Fake heiress Anna Sorokin has finally expressed remorse for her scams – telling DailyMailTV: ‘No money in the world is worth going to jail — even for a day.’
The real life inspiration for the Netflix series Inventing Anna has never before said sorry for swindling New York’s elite by pretending to be a billionaire socialite.
But Sorokin, 31, currently behind bars trying to fight deportation, has finally admitted wrongdoing in an exclusive jailhouse interview with DailyMailTV.
‘I admit I made some mistakes,’ she concedes. ‘I never tried to harm anybody and I’m trying to fix it now. I don’t know what that makes me.’
Sorokin — who also goes by the name Anna Delvey — conned friends, banks and fancy Manhattan hotels out of $275,000 by passing herself off as a German heiress with a $67million trust fund back in Europe.
Anna Sorokin, aka Anna ‘Delvey’, expressed remorse for her scams for the first time in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com
The fake German heiress spoke to DailyMailTV’s Alicia Quarles (right) from an ICE detention facility, where she is being held for overstaying her visa
Sorokin was convicted in 2019 of second-degree larceny, theft of services and first-degree attempted larceny after she refused to pay at some of the city’s most expensive hotels
But her spiraling debts caught up with her in April 2019 when she was convicted of four counts of theft of services, three counts of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny.
Russian-born Sorokin was jailed for between four and 15 years and ordered to pay $199,000 in restitution to her many victims.
When asked at that time whether she had any regrets, the champagne-swilling fraudster told a journalist: ‘I’d be lying to you and to everyone else and to myself if I said I was sorry for anything.’
Despite her attitude, Sorokin, who grew up in Germany and worked as an intern for a fashion mag before coming to the US in 2013, was released from prison in February of last year for good behavior.
However her legal problems were far from over and a month later she was taken back into custody by ICE for overstaying her visa.
Sorokin has appealed her deportation and is hoping to learn her fate next week, she told DailyMailTV, speaking to us from the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, New York.
‘No money in the world is worth going to jail — even for a day,’ she warned.
‘I’m just trying to make the best out of the situation I’m dealing with right now. I could have done so many things different and I would have never seen the inside of the jail. But it just is what it is.
The 31-year-old con artist admitted that breaking the law is ‘definitely not worth it’ and that she is now trying to turn her story around
Anna was acquitted, however, of stealing from her friend, Rachel DeLoache Williams (pictured), who she brought to a $7,000-a-night Morocco villa, claiming she would pay
She made headlines around the world after pretending she was a super-rich heiress called Anna Delvey with a $60million trust fund to gain access to her wealthy targets, and to take out tens of thousands of dollars in bank loans. She is pictured, right, at a New York social event in 2014
‘You don’t get to press a reset button and go back and fix what you’ve done in the past. So don’t commit any crimes and don’t go to jail. It’s definitely not worth it.’
Sorokin claimed she has settled her restitution and covers her own legal bills thanks to the $320,000 windfall she received from Netflix for the rights to her wild life story.
The resulting Netflix miniseries, Inventing Anna, featuring Julia Garner in the lead role, has been a smash hit since its February release.
Sorokin says she’s only been able to watch about 20 to 30 minutes of it so far in video calls to friends.
‘Julia did a great job, a great job. Everybody loves it,’ Sorokin says.
But she adds: ‘I wouldn’t want people to glamorize crimes and use me as an example, like the poster child.
‘This is totally not the message I’m trying to send. I’m trying to turn my story around. I know I’m getting a lot of criticism for, like, why are you giving a platform to a criminal?
‘I feel like I deserve a second chance and I deserve to move on. And I’m not doing anything illegal as of right now.’
Sorokin is appealing her deportation so she can stay in the States, write a memoir and work on her podcast.
Russian-born Sorokin was jailed for between four and 15 years and ordered to pay $199,000 in restitution to her many victims
Sorokin, pictured last March, is now receiving ‘poor person’s relief’ after she reportedly used the Netflix money to pay off her debts
She claims that a number of her fans and friends, including new bestie Julia Fox, 32, have even offered to ‘adopt her’ so she can work around immigration rules.
The pair struck up an unlikely friendship after Kanye West’s ex contacted her on Instagram.
‘Julia is a great friend of mine and she is really, really fun,’ said Sorokin.
