Original subtitles

[ Flippers, pinball clacking, electronic music playing ]

♪♪

Spodek: When a client comes to my office,

it's the darkest day of their life.

They're literally hitting rock bottom.

And that's why they need a criminal defense lawyer.

All clients, in that first consultation,

never give you the full picture.

They give you some detail.

Anna presented herself as a German heiress

and that her family was quite wealthy.

There was no question that she was sophisticated,

that she was intelligent,

but I knew right away there was more to the story.

Reporter #1: She's a woman who allegedly pretended to be

a wealthy German heiress

and is now facing grand larceny and theft charges...

Reporter #2: Anna Sorokin managed to create

a completely false persona, calling herself Anna Delvey.

She built up thousands of followers on Instagram.

Reporter #3: ...a German con-artist.

She lived out a high-society, Instagram-ready fantasy.

Reporter #4: Her story caught the attention

of tabloids and movie makers. Netflix reportedly...

It's Anna's life.

She got to that point on her own hustle.

That's the story.

♪♪

[ Sirens wailing ]

♪♪

♪♪

[ Woman vocalizing ]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

I am Rachel DeLoache Williams.

I'm originally from Knoxville, Tennessee.

-Is that good? -Yeah.

Okay.

I moved to New York to work in publishing

and got a job at Vanity Fair,

where I worked for nine years

before leaving to write a book.

Well, actually, sorry -- that's not even true.

I didn't leave to write a book.

I got laid off. [ Laughs ]

Can we try that again?

Shane: Sure!

I guess I first noticed Anna through Instagram

when I saw her in photos with girls that I knew

and wondered who this new arrival was.

So, I'm sure I would've clicked through on her profile and seen

that she had 40,000 followers

and she kinda just fit into this maybe socialite category.

It explained why she had entered the scene.

I love Instagram. I'm a very visual person.

I certainly use it.

I've never been one to really go in

for ridiculous amounts of selfies,

but I do think there is value to one's personal brand.

♪♪

[ Mouse clicks ]

I first met Anna...

Oh, God, the place we met actually no longer exists,

but it was ironically called Happy Ending.

♪♪

It was a really fun time to be a part of this scene.

Anna was a little eccentric.

She had an accent that I couldn't place.

No pictures. [ Laughing ] No pictures.

Williams: She seemed like she came from money,

but didn't seem to really understand

how to engage with other people.

Like, sometimes it felt like this was, like, her first time

having this kind of friendship.

But we enjoyed spending time together.

We had similar interests in art and music.

But Anna and I, we had very different lifestyles.

One of the earliest signs of that was the fact

that she lived full time in a hotel.

It was just one more example of the sort of wealth

that she must have come from.

She had said that she was a collector of art

and she had this trust

and she wanted to establish her own art foundation.

It would be a members-only club.

It sounded impressive.

♪♪

♪♪

Notar: I liked it, the idea of creating an arts club.

New York was getting a bit homogenized.

That's why I thought what Anna wanted to do

was like, "Ah, finally, somebody wants to..."

So it was very attractive to me.

I fell into the scene of New York nightlife

by luck and chance.

You probably went to high school --

I went to Studio 54.

[ Disco music plays ]

It was Shangri-La,

and I'm drinking Dom Pérignon with Andy Warhol.

This was my reality.

Friend of mine called me

and said, "Do you know this girl Anna Delvey?

She knows so-and-so, and she's looking to do

a members club, art, da-da-da."

He goes, "I think it'd be great for them to meet you."

You know, in a strange way, I kind of liked Anna.

She had this royalty about her.

It was part arrogance,

part just cold.

She was somewhat rude. I found it funny.

I remember I was struck by her Instagram.

Boom boom boom boom!

She has all these people following her,

which then processes as she's a cool kid.

She said, "I want to show you the building."

So I went to the building, we did a walk-around.

Williams: She was trying to finalize the lease

for this building on Park Avenue South,

the Church Missions building.

She wanted to create this space that housed art galleries,

a lounge, you know, pop-up events.

In my mind, I wanted it to be a modern-day Factory,

Andy Warhol style.

