How Much Money Did Anna Delvey Steal?
Over several years, socialite Anna Delvey accumulated an incredible amount of wealth through deceptive means. She tricked not only her friends, but also banks, hotels, stores, and more. Delvey scammed dozens, if not hundreds, of people by making them believe she was wealthy, even though she barely had any money at all. So just how much money did she steal?
As L'Officiel reported, the woman's real name was Anna Sorokin, but she changed it to Anna Delvey in 2013. She moved from France to New York after completing a fashion degree. This was around the time she first started scamming people on a small scale. She would pop into parties or fancy restaurants, eat and drink, and then skip out on the tab.
Through 2014 and 2015, Sorokin networked with wealthy individuals and made friends in high-up places. But she would frequently "forget" to pay her friends back for thousands of dollars in restaurant, Uber, and clothing bills, as L'Officiel reports. Her excuse was that she only carried cash, and her credit cards would often decline.
Racking up thousands of dollars
The facade finally began to crumble in 2016, when Sorokin applied for a loan for the Anna Delvey Foundation (via Cinemaholic). The loan was a whopping $22 million for her aspirational Foundation, which was to include restaurants, art space, a juice bar, and a bakery (per L'Officiel). In a critical misstep, Sorokin falsified bank documents using Photoshop. The bank denied her loan anyway.
Sorokin next tried the same scheme at an investment firm, but they wanted her to pay $100,000 before they would lend her the $22 million. She convinced her bank to let her overdraw her account, and funneled that money to pay the investment firm. The firm backed out of the grandiose loan, but instead of repaying her bank, Sorokin splurged on designer clothes, a personal trainer, and high-end hotel visits, as Cinemaholic reported.
Hotels repeatedly kicked Sorokin out after a pattern of staying for days and then being unable to pay her bills, as Yahoo! Finance reports. She reportedly welshed on paying the $35,000 it cost for her to charter a plane for a trip to Nebraska and back.
Living lavishly
Rachel Deloache Williams, who worked for Vanity Fair as a photographer, was once close friends with the socialite. In 2017, Sorokin reportedly told Williams she would pick up the tab for the $7,000-per-night hotel in Marrakech, and even brought along her own photographer/documentarian. The vacation was lavish, full of champagne, tennis lessons, and custom outfits. But Williams became outraged after their vacation to Morocco, when Sorokin disappeared without paying a nearly $70,000 bill. When Williams couldn't get reimbursement for the trip, she went to law enforcement, telling the New York District Attorney's Office, "This girl is a con artist."
Williams also detailed her friend's inner life, saying that Sorokin would regularly spend $400 on her eyelash extensions, tour multi-million-dollar apartments, and request off-menu meals at expensive restaurants. But by the time her deceit was finally found out, Sorokin was wearing the same clothes for days on end, couch surfing at her friends' apartments, and was caught dining and dashing without paying for her food. Her lies were unraveling. Her father wasn't a wealthy oil billionaire, he was a truck driver (via Yahoo! Finance). She didn't have $60 million in offshore accounts — she relied on other people's cash for nearly everything.
Payback time -- literally
The scams finally caught up with the faux-wealthy German socialite in 2017. She was charged with one count of theft of $300,000, and one count of attempted theft of $22 million. Sorokin was then charged with 10 more counts of larceny, attempted larceny, theft, and attempted theft, as hotels, banks, and financial institutions came forward with allegations, reports L'Officiel.
Then in August 2017, she was indicted for multiple counts of grand larceny in the first, second, and third degree, misdemeanor theft, check fraud, and theft of services. Sorokin had entered a Los Angeles addiction treatment center around this time, but she was removed, arrested, and sentenced to 4-12 years in state prison. She was released in 2021, but just one month after that, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested her for overstaying her U.S. visa.
So how much did she steal total? Estimates vary, but as Yahoo! Finance reports, the sum of what she stole is at least $275,000. After Netflix picked up on the wild tale and paid $320,000 for the rights to her life story, Sorokin paid about $223,000 in state fines and restitution.