Anna Sorokin: 'I'm not sorry,' says woman jailed for scamming New York's richest
Conwoman says she would do it all again - and hopes to move to London after her release
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Your support makes all the difference.A wannabe ‘it girl” who conned her way into New York’s richest social circles by posing as a German heiress said she is not sorry for her crimes.
Anna Sorokin was jailed for up to 12 years for swindling banks, hotels and socialites out of more than $200,000 to fund an extravagant lifestyle in Manhattan.
After being convicted of multiple counts of larceny and theft, the 28 year-old apologised in court “for the mistakes I made”.
But speaking to the New York Times at Rikers Island prison, Sorokin said she would “probably” do it all again.
“The thing is, I’m not sorry,” she said on Friday, the day after her sentencing. ”I’d be lying to you and to everyone else and to myself if I said I was sorry for anything. I regret the way I went about certain things.”
She said she was born in Russia and grew up in Eschweiler, Germany, before leaving home at the age of 18 to move to Paris and work at a fashion magazine.
In 2013 she travelled to New York for fashion week and decided to stay. Using the false identity of Anna Delvey, a German heiress with a $67m trust fund and a fondness for Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent clothing, she began racking up bills at boutique hotels and restaurants.
She began pitching her idea for a $40m private club to entrepreneurs and architects and tried to con a hedge fun into giving her a $25m loan. Her application was rejected but she persuaded one bank to lend her $100,000.
Sorokin said she never told her wealthy friends that she had millions of dollars, they just assumed it.
She also claimed she always intended to pay back her creditors. “My motive was never money,” she told the Times. “I was power-hungry.”
Sorokin was first arrested in July 2017 for failing to pay for stays at two New York hotels and a lunch bill at the Le Parker Meridien. She was then rearrested four months later as the scale of her scam emerged.
Now Netflix and HBO are both working on shows based on Sorokin’s fraud.
She hopes to complete her own account, as well as a book about her experience in prison while at Rikers Island, where she has already been disciplined 13 times for fighting and disobeying orders.
“I guess I’m fortunate enough to go to real prison, so I’ll have more material,” she said.
Sorokin is likely to be deported to Germany following her release but hopes to move on to London.
She said: “Ideally, if all goes well, I’ll have my own investment fund.”
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