Netflix true crime miniseries Making up Anna won audiences over when it premiered in February 2022.
The limited series starring Julia Garner tells the crazy true story of con artist Anna Sorokin, who posed as a wealthy German heiress named Anna Delvey while living in New York.
In addition to defrauding countless wealthy socialites, Sorokin also defrauded several prominent banks and hotels during her time in the Big Apple.
Since Sorokin’s sentencing in 2019, there have been several adaptations of the infamous story — including a book written by her former friend Rachel Williams titled My friend Anna and an upcoming HBO series, according to Deadline — but the Netflix series is based on Jessica Pressler New York article, “How Anna Delvey Fooled New York’s Party People.”
Read on to learn more about the true story of Anna Delvey.
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Who is Anna Delvey?
Anna Sorokin is seen in a courtroom during her trial in New York State Supreme Court in New York on April 11, 2019. TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images
Anna Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, was born on January 23, 1991 in Domodedovo, a small Russian town outside Moscow, but she grew up mostly in Germany. She and her brother grew up in a middle-class family; her father drove a truck and her mother once owned a small store.
At 19, Sorokin left Germany to pursue a degree in fashion in Paris and eventually took the name Anna Delvey. In the summer of 2013, she attended New York Fashion Week on behalf of Purple magazine, where she worked then, and in the end decided to live in the city.
Since her conviction, Sorokin has not been in contact with her parents, who also did not attend her trial. Her father had previously stated that he had disowned her, saying DailyMailTV in April 2019: “I have no influence on her life and what she does. It’s up to her what she did.”
What crimes did Anna Delvey commit?
While in NYC, Sorokin paraded herself as a wealthy German heiress to infiltrate the inner circle of the city’s biggest socialites. During her time in town, she defrauded countless people, hotels and banks, often using invalid credit cards or fake bank statements to create the illusion of wealth. She even came up with the idea of the Anna Delvey Foundation, a private club and arts foundation, to attract wealthy donors and enhance her brand.
After bouncing from hotel to hotel and repeatedly failing to pay her bills, Sorokin was kicked out of several of them. In October 2017, Sorokin was arrested during an investigative operation. At the time, she was staying at an addiction treatment facility in Los Angeles County, California. During her pursuit, she was estimated to have stolen around $275,000.
On April 25, 2019, Sorokin was found guilty of eight counts in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, including attempted grand larceny in the first degree, grand larceny in the second degree, grand larceny in the third degree, and theft of services. That May, she was sentenced to four to 12 years in state prison, fined $24,000 and ordered to pay restitution of about $199,000.
Where is Anna Delvey now?
After her trial, Sorokin was sent to Bedford Hills Prison before being transferred to Albion Prison in New York. In February 2021, she was released early from prison and immediately returned to Instagram.
However, that March she was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for overstaying her visa.
On October 5, 2022, Sorokin was granted release from an ICE facility in Orange County, NY, Bloomberg reported.
As part of her release, according to Bloomberg, she had to post $10,000 bail and was banned from social media, where she often shared posts showing off her apparently lavish lifestyle to friends and potential investors.
In July 2023, Sorokin announced her foray into music, releasing a song called “What the Hell?” with TikTok star and country singer Brooke Butler. The song is a theme song for Sorokin Show Anna Delvey podcast, which she launched that June.
In addition to music, the convicted fraudster also tried his hand in the fashion industry. In September 2023, Sorokin teamed up with fashion PR expert Kelly Cutrone to form the OutLaw Agency, which hosted a rooftop fashion show in New York for rising fashion designer Shao Yang’s eponymous label, SHAO.
Sorokin lives in New York’s East Village, where he has been under house arrest since February 2024, according to Daily Mail.
Despite being under house arrest, Sorokin was cleared to compete in the 33rd season Dancing with the stars, which premiered in September 2024.
“I had to ask ICE for permission to travel out of state because it’s filming in Los Angeles and I’m in New York,” she told PEOPLE. “It took them about 10 days to push it through the system and get everything approved.”
Part of that approval required Sorokin to wear an ankle monitor while appearing in the show, although costume designers were able to create a flashy “detachable sleeve” for the equipment to match her costume.
Ultimately, Sorokin stays DWTS was short-lived, and she and partner Ezra Sosa were eliminated in the first week of the competition. When host Julianne Hough asked her what she would take from the show now that her time on stage is over, she replied “nothing”.
Did Netflix Pay Anna Delvey For Making up Anna?
In January 2021, Business Insider (then Insider) reported that Netflix paid Sorokina $320,000 for the rights to adapt her life story for Making up Anna. The publication also reported that Sorokin used $199,000 of the money she received from Netflix to pay restitution to banks she owed, plus another $24,000 to settle government fines.
In an open letter to Insider in February 2022, Sorokin expressed her thoughts on the Netflix series, noting that “nothing about watching a fictionalized version of myself in this setting of a criminal asylum sounds appealing to me.”
“I hoped for a long time that I would by then Making up Anna came out, I would move on with my life,” she wrote. “I imagined the show to be a kind of conclusion, summarizing and closing a long chapter that had come to an end. Almost four years in the making and hours of phone calls and visits later, the show is based on my story and told from a journalist’s perspective. And while I’m curious to see how they’ve interpreted all the research and materials provided, I can’t help but feel like an afterthought, the bleak irony of being locked up in a cell in yet another horrible correctional facility lost between the lines, history repeating itself.”
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Source: HIS Education