Anna Delvey

Anna Sorokin, known as Anna Delvey, was born on January 23, 1991, near Moscow, Russia. At the age of sixteen, she emigrated with her family to Germany in 2007. By 2011, she had left Germany to explore life in London and Paris, eventually making her way to New York City in 2013. In New York, she interned for the French fashion magazine Purple, where she began to cultivate her vision of a private members' club and arts foundation.

Delvey's ambition led her to create a façade of wealth, as she forged financial documents to support her claims of possessing a multi-million-euro trust fund. This deception allowed her to infiltrate the upper echelons of New York's social and art scenes, where she lived a lavish lifestyle funded by fraudulent checks and manipulated financial institutions. Between 2013 and 2017, she successfully deceived banks, hotels, and individuals, living in luxury while maintaining her elaborate ruse.

Her downfall came in 2017 when she was arrested by the NYPD, following a sting operation initiated by her former friend, Rachel DeLoache Williams, who accused Delvey of defrauding her of sixty-two thousand dollars. In 2019, a New York state court convicted her of multiple charges, including attempted grand larceny, resulting in a prison sentence of four to twelve years. After serving two years, she was released on parole, only to be taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation to Germany.

Delvey's story gained significant media attention, particularly after Williams published an article in Vanity Fair in 2018, which was later expanded into a book titled My Friend Anna. In the same year, journalist Jessica Pressler wrote about Delvey's life as a socialite, leading to Netflix acquiring the rights to her story for the miniseries Inventing Anna in 2022. Her life has since inspired various television shows, interviews, and theater productions, solidifying her status as a notorious figure in contemporary culture.