‘She’s been very supportive over the past months and she can relate a bit to my situation. She had a couple of boyfriends who were in prison or in jail.
‘She always tries to find creative ways to help me. She offered to adopt me. It couldn’t happen but it was very sweet of her.’
Sorokin said she expects her deportation appeal to be decided any day now but if she does have to leave, the UK could be next on her radar.
‘I have a German passport, so technically I could go to a lot of places,’ she explains.
‘I guess I’ll think about that when that happens. London would be an option — I have a lot of friends there.’
If Sorokin does end up back in Germany she’s confident that her working class parents will forgive her.
Sorokin’s dad Vadim, a former truck driver, has a heating and cooling business in Düren, 45 minutes west of Cologne. Her mom owns a convenience store.
On Sunday, Sorokin likened her experience at Rikers Island to a luxury Moroccan villa when compared to her experience at the ICE detention facility
Sorokin has been held at the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, New York since March 2021 for overstaying her visa
Anna revealed she struck up an unlikely friendship with Kanye West’s ex Julia Fox (right) who offered to ‘adopt her’ so she can work around immigration rules
Vadim told DailyMail.com in 2019 that he had disowned his daughter because of her ‘selfish personality’.
But Anna insisted: ‘I’m still in touch with my parents and I call them every other day.
‘They’re not going to drop life in Germany and buy a house by the jail in New York and come see me every day. But whatever I need, I can always give them a call and ask if that’s reasonable. So I have support from them.’
Sorokin is still on US soil despite a chaotic deportation mix-up that had many thinking the con artist was finally on her way out of the country on Tuesday.
She remains in the Orange County jail, where she has been for the last seven months.
As she is Russian-born, Sorokin even had something to say about the war in Ukraine. She feels that people in Russia are not aware of what is happening in the besieged former Soviet republic.
‘Obviously, people cannot make up their minds if they are being brainwashed daily. If you only have one source, how can you not believe them?
‘I feel it’s just really awful and sad.’
An episode of the popular Call Her Daddy podcast, in which she is interviewed from the jail, aired Thursday. It was previously recorded.
She is being held in ICE custody for overstaying her visa, and is due to be deported to Germany although it’s not exactly clear when.
She has previously said that the Goshen prison is worse than notorious Rikers Island in New York City where she was previously held.
She told DailyMailTV that is because Rikers gets so much scrutiny while the upstate facility flies under the radar.
‘They just make up the rules as they go,’ she said. ‘I’m still figuring out what comes from ICE and what comes from the jail.
‘So I don’t want to bad-mouth ICE because I’m really not sure it is them that is making up the rules.’
She complained that the days can be monotonous. ‘It’s just like absolutely nothing all day long.
‘You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to wake up — literally.
Sorokin sold the rights to her life story to Netflix for $320,000. Above, actress Julia Garner plays Delvey in the series ‘Inventing Anna’
In an interview with Call Me Daddy podcast host Alexandra Cooper earlier this week, Sorokin laughed as she revealed how she effortlessly scammed New York City’s high society and denied being a con artist
‘If you just sit in your cell, nobody will ever bother you.’
But she said she keeps herself busy working on her podcast and her planned book.
On Tuesday, Sorokin’s lawyer and friends sparked chaos when they couldn’t get hold of her. The texting system from the jail she is being held in also changed her status to say that she had been released.
A rush of European reporters flocked to Frankfurt Airport to await her arrival and her attorney, Manny Arora, told Good Morning America that he thought she was on her way back to Germany.
A source from the detention center told DailyMail.com on Tuesday morning that she has not left the facility at all, despite reports she may have been on her way to the airport.
She will stay there until ICE agents come to collect her.
‘They don’t give us a heads up, she’s with us until they come to collect her,’ the source said.
Arora told DailyMail.com that he filed an emergency stay Tuesday to block a deportation order that was filed on February 17.
The order will give Sorokin another 30 days in the country.
It’s unclear what her grounds for appeal are, or what kind of visa she hopes to obtain that would allow her to stay in the US.
On Thursday an ICE spokesman confirmed: ‘In November 2021, the Board of Immigration Appeals granted Sorokin’s emergency stay request; she remains in ICE custody pending removal.’
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk