Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - New Scandal for Fake Heiress Ann "Delvey" Sorokin

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

Fake German heiress Anna Sorokin conned her way into Manhattan society. Posing as Anna Delvey, a German heiress, she swindled banks, hotels, and friends out of more than $200,000. She forged checks to get money from banks and charmed people into paying for extravagant meals, and travel. Sorokin was convicted on a handful of grand larceny and theft of services charges. After serving her time, the 31-year-old was released from prison, now, fighting being deported, but again Sorokin falls on her feet. First, she landed a deal with Netflix for the rights to her life story, then began selling her artwork, and then Sorokin says her home confinement and social media ban is “more restrictive” than jail. Sorokin back in the headline now over bunnies. She recently posed with three leashed bunnies in a  Tribeca neighborhood. Then they were discovered in Brooklyn's Prospect Park days later, prompting fierce online backlash. Sorokin says she has received hundreds of death threats, even though she denies any responsibility.   Joining Nancy Grace Today: Wendy Patrick: Trial Attorney & author of “Red Flags” Jeff Cortese: Former FBI supervisory special agent Dr. William July: Psychologist John Lemley: Crime online investigative reporter See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Why won't she go away? Why does she keep resurfacing? Again, Anna Delvey, aka Anna Sorkin, the con artist, has reared her ugly head. Yes, she's added again the fake heiress caught in a, new scandal this time involving bunnies. You know, the hippie-hoppy type of a little creature? Bunnies. Yes, bunnies. The con artist who ripped her friends and others off to the tune of around

$100,000 plus Anna Delvey now accused of cruelly dumping baby bunnies in a public park after she used them in a photo shoot, left them out there to die? It never ends with this woman. I'm Nancy Grace. This is crime stories, and I want to thank you for being with us. Yes, the fake heiress, con artist, caught in a brand new scandal this time about bunnies. The Russian, whose real name is Anna Sorkin, known for posing as a German heiress to climb the social ladder in Manhattan

and defrauding a series of banks, hotels, and individuals. I mentioned over $100,000. That was her friends. But she ripped off other people to the tune of about $275,000. That's over a quarter of a million dollars. And now

she uses little bunnies in a photo shoot and then they're found abandoned in a public park in Brooklyn. Now Delvey swear she has no eye. idea how the bunnies were found for her photo shoot. And some teen kit assistant has amazingly taken responsibility. According to a Reddit user, a rabbit named Parker was rescued from a park

and placed in foster care. Three days later, another rabbit is found in Prospect Park. That bunny saved as well. Neighbors and others were alerted. And everyone noticed both of the rabbits look identical to the ones pinned by Anna Delvey on Instagram. The images show her posing on New York streets with two bunnies on leads. Well, the internet went wild. To that, Delvey goes online and insists the bunnies were borrowed for the shoot and they are safe at home with their own. owners. She put that on Insta. Initially, the assistant denied the bunnies were found in the park, abandoned, but later released a statement claiming that he was responsible. And other

controversies surrounding Anna Delvey, the fake heiress. Do you remember what happened? Because I sure do. Let's take a little flashback. With an extravagant lifestyle and a seemingly endless supply of money, Delvey was an enigma that was made for the age. of Instagram, always at the right place with the right people, living her best life, but with no apparent cause for her fame. Her circle of acquaintances was fed various stories as to how she accumulated her vast wealth. Her father was a Russian billionaire, a Russian diplomat, an oil tycoon, a Russian antiques collector, or a solar energy capitalist. While many parts of Delvey's story were fluid, some things were consistent. Delvey made no effort to hide her internship at the Paris

magazine Purple and made it very clear that her dream was to open a Soho House for Art. An quote upset fake German heiress and a Sorokan guilty of grand larceny after a life of fake ripping people off to nearly a quarter of a million dollars that we know of. Who would believe a Russian heiress and fork over thousands of dollars? And in court, she was more upset about her designer clothing wardrobe than she was about being found guilty. Now, that's unusual. This girl, Anna Sorokin, also known as Anna Delvey, somehow manages to con Soho Elite out of a quarter of a million dollars.