Williams: She wanted to get a $25 million loan

for the creation of her foundation,

so she had gone to a bank for the money.

Notar: When we did that walk-through, she had like six or seven people

following this little girl all around

and, "Yes, over here, I think I want to do this,

and over here, blah blah blah blah."

And like, she worked it,

to the point that you're like, "Hey, she's tough."

Good businesswoman.

♪♪

♪♪

Kremers: To all of these people,

she spun just a web of deceit and lies.

All for a beautiful building in New York with her name on it.

I mean, it doesn't get more cliché than that.

I'm Marc Kremers, I own a company called Future Corp,

a digital studio in London.

My company was scammed.

Anna Delvey's story was that she was a German heiress,

the daughter and benefactor

of a rich industrial family in Germany.

She was looking to have Future Corp create the branding

for the Anna Delvey Foundation,

create a very slick presentation

to sort of wow the bankers about this project.

It had a board of advisors with a lot of names,

and a lot of those names were very impressive,

very established.

And I did contact one or two of them to sort of say,

"Hey, I'm going to be working with Anna,"

and they replied quite quickly saying, "Yeah, that's great,

I'm on the board, she's great."

We reached the end of the first phase of work,

and she liked what we were doing.

But after several weeks, I was like, you know,

"Hey, like, let's sort out that invoice,"

me thinking -- German heiress,

very busy socializing and doing her heiress-y things,

so maybe I should just nudge her.

But those nudges went from one, two, three, four, five

to, I think, literally hundreds.

It was something like £17,000 that was already due.

We're a small business, you know.

My company was put into a lot of peril and almost closed

because of the nature of her telling us

that, you know, the check's in the post,

and then it's going to be there in three or four days,

and then she'd come up with another story.

At a certain point, you're just like, "Oh, come on."

I started to do my own sleuthing

and kind of trying to find mentions of Anna Delvey

within Instagram hashtags and @s and all the rest.

She did study at Central Saint Martins,

which is a preeminent design and art college in London,

where her name was actually Anna Sorokin.

Then she became an intern at Purple Fashion.

She was already not using a real name

and she kind of builds a story one square at a time

on her Instagram feed.

♪♪

Corvacho: I met Anna Delvey here in Paris.

♪♪

My name is Sergio Corvacho.

I have a career in fashion,

in photography,

in makeup and in styling.

I was working a lot for a French publication

called Purple magazine.

That's the place where Anna Delvey started

as an intern.

♪♪

♪♪

Anna had an accent that I couldn't really recognize

where it was from -- it wasn't British,

it wasn't German, it was just a --

a cute accent.

To me, she seemed like a backpacker

that ended up in Paris

and decided to play the game of a fashion girl.

You know, the fashion world is superficial and catty.

It's like high school.

If you hang out with the cool people, you're going to make it.

If you hang out with the nerdy ones,

you're going to be a nerd for the rest of your life.

Anna was never the life of the party.

She was a shy girl, very shy.

I don't think people liked her. At all.

You know, Paris is the city of image.

I think Anna was training herself

in what to wear, how to look,

and how to sell yourself 24/7.

But Anna was telling me

how desperate she was to move to New York,

because things move faster there.

In New York, a nobody can make it into a somebody

in a matter of days or months.

She wanted to be a star.

Everybody has to follow their own dream.

♪♪

♪♪

Dee: Now people think of Anna as this very powerful person.

And that's not really how I remember her.

Okay.

Man: Okay, ready.

I actually met her at Surf Lodge in Montauk.

Surf Lodge was kind of like the newer place.

They were having Patti Smith perform.

I deejayed for her.

So, I was getting ready in my room,

and somebody knocked on the door.

And it was an old friend of mine and promoter,

and he had Anna with him.

She was so awkward, 'cause she walked in with him

but she didn't say a word.

She was not even like, "Hi."

She was just standing there...

...wearing this pink dress and heels.

It was just like, "Whoa, what is going on?"

Because it's the beach, you know?

Sand on the floor.

One of my friends was like, "Wow, your dress is so pretty,"

and her answer was, "Balenciaga."

