True Crime with Kendall Rae - Anna Delvey’s Fake German Heiress Scam

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

Anna Sorokin, also known as Anna Delvey, is a con artist and fraudster who posed as a wealthy German heiress and lied her way through the upper echelons of the New York social and art scenes from 2013 to 2017. This episode is sponsored by: Apostrophe - promo code: KENDALLRAE Check out Kendall's other podcasts: The Sesh & Mile Higher Follow Kendall! YouTube Twitter Instagram Facebook Mile Higher Zoo REQUESTS: General case suggestion form: https://bit.ly/32kwPly Form for people directly related/ close to the victim: https://bit.ly/3KqMZLj Discord: https://discord.com/invite/an4stY9BCN CONTACT: For Business Inquiries - [e-mail]

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So today I am doing another exposed series. It seemed like you guys really enjoyed the first one that I did on Elizabeth Holmes. So I wanted to do another one today on a girl that you may or may not have heard of because this case does not have nearly the publicity that the Elizabeth Holmes case did, but it is one that is equally as interesting and it's also one that you are going to see coming out on Netflix in the next couple years. I don't know the details, but I do know that they're under contract to make some type of documentary

or even why the action thing about this case possibly even starring Jennifer Lawrence. Now, let me go ahead and tell you about Anna Delby. So this is Anna Delby. She was born in Russia in 1991 and she was born into Hello Money. She lived a very lavish lifestyle in New York City. She was a wealthy entrepreneur and business woman

who was very passionate about art as well. She had connections with all of the top business people and was a well-respected art and fashion connoisseur. The only problem is, this is a complete lie. So let me tell you the true story about Anna Delvie and how she tricked tons of people into thinking she was this wealthy New York socialite with tons of daddy's money when it was literally all made up.

Okay, so let's start again. This is actually Anna Sorokin. She was born on January 23rd, 1991 in an area southeast of Moscow and Russia. She was born of two children in the family. In 2007, her family moved to Cologne, Germany and she was 16 at this time. In high school Anna was described as a quiet girl who was shy and had a difficult time learning German. She graduated high school in 2011 and she then moved to London to attend Central St. Martin's school. And she never ended up finishing that school

actually, and eventually she just went back to Germany. When she was back in Germany, she started work as an intern for a PR company in Berlin, but then at the start of 2013, she moved to Paris to become an intern for a French fashion and art magazine called Purple. She made friends with a lot of important people at this magazine, including the founder himself, all of her's own. And this was kind of her in to a bunch of different parties. Her first exposure to the rich life. They got to go to Paris Fashion Week in 2013.

She got to attend all of these fancy parties in different events. So Anna started to really like this new life. And this is right around the time she started calling herself Anna Delby. As this is right around the time she started calling herself Anna Delvey. As time went on Anna decided that she would really like living in New York City. So she decided to go ahead and move there and this is when she started to play this part of an extremely wealthy elite woman. Whatever she went to New York she would stay in the nicest

hotels there which we all know. New York is very expensive. She got around quick, met a ton of people. She ate at all of the fanciest restaurants, and she was actually often seen parting with celebrities. And she was known to be a really generous person with all of her wealth. She was constantly spending it on people, covering tabs for people buying them drinks, buying them gifts. And she was also really known for tipping people in a hundred dollar bills for literally anything, like helping her out of a car. A hundred dollars here, a hundred dollars there for the ballet guy, another hundred dollars for the Bellboy, you know. She was just giving out money. And it wasn't long until she was pretty well

known in the New York social scene. From joyful occasions to the unexpected, first Franklin financial makes loans for living, New York social scene. 5C.com to learn more. All in terms of APRs depend on meeting our underwriting and income criteria and may require collateral. First-ranked financial corporation is licensed by the Virginia State Corporation Commission CFI-215, Georgia Residential Mortgage Licency 5656, MMLS, and the 1414165 Board, not available in North Carolina. People started to be like, okay, so what's the deal here? You're constantly throwing out money to people, you don't work, you're alone here, it seems.