Joining me in All-Star lineup, Jeff Cortizzi, former FBI Special Agent, Wendy Patrick, California prosecutor, author of Red Flags. Dr. William in July, psychologist and John Limley, crime online.com investigative reporter John Limley, help me out. This girl shows up her skin is so pale. She looks like a ghost. And she's got this long brown hair, parted, usually slightly on the side, big glasses, and the hair hangs down like curtains over her face.

You can barely see the eyes, you know, the hair is so. close down. I can't see your face. That makes me suspicious. But who would buy into? My dad is a Russian billionaire. Give me your money. Oops, I forgot my credit card. What happened? Let's just start at the beginning. Well, Nancy, apparently a lot of people were just hungry to buy into this story. If New York City is a city of dreams, which we hear it called all the time, Anna had enough for the entire island. She had long to be a member of the upper echelon of Manning. at society. Let me understand something John Limley, crime online, investigative reporter. Did you just call her giant fraud ripping people off tens of thousands of dollars, including

one woman that took the stand, a working class person who goes on an all expense paid trip with her to Morocco, and then she gets stiffed with a $65,000 bill? Wait, are you calling that a dream? Wait, wait. How dare you even say? One person's dream is another person. Nelson's nightmare. I don't offend yourself with cliches. Don't. The American dream, my rear end, Jeff Cortizze, I call it something a lot different than the American dream.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, this was a, at least on the front end, a well-executed fraud. Over the long term, it didn't have the legs to remain sustainable, though. A long term. I mean, she managed to pull it off, Wendy Patrick for, you know, what, two years? I forgot how long she managed to pull the wool over everybody's eyes. going on trips to Morocco, staying at, I think it's 11 Howard, some ritzy. I don't even know how you find that hotel in New York.

It's one of those places I don't think is even marked. Only rich people go there. Wendy, Patrick, what is, what happened to John Limley? The Voice of Reason. He just called us the American Dream. What? Well, I think John Lindley, what he was talking about is there are some misguided, vulnerable people that really are subjected to social predators like Anna.

And some people just are absolutely, you guys mentioned the glamour, the glitz. It's like they want to believe. And this fake it till you make it lifestyle. You know, nobody even took the time to say, show me the money, show me the funds, show me the corroboration behind your wild stories. Because caught up in the moment in an Instagram savvy society, people want to be in the company of people like Anna. And sadly, as a prosecutor, I am just, we are just absolutely just terrified of people like this that are able to so easily infiltrate our social networks.

To Dr. William July psychologist, author of a dark, and he did acquit her off, which I was shocked about because this girl actually took the stand. Grand larceny for allegedly stealing $62,000 from a friend that she said, come along, I'll pay for everything on a trip to Morocco. Okay, I think they actually punished the friend, because when you go on a luxurious trip to Morocco, you stay in a five-star hotel. They went to spa treatments that were costing like $300 a treatment, whatever that treatment may be, laying in mud, getting their nails, whatever. 300, I think the jury punished that friend for going along with the excess, Dr. July. Yeah, I mean, at worse, Nancy, what you're looking at in cases like this, at worst, is a psychopathological level of narcissism. At best, what you're looking at is a person who has so much greed and desire to please herself that she doesn't care what the consequences are for other people. You were asking earlier, and I just want to address what you were asking earlier, about why and how can this sort of thing happen?

We're all baffled when we see this, but it's age old. It's a tale as old as time. The Charleston comes in and fools everyone. So there's a part of people that are looking at this who want to believe this, because they want to hang out with a person who has this kind of social, these types of social credentials. And they want to believe that she's an heiress so that they can be with her. And people are blaming social media.

It's not the fault of social media. Social media is just a facilitator to the neediness of other people. who want to believe and accept it. Why, are you piling on? Everybody on the panel except Cortizzi. No, no. Thank goodness. It keeps talking about the Instagram Society. You know what?

