her brother for Paris in search of a fashion diploma.
Ms. Sorokin, who has only vaguely talked about her childhood, said she was not close to her "conservative" parents; she noted that they did not attend her trial.
In Paris, she said she took the name of Anna Delvey when taking pictures for Purple, a magazine of fashion, art and culture. There, his attention turned to art.
Winning just 400 euros a month, she remained financially dependent on her parents, who paid for her apartment, she said.
But after experiencing a breakup, she went to New York in late summer 2013 for a trip to Montauk and then to Fashion Week.
New York was not supposed to be a permanent move, but she found more friends than in Paris and decided to stay. She worked for a while at the Purple office in New York. But eventually, she stopped that too.
Prosecutors said it was at that time that the plaintiff Anna Delvey became the plaintiff Anna Delvey.
She switched from a boutique hotel to a boutique hotel, giving out $ 100 tips and issuing bills with promises of wire transfers that never materialized. She organized dinners in expensive restaurants, hired a private personal trainer and wore Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent.
She also began presenting her idea for her private club, which she called A.D.F., with exclusive memberships and rotating exhibits on the arts. She had access to André Balazs, the hotelier; Roo Rogers, the Anglo-American entrepreneur; aNorth Dakota Aby Rosen, the real estate developer.
In 2015, she becomes friends with Gabriel Andrés Calatrava, architect and son of Santiago Calatrava, the architect who designed the Oculus, the bird-shaped centerpiece of the transit center of the World Trade Center.
But time was running out. She stated that she felt compelled to open the club in order to attract more investors. Prosecutors said his trick was falling apart.
At the end of 2016, she said, she returned to Germany for a few months, where she worked out the details of the FD. and created four fake bank statements in Photoshop that she said took surprisingly little time.
She returned to New York in early 2017. She will use these same documents multiple times to obtain different loans, she said.
Life behind bars
Ms. Sorokin was arrested for the first time in July 2017 for escaping multi-thousand dollar bills at Beekman and W New York hotels and at a bill of less than $ 200 at a hotel restaurant. Parker Meridien.
After being released, Ms. Sorokin was arrested again in October 2017 and held at Rikers.
Before the trial, she said, she was offered a sentence of between three and nine years, but she felt it was too long and tried her luck in a lawsuit. Although she was sentenced to a longer sentence than that offered to her under a plea agreement, she stated that she did not regret having been res.
She said she hesitated against Rikers' authority and was disciplined on 30 occasions, including a few weeks alone at Christmas. Because of her behavior, Ms. Sorokin said, she was detained in a maximum security section.
A prison warden in the city confirmed that he had been in solitary confinement and said that Ms. Sorokin had committed 13 offenses for fighting and disobeying orders.
She said that she had gained some fame among the other inmates for cheating the rich, but said she did not support this characterization of herself.
Ms. Sorokin said that she still had infrequent visits from friends. But she did not see Rachel Williams, an old The Vanity Fair photo editor who testified against Ms. Sorokin at trial.
Ms. Williams accused her of stealing more than $ 60,000 for an opulent trip that they performed together in Marrakech in 2017. A jury found Ms. Sorokin not guilty.
At the helm, Williams burst into tears, calling the flight the worst experience of her life. "She should try a week here," said Mrs. Sorokin of Rikers serenely.
Ms. Sorokin began writing a memoir about her exploits in New York. She plans to write a second book about her experience at Rikers.
In a subsequent telephone interview, Ms. Sorokin said that she was eager to finish both books in jail.
"I guess I'm lucky enough to go to a real prison, so I'll have more material," she said.
After her release, she will probably be deported to Germany, but she then hopes to move to London.
She said she had already made "smaller investments" in technology and cryptocurrency, with personal money routed through an L.L.C account.
Ms. Sorokin is also interested in criminal justice reform, artificial intelligence and the banking sector, adding, "Ideally, hopefully, I will have my own investment fund. . "
Spodek, his lawyer, said, "I do not know how realistic some of these companies are. But I'm confident it will not be the last time we hear Anna, and I know she will do great things. "
Others also write Ms. Sorokin's story: Ms. Williams has made deals with HBO and Simon & Schuster. And Netflix bought the rights to the New York magazine article for an undisclosed amount. Shonda Rhimes, creator of "Gray's Anatomy" and "Scandal" has been used to dramatize her.
As the guards signaled the end of the visit before her sentence, Ms. Sorokin was asked if, if the opportunity arose, she would do the same again.
Mrs. Sorokin shrugged. "Yes, probably," she said with a laugh.
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