That was it.

We were laughing about it the whole day, which I feel bad,

but it was really funny.

For the rest of the day we were like, oh, "Corona."

If we had a beer.

[ Seagulls crying ]

The next morning, when I woke up

and I went to get a cup of coffee,

I saw that she was sleeping in a car in the parking lot.

So I walked to the car and the windows were cracked

and she was alive.

It was so surreal when I saw her sleeping in the hot car

and she looked real blushed and her dress was pink.

She looked like a doll, really.

I was like, "Oh, my God, this is so creepy."

[ Laughs ]

And then I kept seeing her at a lot of places.

Every party I was playing, she was there.

She was always on her phone.

That's how I remember her, just looking down at her phone.

She kept asking me about my Instagram,

why I didn't have enough followers, and...

My friend told me, "Oh, she's like this heiress,

she's going to be really rich in a few years."

I mean, it's New York! That's a lot of rich people.

There's a lot of people that care about money and power.

People love to brag about things.

It was funny because she also has an accent,

but you couldn't really place it.

She was obviously not from Germany.

It was really --

It was, like, not a German accent.

She was not exactly the nicest person.

She called people peasants.

She felt so superior.

You know that attitude

when people wear sunglasses in the club?

[ Laughing ] That's what I meant, really.

You know what I mean? It was like, you know,

before people decided to be nice was a better look.

[ Laughs ]

Williams: With Anna, it was sometimes hard to know

when she was being serious and when she was joking.

She would say sort of jarring things.

For example, one time I looked over

and she was looking at herself in the mirror and she goes,

"I'm so pretty and rich."

It was just like, "Excuse me?

Did you just say what I think you just said?"

And just, we both just started laughing

'cause it was so ridiculous.

There were times where she'd be rude to people

or she'd make jokes about someone being a peasant.

Like, things that, you know, of course on paper

just seem kind of appalling, but in real life,

she does have this charm to her and I think I was actively

looking for reasons to forgive her behavior.

♪♪

Dee: So, it was Fashion Week in Paris.

I was playing an after party, and Anna texted me being like,

"I'm having a party at my hotel, pop by."

When we arrived, there were people there,

but they seemed not to know her as well

and everyone is just sitting on their phones

and looking at Instagram.

And all the waiters from the hotel

were standing by the table with napkins,

looking very like -- it was very French, actually.

But I was like, "Let's get out of here, this is just awkward."

And we left.

♪♪

I heard from her next morning.

She called, she was crying, saying, "I'm trying to check out

and my card is not going through.

They're being really mean to me, the hotel.

They say they're gonna call the cops.

I don't know what to do."

She needed my help.

I ask her, "But how much is the bill?"

And she say 35,000 euros.

I thought she was joking.

I laughed. I was like, "Seriously?

My credit card is going to be declined, girl."

Like, no.

[ Snaps fingers ] And she changed right away.

Right away, she was like, "Oh, okay.

Well, see you in New York. Bye."

It was like, "Oh, okay, you can't help me, so goodbye".

It was kind of scary.

It was like, something is weird about this person.

We did not hang out after that.

I was not about to call her a friend.

No.

So I guess she had to take a break

and then find a better target than me.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Williams: It started out as this trip to Morocco.

Anna's offering to take me on some vacation

and to pay for it all.

I was so grateful -- like, what a huge gift,

what an enormous expense.

She checked us into the Hotel La Mamounia,

which is this extremely extravagant,

like the most magical, huge, wild hotel you'll ever see.

It's palatial.

There's four restaurants, three bars,

a lake-sized swimming pool, gardens --

it's just completely over the top.

Anna wanted to go buy some caftans.

So we went into the marketplace and she picked out

$1,300 worth of dresses.

And when she got to the cash register to pay,

her credit card didn't go through.

And I just was like, "Oh, did you tell your banks

that you're traveling?" because that would make perfect sense.

I would flag a charge in Marrakesh, too.

And she said, "No, I didn't. Can I just put it on your card?"

So, of course, I was like, "Alright."

