Fake heiress Anna Sorokin says that crime pays, ‘in a way’

Infamous “Soho grifter” Anna Sorokin reflected on her post-prison success in a new interview, saying that “in a way” crime pays.

The 30-year-old convicted thief, who goes by the alias Anna Delvey, told BBC Newsnight she’s been inundated with media requests and offers since her early release from prison last month.

Asked if crime pays, the “fake heiress” replied: “In a way, it did.”

Netflix controversially paid her about $320,000 for the rights to her life story and for consulting work on an upcoming show about her crimes produced by Shonda Rhimes and starring actress Julia Garner in the title role.

After $198,000 were paid in restitution, the remaining funds were released to Sorokin, who was recently spotted gallivanting around the city or holed up at the five-star NoMad Hotel while documenting her glamorous post-prison life on Instagram.

“I never asked for Netflix to buy my story, it just happened,” Sorokin told the BBC. “And everything else, it just spun out of my control. It’s not like I orchestrated anything.”

Sorokin was freed from the Albion Correctional Facility in February due to good behavior after getting hit with a four-to-12-year sentence in 2019 on grand larceny and theft of services convictions.

A Russian truck driver’s daughter, Sorokin posed as a wealthy German heiress to scam banks and businesses to the tune of $200,000. She also tried to fake her way to a $22 million bank loan to launch a Manhattan art club. 

Her crimes, she said, were “absolutely not” thrilling.

In my head I never thought that I was cheating or getting away with anything, she told the BBC.

The con woman — who infiltrated New York’s social scene, hobnobbed with the city’s elite and lived in luxury hotels without paying the bill — whined that the prosecution misrepresented her motives.

They said I paraded around New York, posing as an heiress. What happened was strictly between me and financial institutions, it was none of their business, Sorokin said.

They portrayed me as a wannabe socialite party girl and that was never my goal.

She also denied being “manipulative,” saying, “I just told people what I wanted and they gave it to me, or I would move on.”

The sit-down was just the latest in a series of media appearances for Sorokin, who last week described her time in a Rikers Island jail cell as “therapeutic” to ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

In an interview with Insider shortly after she was sprung, Sorokin boasted that prison guards treated her like a celebrity, describing life behind bars as “kind of like the scene in New York, but amplified.