Where Is Anna Delvey Today?
The story of Anna Delvey, aka Anna Sorokin, has become a blockbuster of the true crime genre since it first came to light in 2017. Ostensibly a wealthy German socialite who was making waves in the New York art scene, Delvey claimed to be due to inherit $60 million from her family in Köln and used her apparently secured future to broker loans and business deals from countless unsuspecting victims. As reported by CNBC, Delvey's modus operandi involved displays of outrageous and conspicuous consumption — such as stays in upmarket hotels and reservations at the city's most exclusive restaurants — to convince those around her that she had money to burn.
And it wasn't just faceless banks and investment firms that Delvey was conning. As her former friend Rachel Williams told ABC News, the supposed heiress managed to wrangle $62,000 from her while she worked as a producer for Vanity Fair. When Delvey's conniving and deceptive behavior came to light, she was taken into custody to face justice. However, just a few years on from her mighty downfall it seems that Delvey has made the best of her current circumstances.
She was released from prison in 2021
The Anna Delvey story reached its climax in 2019 when it was decided in court that she had purposefully deceived countless New Yorkers and fraudulently extracted services and money from several companies by orchestrating what the judge described as a "big scam" on New York City's socialite world. She was sentenced to between four and 12 years in prison, having been found guilty of eight charges. However, she was found not guilty of stealing money from Rachel Williams and of trying to steal $25 million in fraudulent loans.
Delvey was detained at the notorious Rikers Island prison in the Bronx, where she was also kept after her arrest and for the duration of her trial. But even there she seemed incapable of abiding by the rules that governed everyone else. In the early days of her incarceration, The New York Times reported that Delvey had not made things easy for herself in prison, with violent and non-compliant behavior leading to 30 disciplinary actions being taken against her, including being placed in solitary confinement at one point.
But after her conviction, it seems that Delvey managed to win over the prison system. In a notable turnaround, the con artist was released on parole from Rikers Island on February 11, 2021 for good behavior after four years behind bars.
ICE took her into custody
Anna Delvey wasn't out of prison for long before she ran into trouble again. As reported by the BBC, on March 25, 2021, just six weeks after she had been released from Rikers Island, the con artist who fooled New York was back in custody. She was detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for overstaying her visa period and held at Bergen County Jail in New Jersey while she contested the charge.
ICE first made the case that Delvey should be detained back in 2019 when representative Rachael Yong Yow spoke to Insider to argue that should she evade conviction, she should be delivered immediately to the agency. According to Yow, Delvey was "amenable for removal because she is a visa waiver overstay." Delvey's ICE detention was also characterized by altercations with her captors. Having contracted COVID-19 while in prison in January 2022, she sued ICE, claiming that they had purposefully prevented her from receiving a vaccine booster shot to protect her from the virus.
Anna Delvey was under house arrest as of 2023
In October 2022, it was announced by several outlets — including Rolling Stone — that Anna Delvey had been released from ICE detention after 18 months behind bars. But it wasn't all plain sailing from there. Rather than be given her freedom, Delvey was placed under house arrest. She was also barred from any social media use, which Judge Charles R. Conroy of the federal immigration court ruled would prevent her from being a danger to society as a scammer.
Delvey spoke to The New York Times on the day she returned to her one-room apartment in the city. She had purposefully resisted deportation to Germany and planned on "finding my way back" into New York society in the months that followed. When pressed on where the money was coming from to pay the rent on her apartment, Delvey ducked the question but claimed to have many plans in store, including working on art, a podcast, and a book.
What she's up to today
Most people facing restitution bills of around $200,000 would be in a position of financial ruin that would threaten to dominate the rest of their lives. But not Anna Delvey. The notorious scammer has managed to earn an incredible amount of money despite her criminal past, thanks to one incredibly wealthy company: Netflix.
The tale of Delvey's life of crime has managed to transfix audiences ever since her arrest in 2017, so it is no wonder that the streaming giant came calling to secure the rights to her bizarre life story. The resultant nine-part biopic, starring Julia Garner, premiered on the platform in February 2022. Though the show is reportedly based on an article written by Jessica Pressler in The Cut, Insider says Netflix paid Delvey somewhere in the region of $320,000 for the rights to make "Inventing Anna." Delvey used the money to pay what she owed her victims, and even had a few thousand in change at the end.
She is also reportedly considering publishing a memoir giving her perspective on the story of her crimes, her capture, her imprisonment, and release, though she tells Entertainment Tonight that she is waiting for the "best time" to make the book public. She continues to fight deportation and remains under house arrest bar regular parole meetings — though she is sometimes spotted in public, including at New York Fashion Week (pictured).