Like where's all this money coming from? And this is when Anna started telling people that she had about 60 million pounds in an overseas trust fund because she was the daughter of a very wealthy man. Now when it came to what her father actually did and why he was a billionaire, as she said, she had a couple of different ways

that he made his money. Sometimes he was a billionaire, as she said, she had a couple of different ways that he made his money. Sometimes he was a Russian diplomat, sometimes a Russian anti-collector, or even a big businessman and either oil or solar energy, depending on who she was talking to. So she basically told people she was an ares and that is how she was living. And she would tell people that her main goal

was to build this art foundation with her family's trust fund money. And she actually wanted to use the church missions house, which is a very historical building in New York and a prime piece of real estate, very, very expensive. And she basically wanted to build a members only club that had a nightclub, a bar, art galleries, studio space, and restaurants. And she was going to call this space the ADF, the Anna Delvie Foundation. So in 2013, she actually came in contact with Billy McFarland, who many of you probably know from the Fire Festival disaster.

One of the biggest scams, like ever. Netflix has a documentary. Hulu also has a documentary on this. I might do a video on it eventually. I don't know how many of you guys actually know about it. Let me know if you wanna see a video by giving me a thumbs up. But this guy was also crazy and it's really interesting that they're path crossed.

So basically Billy owned a condo in New York that was called the Magnesis Townhouse, which was named after the company that he created. And basically people who were elite members of Magnesis had access to a townhouse, which was named after the company that he created. And basically, people who were elite members of Nesus had access to a townhouse. Once Anna became a member, she ended up staying in this townhouse for upwards of four months, and eventually moved to New York permanently. And she loved it to travel. She went all over the world, went to Italy, and Ibiza, and whenever she traveled,

she would tell people that she was doing business meetings with some of the world's most famous investors such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. And when she traveled she often would go first class or she would even take a private jet. And at one point she came in contact with a man named Michael Zufu Hong who was an owner of an art gallery in China. He's very wealthy and very successful and also happened to be pretty young and around the same ages Anna. So they ended up traveling to Italy together and while she was there, she would have him pay for everything and she kept telling him, I'll pay you back. But everything went on his card. She would say that either her wallet was in checked bags or she was having trouble getting her

money to work okay overseas because she was out of town just excuses after excuses there's some type of issues so cover me now and I'll pay you back later and Anna was known for this she would always tell people she would pay them back tons of people were owed money by Anna but she somehow would convince people to pay the tab a lot so she was living this nice little life for a long time. Like people were not catching on. It was really crazy. She actually had none of this money. So how was she doing all of this?

So fast forward a little bit to 2016. And Anna is really trying to get her foundation going. But she needed an additional $25 million, you know, just a little bit extra. The place was gonna be 50 million total. So she had about half of it. So she ended up getting in contact with this attorney. His name is Andy Lance, and he actually reached out to Citibank and Fortress Bank and asked them to secure a loan for Anna. He told the banks that Anna's funds were held outside of the US, but the funds would be

backed up entirely by a Swiss bank account and some UBS bank accounts as well. In November of 2016, she actually submitted documents to Citibank saying that she had $60 million in an overseas bank account surprise she did not. And she went ahead and applied for a $22 million loan. And basically Citibank believed this and sent her a $100,000 line of credit, which she then wired to Fortress in order to cover their $100,000 line of credit, which she then wired to Fortress in order to cover their $100,000 in due diligence fees. She then ended up withdrawing from her

Fortress loan application and transferred $55,000 to a city bank account that she used for personal expenses. Basically, she always found ways to pull cash or to move things around or trick the system somehow and end up with money. She would write bad checks and then pull cash before the checks were even found to be bad. So she always had a ton of cash on her. She had no credit cards or anything like that, just tons of cash. And she constantly was getting herself into these situations where she owed money and then somehow wouldn't pay the bill at the end of the day. Like for example, in 2017 she threw herself a huge birthday party and she left the bill completely unpaid, which I don't understand how she was able to do this. I think because she was thought of to be this really rich person that people kind of lit things slide and figured she was good for it a lot of the time.

