The woman whose real-life story inspired the Netflix series “Inventing Anna” is going to be deported to Germany.
Anna Sorokin, who was born in Russia, had portrayed herself as a German heiress named Anna Delvey. She does have family in Germany, The New York Times reported.
Sorokin had claimed that she had a $60 million inheritance, NBC News reported.
Sorokin was arrested in 2017 and convicted two years later on eight counts, including grand larceny, ABC News reported, for scamming banks, stealing a private jet and leaving hotels before the bill was paid. She also was accused of making the New York elite believe that she was something she was not, the Times reported.
In all, she was accused of scamming more than $200,000 from New York City’s society, the Times reported.
Once released from prison having completed her sentence for the conviction last February, Sorokin was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for staying too long in the U.S.
Recently Sorokin had lost the fight against the U.S. government for a bid to stay in the country. She was released from federal custody so she could be deported to Germany.
Friends of Sorokin said she didn’t believe that she would have to be returned to Germany, where she had moved with her family from Russia when she was 15. Her family still lives there. She left her home at the age of 19 for a fashion degree in Paris.
Eventually, she made it to New York where, during an interview with The New York Times, she said she never told people that she was a German heiress and that was what people had said that she was.
She used fake financial statements to court banks and hedge funds to give her money for the Anna Delvey Foundation, a private arts club.
Despite being convicted then held by ICE, she never thought she would have to give up her life in the U.S. and be forced to go back to Germany.
To that end, she worked on appeals, appeared on podcasts, wrote a book and worked on documentary projects, the Times reported.
Netflix paid Sorokin $320,000 as a consultant for the show “Inventing Anna” produced by Shonda Rhimes, but Sorokin said that she was not so “brazen and shameless” as the show had portrayed her, NBC News reported.
She was also part of a class-action lawsuit against ICE for not giving inmates the COVID-19 vaccine. She said she had contracted the coronavirus while in custody after being denied multiple requests for a booster shot, NBC News reported.
But on Monday, her attorney Manny Arora said he hasn’t heard from Sorokin and believes she’s already been deported, NBC News reported.
Arora said that technically she should not have been yet.
“Legally, they should not be able to deport her until the 19th. That is due to the deportation order being signed on February 17 and that allows us to have 30 days to file an appeal,” Arora said in a statement to NBC News. “But we are dealing with bureaucracy, and there are numerous filings in her case so you just never know if there was a paperwork error. I haven’t heard from Miss Sorokin this afternoon, and so I am working under the presumption that she is being deported.”
ICE did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment but did tell the Times via email that she was technically in immigration authorities’ custody.
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