Anna Delvey

Anna Delvey, born as Anna Sorokin, is a con artist from Moscow, Russia born on January 23, 1991. From 2013 to 2017, Delvey masked herself as a wealthy heiress to gain access to the upper-class New York social and art scene.

Her parents were working-class citizens of Russia (then, Soviet Union) and she emigrated from Russia to Germany with her family at 16 years old. In 2011, she moved to London and then Paris before making her way to New York City in 2013. When she arrived in Manhattan she interned at Purple, a French fashion magazine. While working there, she formed a private members’ club and arts foundation and gained a community of high-level connections.

She later created fake financial documents to cover her claims of having a multi-million-euro trust fund and forged multiple wire transfer confirmations. She used these documents and fraudulent checks to scam banks, friends and realtors to pay out cash and grant her large loans without collateral. She used this money to fund her expensive lifestyle.

For four years, Delvey deceived and defrauded large financial banks, hotels and people of a collective of $275,000. In 2017, one of Delvey’s former friends Rachel DeLoache Williams helped the NYPD form a sting operation after she accused Delvey of defrauding her $62,000, ultimately leading to her arrest.

She was arrested in 2018 and remained in prison through her May 2019 sentencing. She served two years after being convicted on charges of grand larceny, second-degree larceny and theft of services. She was also ordered to pay a $24,000 fine and $199,000 restitution and faced deportation to Germany. On October 5, 2022, Delvey paid $10,000 bail and was released from prison, where she was placed on house arrest while fighting her deportation case.

Delvey’s story gained a great amount of public attention in 2018 when Williams wrote a reported feature in Vanity Fair about her experience being Delvey’s friend, which she expanded on in her book My Friend Anna. The same year a journalist for New York, Jessica Presslet wrote an article about Delvey’s life of becoming a socialite. Netflix paid Delvey $320,000 for the rights to her story and later developed the story into the 2022 miniseries Inventing Anna. Delvey’s life has also been the lead subject of other television shows, podcasts and even theater productions.

In September 2024, Delvey was announced as a cast member on Dancing With the Stars season 33. She was partnered with Ezra Sosa in his first season as a pro.