I think it was Wednesday evening,

after we had just gotten back from this day trip

to the Atlas Mountains.

When we got back to the hotel,

the managers were waiting for Anna in the lobby.

They pulled her aside and she said something about the fact

that they had been trying to run her card

and it wasn't working.

And they clearly need their, like, payment.

I don't wanna go to jail anywhere,

like, let alone Marrakesh. [ Chuckles ]

Um...

But she just was so, like, dismissive.

Suddenly, one of the managers is like, "Do you have

a functioning credit card?"

And Anna's like -- looks at me.

And it's at this point that I take out my corporate card,

because I think it's a temporary hold.

It's the last day. I'm leaving the next morning.

It's going to get fixed.

This is not okay with me, but like,

I just want to get out.

It wasn't until I landed that I-I got a text from Anna

saying, "I'll wire you 70,000 U.S. dollars

to make sure everything's covered,"

and I was like, "Oh." Like, that's the first time

I learned how -- how expensive the trip was.

Anna comes back to New York.

I'm starting to get increasingly nervous

about the fact that this money hasn't appeared.

You know, as more time goes by and it's still not there,

she connects me with this person named Bettina

via email -- Bettina Wagner,

who she says is a family accountant

who will help her while she's traveling.

Anna would chime in like,

"Bettina, this is a personal favor.

It should have been taken care of five days ago."

Like, of course, it was Anna on both emails, um...

I think. [ Chuckles ]

Shane: Sorry, so Anna was...

Bettina.

I think!

Kremers: At a certain point, the whole thing became

a kind of a ridiculous opera, really.

I said to Anna, "You must have a family office

or a family financial manager --

put me in touch with these people."

And then she introduced her family office manager --

um, Peter Hennecke.

Peter Hennecke was Anna Delvey.

[ Laughs ]

You know, I mean, these -- these kind of aspects of the story

are just quite mind-blowing.

There was a time when I was like, "I want to get on a call with you and Peter."

And I called Anna, we're trying to get hold of "Peter."

Obviously, Peter was not going to arrive on that call,

and the excuse for that was apparently

that his daughter was hospitalized.

So there's also a fake daughter now involved in all this.

And um, yeah, I don't know, at a certain point,

maybe a few months later,

I was like, you know, "Where's Peter?

I haven't heard from him for a while."

And then she kinda dropped the bomb on me

that, uh, Peter had passed away.

And then I think she introduced Bettina.

I kind of did half expect for her to,

at some point, just ghost me.

A normal person would at least --

yeah, a normal sociopath would ghost you.

Maybe. You know.

But she seemed to be really on it.

[ Chuckles ]

What you're really dealing with is a bona fide sociopath

on every level.

Somebody who's dark -- dark as hell.

♪♪

♪♪

Williams: A little over two months after Morocco,

I have credit card statements due,

I have to pay my rent.

I was constantly hoping repayment was on the way,

and Anna just kept moving the goalpost.

I was living paycheck to paycheck

and I would just have these incredible panic attacks,

like unable to breathe, just thinking like, "Okay, well,

I was already not making any money, not saving any money,

and now I'm gonna have this enormous debt

that I'll never be able to pay off,

I'm never gonna have a house,

I'm never gonna be able to have kids."

It was -- like, it's been however many years

and it still makes me catch in my throat.

And finally I asked her, can we meet at this bar

on the West Side Highway, that's outdoors on a pier.

It's called the Frying Pan.

I didn't know what to expect.

She just looked kind of disheveled, um...

And Anna, she actually...

She was a little bit emotional,

but it was because it was the same day

that the tabloids had come out

about her stiffing the Beekman Hotel.

Turns out she hadn't paid her bill there, either.

New York Post and the New York Daily News

had called her a wannabe socialite.

And she thought that was a terribly unfair portrayal of her

'cause she was really working hard

and she wasn't out partying all the time

and she didn't understand why they would say that.

What unfolded was a real-time compacted version

of what I had been through with Anna

over the previous two months or so.

She just had an answer for everything.

By the end of that evening,

there was no chance she was anything but a con artist.