Instagram didn't have a dang thing to do with this. It was all Ms. Thing. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA.

Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

Fake heiress, Anna Delvey, hits the head. again, this time about abandoned bunnies of all things. Okay, Anna Delvey, I guess, is one of her names. Anna Sorkin is another name. She is Russian from a middle-class family who presented herself in New York as a German heiress-slash-socialite and conned people out of nearly $300,000, including fantastic hotels, amazing five-star trips, fancy restaurants. clothes, you name it.

Again, she is linked with scandal. Go away. Work like the rest of us for Pete's sake. Do you remember the trial? I remember the whole thing was delayed because she refused to come out unless she had a designer clothes. Oh, my stars.

But let's take a walk down memory lane. Her parents, hardworking, middle class people that she borrowed a ton of money, borrowed, i.e. stole a ton of money from them as well. Hey, but she didn't just create a different identity. Her parents, I think the dad drives a truck and I know that's like my dad as you know worked on the railroad. My mom started as a bank teller. My grandfather drove an ice truck and a school bus, anything to put the food on the table. But she not only assumed different an identity for herself.

But she also created a whole team of imaginary assistants. An assistant, an accountant, a manager, Limley, is this true? All of her imaginary assistants? Well, and some were not so imaginary. She even had the concierge at a hotel essentially on her staff at her beck and call. She was able to convince people of not only her wealth, but all of her aspirations, her dreams. really wanted to build this members-only arts club on Park Avenue

South and was even working to get the financing for it and was not too far away. Thinking this, John Lemley, she lied to a bank using phony records. Anna went too far when she attempted to take out a loan for $22 million to finance a visual arts center she called the

Anna Delvey Foundation. In all, Anna reportedly scammed a total of $275,000. and his double life began to crumble as hotels went after her unpaid debts, and banks began to investigate her alleged assets. Wow, that's Jesse Palmer over at Daily Mail TV. Wow. Okay, so friends and acquaintances say Sorokin spent years playing the part of an art-obsessed German heiress. Sometimes she'd be Russian, sometimes she'd be German.

She had an accent to go with it. Rubbing shoulders with the fashion elite at Paris Fashion Week, frequently spotted in London night spots then those who knew her saw her at a party in Berlin she told everybody she had just flown in on a private jet how did she pull it off scamming nearly $300,000 it was only when these Ritsey hotels in New York went after her to pay her bills that the whole thing

fell apart but what it really amazed me you know I don't know if you do this or not Wendy Patrick California prosecutor, author of Red Flags on Amazon Wendy, under the Constitution, you can't force a defendant into court in handcuffs or leg irons or waist shackle. You can't force them to come in inmate, jumpsuit, prison blues, or orange, or stripes, whatever the case may be. But I would always keep a jacket and pants and a couple of different sizes in my office. So when a defendant would show up on Monday morning trial calendar and say, oh, yeah, I want to go to trial, but I don't have a suit.

I go, oh, I do have a suit for you. But she was more concerned about what she wore to court. Every day she had, she actually had a personal dresser, stylist dressing her for court, Wendy. Yeah, you know, Nancy, what you're describing really is something hopefully the judge will take into considering it sentencing because it's this entire mentality of, I don't want to say, just not getting it, that would be too kind. It's a complete underappreciation or I should say non-appreciation for the fact that the rest of us work for a living. Her family works for a living. There is so much more to life than clothes and appearances and image. You know, one of the things that distinguishes this case is the fact that this over-emphasis on image, on money, on glamour,

sounds like it absolutely overrode every ounce of judgment that she had. And to take that into the courtroom, as you mentioned, Nancy, is probably a little bit beyond the pale. to our friends an Inside Edition. This is Diane McInerney. This woman may look like she is dressed for a fashion show and her designer duds, but the wannabe socialite is actually on trial for swindling hundreds of thousands of dollars from unsuspecting people. She was so concerned about how she looked in court, she actually hired a stylist. Is she in a courtroom or at a red carpet event? Anna Sorokin is accused of posing as an heiress to live an extravagant lifestyle, but it's what she's wearing to trial that is making headlines. The 27-year-old defendant

