Judge sentences fake German heiress Anna Sorokin to 4 to 12 years behind bars
Prosecutors say Sorokin conned her way into living a jet-setting lifestyle in New York, asking friends to front big bills that she never paid back; Laura Ingle reports.
Anna Sorokin, who convinced New York City's elite that she was a German heiress by the name of Anna Delvey in 2017, remains in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody as of Tuesday afternoon, despite rumors of her deportation, according to the agency.
A Manhattan jury found Sorokin, now 31, guilty of multiple fraud charges in 2019 and served nearly four years in prison before being released in 2021 on good behavior. The German citizen was subsequently arrested by ICE on March 25, 2021, for overstaying her visa in the United States.
"In November 2021, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) granted Sorokin’s emergency stay request; she remains in ICE custody pending removal," an ICE spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Tuesday afternoon.
In this April 22, 2019 file photo, Anna Sorokin, who claimed to be a German heiress, arrives for her trial at New York State Supreme Court in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
The ICE spokesperson added that the agency does not discuss future removal operations due to operational security.
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Reports released Tuesday suggested that Sorokin had been deported back to Germany from the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, New York. She was scheduled to leave Monday after a Manhattan judge denied her appeal to stay in the U.S., and prison officials disabled her account on an inmate communications app, an attorney for Sorokin told Insider.
"Legally, they should not be able to deport her until at least the 17th. But it's ICE, and there are numerous filings in her case, so you just never know if there was a paperwork error," Sorkin's lawyer, Manny Arora, told the outlet. "In the end, they can do whatever they want."
Anna Sorokin is escorted into a courtroom after a recess in her trial at New York State Supreme Court, Thursday, April 4, 2019, in New York. Sorokin, who claimed to be a German heiress, is on trial on grand larceny and theft of services charges. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Arora did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Fox News Digital.
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Sorokin was accused of swindling some $200,000 from New York banks and businesses. In April 2019, she was convicted of four counts of theft of services, three counts of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny, and acquitted of one count of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny after a monthlong trial that highlighted the fraudulent life she concocted in New York.
The then-28-year-old woman deceived a network of friends and financial institutions into believing she had a roughly $67 million fortune from her father overseas.
Anna Sorokin, who claimed to be a German heiress, returns to the courtroom during her trial on grand larceny and theft of services charges in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
Sorokin went to remarkable lengths to have others pay her way, including Rachel Williams, a former Vanity Fair photo editor, who penned a piece about her experience. Sorokin allegedly duped Williams into paying a $62,000 bill for what was advertised as an all-expenses-paid trip to Morocco — a charge of which Sorokin was acquitted.
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The faux German heiress was also accused of forging financial records in an application for a $22 million loan to fund a private arts club she wanted to build, complete with exhibitions, installations and pop-up shops, prosecutors said. She was denied the loan but persuaded one bank to lend her $100,000 she failed to repay.
Sorokin, who has nearly 1 million Instagram followers after Netflix released a show based on her life called "Inventing Anna" in February, has managed to keep her social media accounts active from prison, appearing frequently in news interviews and on podcasts.
Fox News' Nicole Darrah and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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