♪♪

So, the next day, I emailed the District Attorney's office

with a link to the article from the New York Post, saying,

"I would like to speak with the prosecutor on this case.

I think this girl's a con artist

and I have information that might be useful."

Very shortly after that, I received a phone call

from a woman who said, "We think you're right."

So I met with two prosecutors,

gave them my little binder full of everything

and realized that Anna was the subject

[voice breaking] of an ongoing criminal investigation.

Yeah.

My name is Emily Palmer. I am a crime reporter.

I covered the story of Anna Delvey

for The New York Times.

She was the chameleon. That was her personality.

she was really good

at camouflaging within her surroundings.

And she did that for years

amongst Manhattan's most elite.

She was very smart.

She knew the right people to befriend.

In New York, I think there really is this idea

of bowing down to those that are wealthy and elite.

You know, she would tip $100

and she would make sure that people saw that.

And so she could make a little bit of money go a long way.

Williams: It turns out, the way that Anna operated,

it was just a house of cards. She was check kiting.

She had been opening bank accounts with multiple banks

and then writing herself checks from one to the other

and withdrawing the funds before the check bounced.

That's the money she was using in order to finance the hotels

and meals and all of her routine --

the hair cuts, the color, the shopping.

Palmer: She was such a masterful study of character.

She could talk her way into a room

and she could talk her way into just about any situation.

It eventually -- it caught up with her.

You can only do it so many times.

Williams: Anna was due in court on September 5, 2017,

for the three misdemeanors she'd been charged with --

the Beekman, the W, and the Parker Meridien.

But on that day, I got a phone call

from a detective from the NYPD, Officer McCaffrey,

who said that Anna had not shown up in court,

and they asked me if I might know where she was.

And they asked if, if I were to contact her,

whether I thought she might respond.

So, at their urging, I resumed communication with Anna.

"Hey Anna, I've been thinking about you today

as I know you had that court date.

I wondered how it's gone for you.

I can't imagine you intended for things

to turn out the way they have.

It seems like you must've gotten into trouble somehow.

I'm sorry that you didn't feel like

you could tell me the full story,

and I'm sorry you're in this mess, however it happened."

And then moving forward from that day,

we began a very slow exchange of text messages

where it was kind of reestablishing this trust.

Ironically, her trusting me.

I would look at Anna's Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,

to look for clues as to not only her whereabouts,

but her mentality, her agenda -- you know, who is this person?

Anna's Instagram took on this other meaning.

She had posted pictures of chessboards,

this idea of playing a game.

Or Anna would Instagram photos of artwork

that said something like "Malice."

I was looking at her Spotify playlists that were public,

which included so many songs about getting away with things

and avoiding the police and living fake lives...

"Fuck Tha Police," N.W.A.

"All Eyez on Me," Tupac.

"If I Get Locked Up" by Funkmaster Flex.

Kind of a lot, no?

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Over the course of the month, I worked with the NYPD

to piece together where she had gone.

Part of that happened through her Instagram,

actually, 'cause she began posting

sort of cryptic, abstract selfies.

There was one of her feet in this bowl of fruit,

and in that image, I happened to recognize this key fob --

a key fob I had seen when I was at the Chateau Marmont

in Los Angeles for photo shoots.

At a certain point, Anna called me and told me

that she had checked into a rehab,

and that's where she was.

I asked for information about like,

"Oh, you know, do you get to play tennis there?"

'Cause Anna liked to play tennis.

And she said, "Yeah, they have

a relationship with this country club."

And I said, "Oh, do you go for walks on the beach?"

And she's like, "Yeah, it's across

the Pacific Coast Highway."

So I figured out that she had checked into Passages,

which is I think one of, if not the most expensive rehab

in the country,

costing upwards of $60,000 per month.

She knows I'm coming out west

for a conference and she had said,

"We should get together while you're out here."

I suggested we go to lunch.

It was shocking how easily we kind of slid

back into this old rapport.

It's curious to think that she thought that would be possible

given everything we had just been through and the fact

that this enormous sum of money was still outstanding.

But again, Anna is texting me, asking me for favors.

