Viewers around the world loved engrossing themselves in Netflix’s Inventing Anna released in 2022. The lead of this show, Anna Delvery (Sorokin), stole a huge sum of money from different parts of the world while pretending to be an heiress in New York City for years.
She became the center of all news highlights in 2018 when a Vanity Fair piece extensively detailed how she conned wealthy New Yorkers out of their money. The fraudster’s high jinks soon ended and she was convicted of eight felony charges in 2019. Apparently, she is in ICE custody. Her net worth remains a topic of discussion among many people even today.
Here is everything about Anna Sorokin, including her net worth.
Early Life
Anna Delvey’s real name is Anna Sorokin. She was born on the 23rd of January, 1991, in Domodedovo, Russia, in a working-class family. Her father worked as a truck driver, and her mother ran a small convenience store before becoming a homemaker.
While Anna was born in Russia, she spent her young days in Germany after her family moved there. She graduated from a high school and soon left for London to pursue her further education. But she never completed her graduation.
She dropped out of graduate school, which also made her return to Germany for a while. After her brief stint in Berlin, Anna packed her bags and moved to Paris to pursue a public relations internship at Purple Magazine in 2013. The glamorous background of her job attracted the female. She even attended New York Fashion Week before transferring to an internship at Purple’s New York Office.
Around this time, Anna began to go by Anna Delvey instead of her real surname (Sorokin).
Anna’s Journey to Being a Con Woman
Anna quit her internship at Purple. However, she stayed in New York and began to live with her false identity. Her fake identity was not that of a common female, she impersonated a German heiress. For years, Anna socialized with the creative scene of the city and rubbed shoulders with elite socialites, wealthy artists, and other influential figures – all of which helped her to piggyback her success to a great extent.
She persuaded many individuals and banks countlessly in giving her tens of thousands of dollars under the pretense of paying them back one day. But she never paid them back. On the contrary, she used all their money to fund her lavish lifestyle and in promotion of the idea of the Anna Delvey Foundation – a private social club and art gallery.
Anna enjoyed the peak of a luxury lifestyle by staying in luxury hotels, tipping handsomely, and dining in expensive restaurants. But soon, her disastrous borrowing and spending habits caught up to her.
When Anna’s Fraudulent Activities were Caught by the Police
After being evicted from dozens of hotels and racking up stacks of unpaid bills across the city, Sorokin was indicted in August 2017 on two counts of attempted grand larceny in the first degree, three counts of grand larceny in the third degree, and one count of misdemeanor theft of services. The police also indicted her for incidences of cheque fraud and theft of service in relation to her failure to pay back her hotel and restaurant bills.
She was arrested after two months in a sting operation in Los Angeles. Reportedly, she was staying there at an addiction treatment facility. Following her arrest, she was also sentenced to 4-12 years in state prison for her crimes. Initially, she was released early on parole in February 2021 but ended up in custody again the following month when she was detained by ICE for overstaying her visa in New York. As of February 2022, the German national was still awaiting a decision surrounding her deportation.
Following all these events, her future remains uncertain. But all these events made many people curious about her net worth.
How Much Money Did Anna Sorokin Steal?
Want to know how much money Anna Sorokin stole while pretending to be an heiress?
According to prosecutors during her 2019 trial, Sorokin’s deception enabled her to steal an estimated $275,000. As a part of her sentencing in 2019, the scammer was fined $24,000 and ordered to pay restitution of nearly $200,000.
What is Anna Sorokin’s Net Worth?
While pretending to be an heiress, Anna declared her net worth to be around a whopping $60 million. But this figure is far from reality.
Although she was paid by the OTT giant Netflix for the rights to her life story for their show Inventing Anna, the disgraced scammer didn’t have as much money left to her name for she had to pay back her restitution and ongoing legal fee.
Reportedly, Anna had to pay a total of $223,000 in combined restitution and state fines. According to some sources, Anna’s current net worth sits below $100,000. Given her past spending habits and penchant for living luxuriously, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if she is already in the red.
How Much Did Netflix Pay Anna for the Series?
According to an inside report, Netflix paid a whopping $320,000 to Anna for the rights to adapt her life story into Shonda Rhimes’ limited series, Inventing Anna. The publication also shared that she used $199,000 of the money to pay back her restitution and another $24,000 to settle state fines.
In an essay, Anna confirmed that she would not be watching the series based on her life. In her own words, “Nothing about seeing a fictionalized version of myself in this criminal-insane-asylum setting sounds appealing to me. For a long while, I was hoping that by the time Inventing Anna came out, I would have moved on with my life. I imagined for the show to be a conclusion of sorts summing up and closing of a long chapter that had come to an end.”
She further added:
“Nearly four years in the making and hours of phone conversations and visits later, the show is based on my story and told from a journalist’s perspective. And while I am curious to see how they interpreted all the research and materials provided, I cannot help but feel like an afterthought, the somber irony of being confined to a cell at yet another horrid correctional facility lost between the lines, the history repeating itself.”
Inventing Anna had been a much-awaited series for the audience. It was released on the 11th of February.The series is based on the New York Magazine article, “How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People”. The article was published by Jessica Pressle. On the show, Anna is portrayed by Julia Garner. Its official synopsis reads,
“In Inventing Anna, a journalist with a lot to prove investigates the case of Anna Delvey, the Instagram-legendary German heiress who stole the hearts of New York’s social scene, and stole their money as well?”
Some More Facts About Anna Sorokin
- Do you know Anna Delvey wasn’t the only fake person that Sorokin created?
While prosecuting her case, New York Assistant District Attorney, Catherine McCaw, told jurors that the heiress impersonator invented a team of imaginary assistants she would reference. She did so to cement her fraudulent image of someone with significant resources and wealth.
The fictional staff members, such as her accountant, too, came in handy for passing the blame on when her wire transfers of money she owed didn’t ever come through.
- The whole scheme of fraudulent earnings came to light on the trip to Morocco where Anna invited three friends, including Rachel Deloache Williams, the former photo editor of Vanity Fair. During their vacation, the hotel staff informed them that Anna’s credit cards were not working and Williams ended up footing the whopping $62,000 bill for their trip, while the former promised to reimburse. The scammer, however, didn’t pay back Williams for months, causing her to report Anna to the police and the district attorney’s office. As a result, Anna was arrested in 2017.
- Even after her arrest, Anna did not give up on her lavish lifestyle. On this account when she didn’t have expensive clothes to wear, she would not want to show up on her trials. Going by the claims of her stylist, she had a secret benefactor who made sure that the scammer got designer clothes of her taste for her trials without having to worry about the dues.
- Not many people know this, but Anna Sorokin went to Central Saint Martins, the elite fashion school in London. Although she never graduated and moved to Paris with an internship contract, we assume she may have developed a hunger for riches from there.