showed up wearing a form-fitting black dress with a plunging neckline and choker necklace. It's a look that could backfire, worn stylist Don Karen. Black dress definitely a no-no. It hyper-sexualized her. It makes her appear to be like a seductress. The choker kind of shows to me

that she's trying to be overtly sexy. The more sexy she appears to be, it hurts her. Sorkin is so obsessed with her clothes. She refused to enter the courtroom because the outfit she was given to wear, was not up to her standards. The angry judge told her, this is unacceptable and inappropriate.

This is not a fashion show. Sorokin's lawyer, Todd Spodeck, says, accounts of his client delaying the trial because of fashion are being blown out of proportion. It's not that she didn't want to come out only because of the clothes. She's going through a major criminal trial that's publicized every day. It's emotional and it's her life.

Don't cry too much for Anna Sorokin. She was living a life that many people not me, but many people dream of. She made a show of proving she belonged with the rich and famous decked out in signature Celine glasses, Gucci sandals, high-end buys from Netta Porte, Elise Walker. She usually holed up in a $400 a night room

for months on in at Manhattan's very, very luxurious 11 Howard Hotel, concierge at the hotel, said they became friends when she would repeatedly routinely pass out crisp $100 tips to both them and Uber drivers. When I hear the words crisp $100, how many $100 bills do you have, Jackie? I don't think I have any. So Jeff Cortizze, former FBI special agent, when I hear the word, crisp $100 bills. That means you just got them out of an ATM or from the bank.

So how does she manage to defraud the bank to get cash to tip concierge to fake for her? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think it's a numbers game in many respects. There were multiple banks engaged in her activity. She appears, based on the information, limited her trips back to the same well. although she would go back to the same bake on occasion for certain banking activity. She did share the wealth amongst the banks within New York so as not to draw too much attention over an extended period of time. Well, what I understand that she did, and I'm going to have to get clarity on this,

is that she would provide fake bank records to one bank, and then she was trying to get a massive loan for $22 million. So she, they wanted a down payment. So she faked records and got, I don't know, 50 to 100 grand from one bank and used that money to get a loan as a down payment on a loan, a bigger loan at another bank. None of the banks realizing what the others were doing. Another thing that really fascinates me, Dr. William J. L.I. And not in a good way. It's like looking at a tarantula under a glass box, okay, that sort of fascination, is the way she carried on this. big, huge, imaginary life.

She would splash out on shopping sprees at boutiques, very expensive personal training sessions and beautician appointments, and she would always bring along a friend and pay for them, and they would be all impressed. The social elite, as they call themselves, would go to lavish and large dinners for celebs, artists, CEOs, all-in restaurants there in Soho. If you do look at her online, she's always drinking a big glass of wine at some beautiful location.

How can an adult have that type of an imaginary life? I mean, I know when children have an imaginary friend, there's all sorts of psychological reasons for that, maybe just security. But an adult? Certainly people can have these types of imaginary lives and they're going to recruit other people. Just because of the chronological age does not make a person have. the maturation that they should have. And then that can be from a lot of different things. But certainly as much as she can get other people to buy into this,

then that's because she's going to continue and she's going to expand that imaginary life. And people can be very charming, they can be very off-putting, excuse me, they can be very charming, they can be very persuasive, and they can get other people to buy in. There are people that can go into banks and they can fake a story and they can get people to believe it. It happens every day. And this is a person who can do it. that and the imaginary fast parts of this i mean i wouldn't i haven't examined her so i can't go so far as to say she's delusional or anything like that but clearly she has the ability the the the uh maybe a

pathological type of charm some people can do that and also you have to remember other people are buying into this because the banks aren't checking credentials properly under the name anna delvey she arrived in new york with a high-priced wardrobe and was known for handing out one hundred dollar cash tips reportedly saying at different points that her father was a diplomat, an oil baron, or involved in the solar panel business, none of which are the case. People who knew her said she often asked others to use their credit cards to cover cab and plane fares and then failing to repay them. Her friend Michael Sissack at Time magazine online, yeah, there was one story that came out at trial, how she hired a PR firm to organize her birthday party in Soho. It emerged.