She's saying, "Can you pick up vodka and water bottles

and then put the vodka into the water bottles

and then drive them to me in Malibu?"

Not a -- Not an ounce of self-awareness.

It was October 3, 2017.

She was going to meet me at noon.

And when she left the rehab facility that morning,

she was arrested by the LAPD, who were stationed outside.

Reporter: A bogus German heiress is standing trial

accused in a massive swindling scheme here in New York.

And prosecutors say Anna Sorokin posed as that heiress

and blew through $275,000

in a 10-month jet-setting spending spree.

When the news broke, I was like, "Oh, shit!"

Okay, so that's where she's been. That's it.

I knew from the beginning that it was not right.

All I can say is like, I told you so.

I got a ping from Google news alert about Anna Delvey.

I just immediately forwarded it to her with absolute glee,

saying, "Oh, look, looks like things are going well for you."

I think then after that, she blocked me on Instagram,

which is maybe a badge of honor.

♪♪

Spodek: When she first came to me,

she had one open misdemeanor criminal case

and she went M.I.A.

I'm in court a few weeks later

and I see a young woman in a jumpsuit

who happens to be Anna, my client, who warranted,

so I'm like, "What the fuck? What's going on?"

And then it all came out.

Then it came out that she had warranted,

that she left for California, was arrested, was extradited,

and had these large-scale bank schemes going on

and, you know, just living la vida loca.

The wannabe socialite is actually on trial

for swindling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Reporter: She falsified bank records, forged her identity.

Reporter #2: Anna Sorokin is accused

of scamming people in New York out of more than

a quarter-million dollars to fund her lifestyle.

Reporter #3: She conned money out of friends,

banks, and hotels.

So I said, "Listen, we better get started,

'cause this is going to be one monster of a trial."

And we started, and we went to fucking war,

and I loved it.

So, I knew that I had to paint a picture of Anna

as an aspirational young woman who didn't have

the opportunities that other people have.

I presented the theory of the case via the opening statement.

So I'll read a little bit for you.

"Sinatra said, 'I'll make a brand-new start of it

in old New York.

If I can make it there,

I'll make it anywhere.'

Now, Anna also moved to New York,

just like some of you did.

She came here bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,

and excited about the opportunities that awaited her.

She was merely 25 years old.

Through her sheer ingenuity, she created the life

that she wanted for herself.

There's a little bit of Anna in each of us.

Anna has moxie. She hustles.

Or like my grandmother would say, "She has chutzpah."

Anna did not have connections to open doors for her.

So Anna had to kick down the doors herself.

The evidence will show that Anna

never intended to commit a crime.

She allowed everyone to believe the story

that they wanted to believe,

and she reaped the benefits."

That's page three.

Good?

♪♪

♪♪

Palmer: I attended the trial most days.

I think people went into this trial knowing Anna Delvey

and wanting to know Anna Sorokin.

Anna was born in Domodedovo, Russia,

not a lot of money.

Her dad ran a heating and cooling business.

They were immigrants from Russia to Germany.

But the beginnings of Anna Delvey

start when she moves to Paris.

She gets an internship at Purple.

She takes pictures for the magazine

and has to choose the name

that she's going to attach to those pictures,

and she picks what she told me was a pen name, Anna Delvey.

She credited the name as being her mother's maiden name.

She assured me she didn't make it up,

but there was no evidence to the fact

that that was her mother's maiden name.

And then she goes to New York for Fashion Week one year

and she just likes it and she decides to stay.

And she becomes known as Anna Delvey to everyone there.

[ Indistinct talking ]

The charges in this case included,

you know, a $200 restaurant bill

and hotel bills that were unpaid.

All of these go to the illusion of Anna Delvey,

but the top charges go to her greatest con,

which was this idea of creating the Anna Delvey Foundation --

or perhaps her intent to just get tens of millions

and never create it, right?

We don't really know, because it never happened.

Spodek: The Anna Delvey Foundation.

Anna needed capital to create this business.

And all these sophisticated, savvy people were like,

"Hey, this plan makes sense. I want to be a part of it."

