Anna Sorokin
Anna Sorokin is once again trending as the Netflix documentary Inventing Anna is released. Sorokin is a Russian-born German who introduced herself as Anna Delvey in New York. She penetrated the elite circles with the backstory of a rich German heiress. She lived at lavish hotels and was also reported to tip $100 often.
Anna Delvey arrived in New York wanting to launch her project Anna Delvey Foundation. She was planning to build a museum for the arts. While she goes about planning, she flaunted her wealth by checking in at fancy hotels. She also eats dinner at fancy Michelin star restaurants. Many from the New York elite believed her story and began to accompany her.
Her friends were impressed with her financial status. The hotels however a beginning to catch up on her scheme. Many of the hotels were left unpaid as the card she gave them does not work. There were incidents where hotel staff had to lock her room until she pays the bill.
She also applied for loans from banks to fund her project. One of the banks refused her loan since they could not contact her alleged financial advisor. Another bank stipulated that if she could cover the legal fee of 100,000, they would approve the loan.
Scam
On one of her trips, she invited photographer Rachel Williams to join her. The vacation trip was luxurious and was supposed to be funded by Anna. During their vacation, the hotel confronted them that the card they provided was not working. Rachel, thinking it was an error of the bank, provided her card to the staff. She left Anna at the hotel since she had to fly back early for a project. When she arrived, she was surprised that the hotel charged her the entire bill.
This is when the house of cards began to fall when she finds out Anna was a fraud. All the time that she was part of the New York elite, she really had no money. The story about her being an heiress is also false. Her parents were part of the middle-class working people in Germany.
She was taken to court with multiple counts of fraud and was then sentenced to jail.
Netflix has shown many documentaries of such scams like Fyre and Tinder Swindler. It is understood that this is to create awareness however if the ones who committed fraud are being paid, are we just enabling them and not letting them learn from their mistakes? One of the positive things that came with it is that the victims can express their stories. Many documentaries of scams have led to GoFundMe pages to help them recover.