By Teresa Lynn Hasan-Kerr
Rabat – New York socialite Anna Sorokin was sentenced to a minimum of 4 years for grand larceny, theft, and attempted larceny as of May 2019.
The young woman, posing as an heiress, conned several banks, hotels, and a private jet company for millions. Sorokin claimed that her fortune came from successful parents in Germany.
Little did her social circles know, Sorokin actually invented false biographical details, one of them being the name they knew her as Anna Delvey.
Sorokin promised to finance a trip for her friend, Rachel Deloache Williams, to Marrakech, totaling approximately $70,000. When Hotel Mamounia announced card was declined, Williams paid the hotel with Sorokin’s word that the thousands of dollars would be reimbursed.
“She walked into my life in Gucci sandals and Céline glasses, and showed me a glamorous, frictionless world of hotel living and Le Coucou dinners and infrared saunas and Moroccan vacations. And then she made my $62,000 disappear,” Williams says in an article for Vanity Fair, calling Sorokin “a magician of Manhattan.” Sorokin has paid only $5,000 back to Williams.
Anna Sorokin was truly a member of New York City’s elite, living in hotels, going to Paris Fashion Week, attending Coachella, and tipping hundred dollar bills all while wearing high-end designer clothing. While in Morocco, Sorokin ordered a helicopter to fly her from Marrakech to Casablanca.
It is said by her close friends that Sorokin spent money easily, though there were many revealing times which Sorokin would ask friends for a place to stay or call and ask them to pay for her ride.
The double reality Sorkin lived finally came to light when her credit ran out and she was refused at both the Beekman and W Hotel in New York. By this time, Sorokin had made headlines for not paying her “fancy” hotel bills.
Williams eventually took Sorokin to court for being a con-artist around the same time the hotels ran headlines for Sorokin’s trail of debts.
To those she scammed, Sorokin issues no apology: “The thing is, I’m not sorry.”