she never paid the bill. During her stay at 11 Howard, she struck up a friend there in addition to the concierge's and asked for the recommendations for the very, very, very best food in Soho. We also learned that on one occasion she invited friends to dinner

at Soho San Ambrough and the friend ended up paying a whopper, massive bill when Sorokin's 12 credit cards were all declined. But Sorokin paid her back triple the amount the following day in cash. We also learned that she would go to unique treatments like infrared saunas in the East Village, go out to dinner after celebrity training sessions with Casey Duke, which Sorokin also paid for.

John Lemley, how did she get money from one bank to get a loan from another bank? How'd that work? It's a very interesting line to follow how she did this. She would go to a bank and ask for a certain line of credit based on a lot of times just a promise of the fact that she had millions overseas, that she could reach. pay the loan. And she would go from one bank with that money to another bank and get an even larger. In fact, here's an example. She talked to an executive with Citig National Bank into giving her a line of credit on her account for $100,000, promising to repay it with a wire transfer from a European account.

She used that money in a failed attempt to secure a $25 million loan from Fortress Investment Group. And one of the managing directors at Fortress has said that she ran into problems providing details about the origin of her wealth.

Someone actually thought to ask about that. You know, her lies became more and more spectacular. Wendy Patrick, California, prosecutor. In fact, she even managed to charter a private plane on one occasion with absolutely zero money, Wendy. How do you do that? Yeah, the level of sophistication, Nancy, as John was explaining, and as we know, now looking back, was absolutely stunning.

It was almost as if she was daring authorities to catch her in this escalating scheme of sophistication. And, you know, the answer to how you do that is the same way we see people committing other crimes is sometimes people are so trusting because image matters. You know, this is something I talk about in my book. We tend to attribute all these positive qualities to somebody who comes across as believable, whether they're pretty or that we like what they say or we're enamored with their accent or their clothes. All the types of things that Anna used to get ahead can fool other people into letting them acquire the kind of wealth. And as you point out, tangible benefits that this young lady did.

John Lemley, tell me about the Lux treatment she got in Morocco where she ended up stiffing her friend with the bill. Well, when they went to Marrakesh, she went with a friend, and she had offered to pay for everything. Now, her friend actually offered to help pay, but she said, no, no, no, you work hard for your money, harder for your money than I do. This is my treat. And they would go out for a round of drinks, and oops, she forgot her credit card. So she would ask, you know, very quietly if the friend could, you know, just cover this one check. And that would happen over and over and over again. And this friend, in the end, ended up covering the $62,000 cost of the flights, dining, shopping,

and the stay at a hotel where they had a private villa with a courtyard, a pool, and a butler. All the extravagance that you might say was fit for, say, a Kardashian. get a $62,000 vacation. That is more than most people make an entire year. While in Marrakesh, Morocco, Sorokan, aka Delvey, took part in all the activities the hotel had to offer. For instance, they took private tennis lessons. They ate breakfast, pool side. A butler would deliver them fresh watermelons and bottles of rosé. They roamed the gardens, relaxed, swam in the villa's private pool, took a tour of the wine cellar, ate dinner with live Moroccan music before capping off their nights with cocktails at the Churchill bar. I mean, this is a trip that most people only dream of. I

And now here's Ms. Thing, having a nearly $70,000 vacation built on crime. Yeah, you know, Nancy, the best things in life are free. And everybody knows that. So when you look at a story like this, part of, I think, the offense that everyone is taking is to use crime and criminal activity to build a fake world where people pay the kind of money that most of us would never do even if we had it. You talk about the value of hard work the way we were all raised. It sounds like those she surrounded herself were really taken with the fact that someone they believed was as rich and famous as she was would be interested in them. That is a basic human need. Ironically, that was being satisfied through crime and through, as you pointed out earlier, having this imaginary friend that's larger than life.

