Anna "Delvey" Sorokin is out of prison and busy.
The 29-year-old Russian-born con artist, who infamously swindled her way through the New York City social scene by posing as a German heiress with a $60 million trust fund, left Albion Correctional Facility (she was previously at Rikers Island) late last week, released early for good behavior and participation in prison programs.
Delvey was arrested in 2018 and charged the following year with grand larceny (among other fraud-based convictions) for stealing in or around $200,000 from businesses and applying for a $22 million loan under false pretenses. But Delvey’s story went viral after a piece in New York Magazine, written by Jessica Pressler, who was personally defrauded by Delvey, detailed just how deep her deception went.
But according to Delvey, fraud was never her intention. In her first interview since her release, she told Insider, “I know what I did, and I know where I'm coming from. And I don't even need any reflection on that. I don't really have a problem with myself as a person, because I know I was never planning on defrauding anyone.” Cool!
Now, out on parole and living, remarkably, in Manhattan (though a deportation is likely on the horizon), she isn’t missing a beat.
Delvey has reignited her social presence, creating a brand new Twitter account and reviving the Instagram account that, make no mistake, she (or at least someone) was keeping active while she was behind bars. In the few days since she’s been back on the streets, Delvey has posted to Instagram no less than 20 times at time of writing, re-sharing her sarcastic tweets and showing off her Valentine’s Day celebrations with a friend.
She is, obviously, maintaining her fake identity across all her accounts (“Why shouldn't I? I'm a movement by myself.”)
But, you know, whatever. She’s a free(-ish) woman now; let her post silly photos of eating chocolate in a bathtub and selfies from bed. What’s audacious about Delvey’s social media activity is the behind-the-scenes looks she’s sharing at her apparent work-in-progress television series.
“Anna Delvey TV coming soon.” Girl, what? Delvey told Insider that the series will be “a way to control what I want to tell.”
Oh, and she’s writing a book. *bangs head on table*
“It's going to be something similar to the previous three pieces I posted on my website,” here she’s referring to the open letters to Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein she wrote, “but I have literally 10 boxes full of paperwork where I've been writing down my words from Rikers and Albion. So I just need to get everything together,” she said. “It's going to be my take on the criminal justice system and my jail experience...My point is basically going to be, like, the pointlessness of the whole thing. They just wasted everyone's time and money.”
Maybe it’s the non-criminal in me, but I just think that if you spend time, any time at all, in literal prison, maybe you’d keep a low profile. Maybe you would try to right your wrongs, get a modest job, become an upstanding citizen. Alas, #InfluencerLife is even more alive and well in 2021 than it was in 2018, so, if anything, Anna Delvey has emerged from prison into a world so perfectly suited to her particular...charms.
And charms she has! As much as we hate to admit it, people like Delvey draw attention, and it’s not as negative as you’d think. Her crimes were boundless, yes, but they weren’t gritty -- she’s a high-brow criminal. Voyeurs can keep up with her without feeling particularly slimy, and we’ve talked about this before: There’s something intoxicating about scammers that keep us coming back for more.
And it’s obvious that she didn’t take her nearly four years in prison seriously...at all.
I guess it doesn’t help that she made some easy money when Shonda Rhimes paid her for the Netflix series about the whole ordeal, “Inventing Anna,” that’s currently in production (though New York reportedly invoked the Son of Sam law that reroutes some of that pay-out to Delvey’s victims.)
Delvey even admitted her very blasé attitude toward prison to Insider, calling it, “not so bad as to act as a deterrent for any future crimes.” Oh, OK.
She mentioned how the program she recently went through from prison, which prepares inmates for release back into the world, was “a huge waste of time,” and then humble-bragged about her ~connections~ and how all the officers knew who she was.
“It's kind of like the scene in New York, but amplified. Because if you know the right officers, they're going to get you the right job...It's all about who you know and what people think of you,” she said.
There you have it, folks! If you go to prison, just make sure you do a high-profile enough crime so that the officers respect you for it. And then strike a book deal immediately upon release.