Shortly after her birthday party, she rented a super fancy room at the 11 Howard Hotel in New York City, and this hotel is owned by the same person that owned the space that Anna wanted to part her foundation in. And since he owned the space, he was basically holding it for her, knowing that her money was tied up right now, but as soon as she was able to get the funding she would.

And because she knew the hotel owner, and they were about to do this big multi-million dollar deal, she convinced him to let her stay at the hotel with just a wire transfer, no credit card on file, which is like unheard of. And of course, while staying at the 11 hours, she racked up a huge bill. She would eat at this really expensive restaurant all the time inside of the hotel called Le Koucou. And she would just have them build her room for these meals so she was constantly eating there and she even became friends with the staff and the chef and would tell the staff the waiters oh the chef like loves me he knows me and he'll make me this special thing that's not even on the menu like she was literally getting secret menu items from fancy-ass restaurants you know I'm expensive that is it's

insane. So in April of 2017, she was really starting to dwindle on her remaining cash and she had no money coming in. So she decided to deposit $160,000 worth of bad checks and she was able to pull out $7,000 before it was discovered that these were bad checks. And at the same time, the 11 Howard Hotel realized that they had no credit card

on file for her, but there was this huge bill that was unpaid on her tab and they started to get worried. So the hotel came to her confronted her about this and said that she needed to pay her bill or she would just be kicked out of the hotel. And she said, no worries, I have a wired transfer on its way. I actually have a package coming for you guys and when this package came It was not filled with money. It was filled with cases of champagne and instructions to split it between the staff members and somehow and ended up getting city bank to send the $30,000 that she owed the Howard Hotel to them even though she didn't actually have these funds. It's it's Mindbling. I don't understand how she was able to do this. So Anna's pretty down on her money at this point. You'd think she'd

kind of righted back, not the case. She ended up using the extra cash from those fake checks that she deposited and she booked herself a private jet worth $35,000 just to take her to this Warren Buffett Investor's conference in Omaha. And the crazy thing is even though she had paid the Howard Hotel before she left for this, they still were not able to get a credit card from her and they felt like something was off. So when she was gone at this conference, they ended up going up to her room, taking all of her stuff, packing it up and kicking her ass out.

So towards the end of June of 2017, Anna decided to take a trip to Morocco with one of her friends and she didn't have a lot of money. She did not make that much and she was not able to afford this trip so she told Anna, you know, I can't go. And Anna was like, no worries, I'll pay for everything, you just come with me.

She was like, sure, so they went to Morocco. She also decided to bring her trainer. So the three of them headed to Morocco and they went and said, this super, super fancy place. And she knew that her two friends couldn't afford this and so she ended up paying for everything when they were there. Her friends paid for their own flights

but she said that she would pay them back and the hotel that they were staying at cost $7,000 a night. So she gave them her credit card, but it wasn't long until they figured out that her credit card was not working and they were demanding her to put a new credit card on file. At first, they were pretty lenient with her.

They were, you know, not making a big deal about it. This is a really prestigious hotel. She's this really fancy person. So they figured she's good for her money. And this whole Morocco trip is a little confusing. Not all the information is out there, so you can have to piece it all together, but I think that her trainer either just wanted to go home

or was sick and ended up trying to leave the hotel. And when she did, like, try to check out herself, they didn't have a credit card on file, so they wouldn't let her leave until someone put a credit card down. So they ended up tracking Anna down and her friend Rachel, in their own room kind of backed them into a corner and said one of you needs to put a credit card down. This was a pretty big argument. Anna was really, really mad, really frustrated that this was happening and she basically told Rachel like, I don't

know what's happening with my funds. I don't know what's going on. Can you please just cover this for now and I'll pay you back within a week and Rachel Having no other choice decided to do this. It's reported that she made around 60 grand a year and this bill was like $62,000 so they all came back from Morocco and when Anna got back She stayed at a new hotel and she'd been kicked out of the 11 Howard and she went to a new hotel called the Beakman So 20 days into her stay, again, she somehow made it that far without paying for anything and she had racked up a bill of $12,000.

