A con artist who posed as a billionaire heiress to allegedly steal hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of hotel stays, trips, bank loans and personal training has refused a plea deal and will now go to trial on fraud charges.
Anna Sorokin, 26, appeared in court in Manhattan on Tuesday on grand larceny charges. She was prepared to take a plea deal which would have seen her go to jail but only if it meant she would spend three years behind bars at most.
It is not clear what deal prosecutors offered her but the prison term was not short enough and she turned it down.
Now, she faces up to 15 years in prison.
Anna Sorokin, the faux German heiress accused of swindling banks, hotels and friends out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, appears in court in Manhattan on June 19 to turn down a plea deal which would have put her behind bars for between three and nine years. She now faces 15 years imprisonment if convicted
Sorokin posed as Anna Delvey, the heiress daughter of a fictitious billionaire Russian magnate and used the persona to dupe elite circles in Manhattan from 2016 until January this year.
She talked banks into lending her money to start the ‘Anna Delvey Foundation’ and skipped out on bills at the end of a weeks-long stays in some of New York’s finest hotels.
She also targeted individuals who she believed would serve her well and got them to pay for things with the promise that she would eventually give them the money back.
Among them was a Vanity Fair picture researcher whom she convinced to pay $62,000 for a trip to Morocco after her own card was rejected.
Sorokin denies the charges and insists she was always trying to be seen as a businesswoman.
She claims the dinners, at extravagant restaurants like Le Coucou were business meetings and that it was all going towards the Anna Delvey Foundation, an arts-focused members club she planned to open and still speaks about.
In an interview with New York Magazine earlier this year, she said: ‘I had what I thought was a great team around me, and I was having fun.’
She said that while she had done some things wrong, it ‘doesn’t diminish the hundred things I did right.’
Prosecutors say she facilitated her lifestyle by check-kiting – a practice whereby a person deposits bad checks into a bank account then withdraws a cash amount before they bounce.
Sorokin, who used the fake name Anna Delvey to dupe friends and New York’s glitteratti, wore her trademark Celine glasses and a makeshift headband which appeared to have been crafted out of bandages
Sorokin, 26, will return to court on June 19. She is being held at Rikers’ Island which, she says, is not ‘as bad as people think’
In May, Sorokin spoke from Rikers’ Island to say it was ‘not that bad’.
Sorokin is pictured in one of the many Instagram photographs she uploaded as Anna Delvey, before her arrest
She said she had learned not how ‘easy’ it was to steal other people’s identities by watching financial criminals behind bars.
‘This place is not that bad at all actually. People seem to think it’s horrible, but I see it as like, this sociological experiment.
‘There are couple of girls who are here for financial crimes as well.
‘This one girl, she’s been stealing other people’s identities. I didn’t realize it was so easy,’ she told New York Magazine.
On Tuesday, Sorokin’s lawyer Todd Spodek would not go into specifics of the case but said: ‘Our position has always been that the people will not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Sorokin intended to defraud her friends and colleagues.’
Sorokin’s case received notoriety from two lengthy articles in Vanity Fair and New York Magazine.
Among those who have spoken out about it are some of her alleged victims including staff at the hotel where she stayed.
They told how she tipped with $100 bills and gave off an air of extreme wealth.
Sorokin (far right) is pictured in September 2014 with Giudo Cacciatori, Gro Curtis and Giorgia Tordini at The Jane hotel
One, who was the receptionist at 11 Howard where Sorokin stayed for a month, told how she once attended a dinner she organized for a large group at Le Coucou which included MaCaulay Culkin.
Others described how restaurants began calling them after seeing pictures of them with Sorokin on Instagram and asking to be put in touch with her because she had skipped out on her bills.
The truth is that she was born in Russia and grew up in Germany as the daughter of a truck driver.
She left Germany in 2011 to move to London where she attended Central St. Martin’s College as a fashion student.
Her father told New York Magazine that they had supplemented her rent and schooling at first and that he was stunned by the news she had been arrested.
‘We always paid for her accommodations, her rent, and other matters.
‘She assured us these costs were the best investment. If ever she needed something more at one point or another, it didn’t matter.
‘The future was always bright,’ her parents, who did not want to be identified, said in an email.