A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it.

He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Authrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Crime Stories with Nancy. Nancy Grace. Anna Delvey, aka Anasoric and the con artist, back in the news, this time to the forefront over abandoned bunnies used in a photo shoot and then abandoned in public parks. Well, eagle-eyed Reddit users notice they look very similar to the ones in Anna Delvey's photo shoot. And bam, it all came crashing down.

Now, a teen assistant says it's all his fault. that he lied and he takes responsibility. Okay, whatever you say, I'm still hung up on the $300,000 she scammed. Remember that? You know, I don't know about you, Jeff Cortiz, a FBI special agent, but I loved it. When I would, of course, the prosecutor gets in front of an entire jury panel

and reads the indictment before you begin jury selection. So everybody knows who's charged with what and what all the counts are. and I would love it to say State versus Jeff Cortizay, aka Charlie Tuna, aka the Hammer, aka blah, blah, blah, and so forth and so on. I would love reading out 10 or 12 aliases. And by the time you're done reading that,

the jury just looks at the person and goes, you're guilty. You're guilty. Why are you? Why do you have 12 aliases? And this girl, I'm telling you, not only had aliases, but she had fake assistants. She lied about her mom and dad, who they really are.

The reality is that her father was a truck driver, and he went on to work at or start a heating and air-conditioned business. The friends in school called her Barbie, and her favorite movie was Mean Girls. and I don't think that's any of that is good. Okay, that means nothing good, Jeff Cortiz. No, I agree 100%. You hit it on the head.

You know, the minute individuals start layering themselves with aliases and A.K.As, you know, they're putting up walls and barriers that any jury is going to be able to see through. You know, she really executed a well-thought-out plan against the banks using multiple techniques and methods to siphon money from them, you know, from top to bottom, she exploited what people want to see and exploited the type of lifestyle that people want to have to the extent that, you know, if I was going to run an undercover, I would have done many of the techniques that she did in order to manipulate my audience. Well, another aspect to this, John Lumley, is I remember one day when John David came running

hole and went, so-and-so's mom is so cool. She works for Chick-fil-A. And she gets free t-shirts and she gets this and she gets that. I think the lady who's very lovely was in marketing or PR and would bring home, you know, like a t-shirt or a moo cow or whatever they had. And I thought briefly of creating a different persona to try to impress. John David's friends who were then four years old. Okay, but I just decided, no, I'm just going to stick with the truth, you know, and let the chips fall where they may. But John Lemley, I mean, that would hurt me if I found out the twins were lying about their mom and dad,

that what we are isn't good enough to fit in to their self-image they're projecting. That would really hurt my feelers. And that's exactly the way hurt. parents felt about the whole thing. They actually did help fund her through college and as she was getting out on her own, but there was never any sort of trust fund. She moved to Germany in 2007. And after she dropped out of college, she interned in public relations before then moving to Paris and became an intern at Purple Magazine. Once she arrived in New York City, she just somehow managed to be

in all the sort of right places and she was this German heiress according to her with a father that you would think was Wait a minute I thought she was supposed to be a Russian heiress. Well no she was from Russia

but she told people she was a German heiress. What's really funny though is that her German according to a lot of people was terrible I want you to take a listen to what the defense claims in closing arguments. She had to fake it until she could make it. Those words from the defendant's own attorney who claimed she never intended to commit a crime.