She had given them the same bullshit that she had a wire transfer on the way that never came and she did not have a working credit card on file. So they ended up locking her out of her hotel room and kicking her out. So she went to a new hotel, The W. And she did the exact same thing there. So it just shows you that she was really, really good

at playing this part of this extremely wealthy woman that had all this money to be spending on hotels and convincing people that she could back up those bills. But by this point, she was pretty much homeless. No one was believing her bullshit anymore and she had nowhere to go. Not only only that but the space that she was supposed to be buying for her You know art foundation ended up getting sold to someone else because the dude was like I'm not waiting for you anymore And that crushed her dreams and really made her depressed so it wasn't long before the charges started catching up with her

So by July of 2017 and Anna was facing three different counts of misdemeanor charges for theft of services. There were complaints about her not paying her bills at the Beakman and at the W. There was also an instance where she ate at a really fancy restaurant in New York and ended up not paying the bill. The restaurant ended up calling the police and that was the first time that she was actually faced

with a charge. So while her misdemeanor charges were pending, Anna was freaking out and she ended up trying to go ahead and put in bad checks again and get some money out. She put two bad checks into signature bank and was able to get 8,200 bucks out and with this money she flew to California. She claimed that this was a trip that she already had planned but as soon as she landed on October 3rd, 2017, she was arrested and brought right back to New York City. At this point, they had put everything together and she was facing six counts of grand larceny and attempted grand

larceny in addition to her theft of services. And it was reported this time that she had defrauded about $275,000 worth of money from banks. So last December, they had the trial and appeared in a New York City criminal court and she actually rejected her plea deal that would have released her from jail and deported her back to Germany in early 2019. She said that she was innocent. Okay, good idea, girl.

Her trial started on March 20th of 2019 and during the trial, the prosecutor said that Anna seemed to show no remorse for what she had done and that she had shown more concern about her attire than the emotions of the people that she heard. It was rumored that she actually hired a fashion consultant to help her with their outfits in court. And if her outfit wasn't good enough

or she didn't feel comfortable in it, she would literally cancel or push back her court dates. Her defense team was pretty weak. There wasn't much they could say. They tried to just say, you know, she's a nice person. She was just buying time to pay back all that debt. And they even had the nerve to compare her to Frank Sinatra. They were trying to, you know, display her as the American dream, the New York dream, I guess, the entrepreneur, and that her and Sonata both had to find opportunities in New York. So obviously the jury did not buy this and on April 25th of 2019 and it was found guilty of three counts of grand larceny, four counts of theft of services, and one count of attempted grand larceny. She was found not guilty on another charge of attempted grand larceny, which was trying to get that $22 million loan

And not guilty for another grand larceny charge for the trip to Morocco that Rachel ended up having to pay for and this is when It was discovered that Anna actually didn't have a scent to her name It was a big lie that she came from this family full of money and that her father was super rich Her father was a truck driver and her mother owned a small convenience store so they were really average people. And then on May 9th of 2019, she was given a sentence of four to twelve years in state prison and find twenty-four thousand dollars and also ordered to pay a restitution of about two hundred thousand dollars. So she really should have just accepted that plea deal.

And she also will probably be deported back to Germany as soon as that sentence is up. Anna was incarcerated at Riker's Island during the trial, but now she's currently incarcerated at the Women's Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Bedford, Westchester County, New York. And at first, she actually apologized for the mistake she made. But then,

she actually took it back. She said, and I quote, the thing is, I am not sorry. I'd be lying to you and to everyone else and to myself if I said I was sorry for anything. She said she regrets the way that she went about certain things, but overall, she's not sorry. So they have done interviews with her in jail, and she has said things like she's gotten in trouble in jail and she had to go into solitary confinement, which I'm sure was horrible. I don't know if it's true, it's hard to believe anything she says, but one of the corrections officers said that she had already racked up 13 infractions from fighting with people and disobeying. So like I mentioned, you will eventually be seeing this on Netflix and it might star Jennifer

Lawrence. Because Netflix bought the full rights to her story, she will not be getting any of the money from that deal. It'll all be going to a victim's fund from people that she, you know, frauded. But it could be argued that she got what she wanted all along, which was basically clout. And now she's about to get this Netflix documentary

made about her. That is going to be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode. And make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple Podcast. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then, stay safe out there.