Thursday 2 May 2019

Anna Sorokin found guilty / VIDEO:How NYC’s Richest Socialites Were Scammed By Anna Delvey, Allegedly | Va...





Anna Sorokin: fake heiress found guilty of theft and grand larceny in Manhattan
Woman who masqueraded as Anna Delvey swindled tens of thousands of dollars from banks, hotels and friends

Associated Press

Fri 26 Apr 2019 07.26 BST First published on Fri 26 Apr 2019 01.40 BST

A New York jury on Thursday convicted an extravagant socialite who bankrolled an implausibly lavish lifestyle with tens of thousands of dollars she swindled from banks, hotels and friends who believed she was a wealthy German heiress.

The Manhattan jury found Anna Sorokin guilty of four counts of theft of services, three counts of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny following a month-long trial that attracted international attention. She was acquitted of one count of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny. She is to be sentenced 9 May.

Sorokin also faces deportation to Germany because authorities say she overstayed her visa.

Using the name Anna Delvey, Sorokin deceived friends and financial institutions into believing she had a fortune of about $67m (60m euros) overseas that would cover her high-end clothing, luxury hotel stays and trans-Atlantic travel.

She claimed her father was diplomat or an oil baron and went to extraordinary lengths to have others pay her way. Prosecutors said she promised one friend an all-expenses paid trip to Morocco but then stuck her with the $62,000 bill.

She also forged financial records in an application for a $22m 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.

Her defense attorney, Todd Spodek, insisted Sorokin planned to settle her six-figure debts and was merely “buying time”.

Anna Sorokin proves we’re all soft touches for glamour scammers
Rebecca Nicholson
There’s a reason why the story of the sham heiress is fascinating – in our phoney world any one of us could be conned

Sat 27 Apr 2019 15.00 BST

Netflix and HBO are both working on the story of the convicted conwoman Anna Sorokin, aka ‘Anna Delvey’
On Thursday, in a New York courtroom, Anna Sorokin was convicted of a litany of charges: four counts of theft of services, three of grand larceny and one of attempted grand larceny. The story of her brief, bright career as a scammer, when she floated around the city claiming to be an heiress called Anna Delvey, on a cycle of borrowing and defaulting, has proved so gripping that it is already being turned into competing projects. A New York magazine report from 2018 was optioned for Netflix; a Vanity Fair story, written by the photojournalist who had been swindled by Sorokin (and who testified against her), is being adapted for HBO by Lena Dunham.

Sorokin’s convictions, for which she faces a prison sentence and deportation to Germany, make her the latest in a line of high-level fakers elevated to celebrity status by our fascination. It’s no wonder that Netflix and HBO are involved in turning the saga into entertainment: from the Fyre festival to Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced CEO of Theranos (not, in a week of Avengers overload, to be confused with Thanos), tales of people promising something they could never, or never intended to, deliver are everywhere.

It is surely just a matter of time before Netflix creates a “glamour scammers” category, on a par with “understated TV dramas featuring a strong female lead” or, as I found when scrolling last week, “sparking joy”, which perhaps reveals more about my algorithms than I should be comfortable with.

I used to think that the appeal of such stories was down to the unedifying pleasure of schadenfreude and the firm belief that we, the people watching, would never be conned like that. The Fyre festival fiasco thrived on this sentiment: people saw others paying for the pursuit of impossible glamour, only to find that it was actually impossible.

Now I think the appeal might lie somewhere else. We are all in a position where being tricked on some level is not unusual and seeing these grand scams unfold only highlights how much of the world is run on persuasion and image of no substance. Even Sorokin’s legal strategy emphasised the fakery around us. “Everyone’s life was perfectly curated for social media. People were fake. People were phoney. And money was made on hype alone,” her lawyer told the jury.

It’s little comfort to those damaged by Sorokin’s actions. But they expose a vulnerability in all of us and that might be what makes such stories so desperately, hopelessly thrilling.


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