For the first time since leaving prison, Anna Sorokin—better known by her alter ego moniker, Anna Delvey—has been spotted in New York.
The phony German “heiress,” whose genuine story served as the inspiration for the popular Netflix series Inventing Anna, was photographed yesterday getting ready for court outside her new Manhattan residence. Delvey was completely attired in black, including her trench coat, matching pants, strappy heels, big sunglasses, and head scarf.
She also wore a brooch with the initials “AD,” showing that she had no intention of going back to using her own last name.
Delvey spent several years in the 2010s as a socialite, convincing New York’s elite to invest in a members-only arts club named after her. If you’re not familiar with Delvey’s story that brought her to this point, you should know that. She pretended to be the daughter of a German oil magnate in order to con important financial organizations, banks, hotels, and acquaintances into paying her luxurious lifestyle.
Delvey’s web of lies ultimately caught up with her, and in 2017 she was sentenced to almost four years in prison for her financial crimes. In February 2021, one month after her release from prison, the 31-year-old was detained once more, this time for exceeding her visa’s validity in the US. Delvey was taken into custody and held there by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) until her recent release last week.
Delvey’s lawyer John Sandweg said a judge “understood that immigration detention was no longer essential for Anna” when she was released from jail, but he added that the decision “does not mean that Anna will get a free pass” because she will remain under home arrest.
She will continue to be subject to deportation proceedings, and ICE and the State of New York will closely monitor her release, he continued. The evidence, however, “clearly established that any dangers can be more than sufficiently reduced by appropriate supervision,” the court said.
Delvey acknowledges that she prefers her life today to how it was while she was incarcerated, despite the fact that her movements are tracked via a tag on her ankle. She told the media about her newfound freedom in Manhattan and said that she was allowed visitors on Thursdays after 1:30 p.m. I definitely see things differently today than I did when I came out for the first time in February of last year, she added. “It’s simply not possible to have experienced what I have without altering. Being locked up taught me so much.
Delvey continued by saying that she will probably remain in New York while she pursues her deportation case. “That makes me really, extremely happy. That is precisely what I desired. I just want to someday have more freedom.
“How I’ve felt about everything has a pretty well-documented arc. I couldn’t just make the changeover in one day; that wouldn’t be right. That would be incredibly dishonest. It takes time. I’m sorry about how things turned out. I’ve made an effort to learn from my experience, realizing that the choices I made in the past have shaped who I am today.