But prosecutors call her fraud and a liar who would do almost anything to prolong her life of luxury. This morning, the fate of an alleged scam artist is now in the hands of a jury. Both sides wrapping up arguments for a case that's drawn international outrage. The style-savvy defendant even turning. heads in court wearing an animal print dress. She called herself Anna Delvey, a fashionable globetrotter who prosecutors say was pretending to be a high-flying German heiress, living a fairy tale life of glitz and glam among Manhattan's elite. I urge you to come to the only verdict that is

an accord with both the law and the evidence, and that is that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecutors say the 28-year-old, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, stole $275,000 from banks, hotels, and friends, all part of an elaborate scheme to keep up her illusion of grandeur. Prosecutors also alleged Sorkin tried securing a $22 million loan to operate a private club, claims her lawyer denies. I do not believe she had the intent to ever commit a crime. Whether she owes people money, that's a fact of life. That's the reality of doing business in New York. Now facing charges of grand larceny and theft, she could spend up 15 years in prison if convicted.

But officials say, even if acquitted, she will be deported to Germany. Sorkin's attorney says she got in over her head but was just buying time until she could pay everyone back. You're hearing our buddy Whit Johnson at GMA at ABC, pay everybody back. I saw no signs of paying everybody back. And calling this doing business, that's certainly putting perfume on the pig. Now, you know there's a problem, Wendy Patrick, California prosecutor and author of Red flags, when the defense to theft and fraud is, fake it till you make it.

Okay, I would not say that that's a valid defense and a fraud case. You're admitting you're faking it. It's probably not a good theme for the defense. One, I'm sure they're rethinking right about now. You don't want to, that that's kind of playing right into the prosecutor's case. Now, what they probably were trying to do, interestingly, in trial. Nancy, you and I have both seen this, is really kind of painting this bone. vulnerability picture of the defendant to try to make somebody feel sorry for her that she was

caught up in this false lifestyle felt she had to pretend she was somebody she wasn't who can't relate to that there's a little bit of Anna and all of us you know some of the themes we've well wait wait wait right I want to isolate what you just said yeah the defense argued at trial as if Anna Sorokin aka Anna Delvey was some type of a renegade and a rebel someone who was you know, making her own path in the world creatively. B.S. don't tell me there's a little bit of Anna Sorokin and me because that was their defense. There's a little bit of Anna and all of us. No, because she is a fraud, a thief,

and she ripped people off and they're never going to get repaid, Wendy. Right. That's what I'm saying. That, well, that's probably why she was convicted because these defenses are just not realistic to jurors to hardworking jurors and just cannot relate to the fact that we are anything like this picture of Anna. Nonetheless, we have seen this defense time and again, and thankfully, it is not successful. Take a listen to this. The courtroom drama played out late into the evening. At one point, the jury appeared deadlocked, the defense asking for a mistrial.

But then the verdict, jurors agreeing with the prosecution that Anna Sorokin built her fairy tale life on a foundation of theft and lies. Overnight, a New York City jury finding socialite anisorican, a so-called Soho Grifter, guilty on eight counts, including grand larceny, attempted grand larceny, and theft of services. Prosecutors arguing the 28-year-old stole a quarter of a million dollars from banks, hotels, and friends to fund a lavish lifestyle. The jurors obviously believed our point of view and followed our logic and acquitted her of the top charges. I'm saddened that she was convicted of some of the other charges. Prosecutors say the Russian-born Sorkin, who called herself Anna Delvey, was pretending to be a high-flying German heiress, living a life of glamour among Manhattan's elite.

Authorities say she even forged financial documents, hoping to get a $22 million loan to open a private club in the Big Apple. While she was turned down, she did convince one bank to loan her $100,000, which she never paid back, or lawyers saying she meant to but had gotten in over her head and was just buying to. Time. Two bunnies abandoned in a public park, trace back to Anna Delvey. Surprise, surprise, surprise. She swears she had nothing to do with it. Yet again, another scandal. I would put money on it if I were a betting person, which I am not, that we have not heard the last from Anna Delvey, aka con artist Anna Sorkin. Nancy Gray's signing off for now. Good night, friend. This is an IHeart podcast.