Where it became illegal was when she went to banks

and she wrote down how much she was worth

and she submitted fake bank statements.

The issue was, is that the underlying documentation

and the underlying story was not 100% accurate.

There were some issues with those things.

She only Photoshopped four documents.

That's not a lot of documents to create

considering the fact that her aim was to get $22 million.

Spodek: When you look over the documents

that the bank received to support the stuff,

it was so crazy -- like, they were made online.

Like, anybody could figure this out,

but they just overlooked it all.

Every opportunity for a bank to realize

that something was afoot, they missed,

literally every step of the way.

Because they wanted the German heiress.

She was rich, she was balling.

She was a fraud, and they all fell for it.

And that goes to show you

how blinded by glitz and glamour people are.

Palmer: The other interesting charge against her

was for taking about $60,000 from her friend Rachel Williams

for a very lavish trip to Marrakesh.

I think that the prosecution thought Rachel would be somebody

that the jury would empathize with.

But Rachel Williams played right into the hand of the defense.

Spodek: Rachel Williams was Anna's friend.

They were intimate --

they were emotionally intimate with each other.

Rachel -- I don't want to say

was only friends with her because she had means,

but she was certainly taking advantage of her generosity.

It was kind of like being a friend with a celebrity

who picked up the bill for everything.

The really crazy part is, Rachel set her up.

We're talking about, "I'm going to conspire with the detectives

so that she gets out of the rehab facility

and gets arrested on the spot."

That's some gangster shit.

That takes a certain type of individual to do that.

Now, interesting side note about Rachel is,

I knew a fair amount about Rachel

because she had reached out to me

early on in the case.

This is a scoop for you. This is a scoop for you.

So, I'll explain.

Once the case started going

and there was a lot of media attention,

everyone was trying to profit from it.

Rachel had reached out to me and was like,

"You're her lawyer, you are representing her interests --

I also am interested in, you know,

exploiting this story to my benefit."

She wanted to join forces

with the other members of this story

and sell their story collectively

to the highest bidder.

And she was unable to 'cause we didn't cooperate with her,

but she's a hustler.

Reporter: One of the friends that Sorokin duped

reportedly sold her story to Simon & Schuster

to tell her tales.

She's the author of "My Friend Anna:

The True Story of a Fake Heiress,"

the book that she wrote after all of this came out.

Williams: Thank you so much for having me.

So, take us back to the beginning.

What were you doing when you first met Anna?

I was working at Vanity Fair.

I liked her, and so we had a lot of fun together.

She said that she, uh, had a trust fund.

By the time I left Marrakesh, Anna owed me $62,000 dollars.

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Spodek: I think she made a fatal mistake in court

in how she presented herself.

The most important thing at the trial,

no matter what, is connecting with that jury.

Do not bullshit the jury.

She should've got on the stand and been like, "Look,

I don't want to paint a picture that I'm an angel.

I made over half a million dollars from this.

It worked out well for me.

Doesn't mean Anna didn't fuck me over,

but ultimately, it worked out well for me."

And the jury would have connected with it.

But instead, she did it the opposite way.

She ultimately testified

about what a traumatic experience this was

and she owed this debt.

You have people whose parents died, have been evicted,

maybe people who are suffering from cancer,

have such horrific problems in life --

how could you sit there and testify about how owing a debt,

a $70,000 debt on a corporate credit card

is the worst thing that ever happened to you?

How would anyone relate to that?

Once Rachel testified, it was like we won the Grammys.

She had an opportunity, now she wrote a story,

then she writes a book, now she writes another book,

and what happens? Now she's an author.

In New York, people make it out of nothing.

They hustle. Rachel hustled.

I didn't do anything for money. Like, just full stop.

That's not, you know...

But it -- it did help me to repay debts.

And in the end, American Express did end up protecting me

from the La Mamounia charges, which was an immense relief.

It was -- I mean, of course,

that was a-a huge relief.

There was a wave of

media interest in the story.

I was put in touch

with agents at CAA,

who helped me to navigate

this completely uncharted territory.

So, there was then a, um...

I don't -- Is it called a book deal?

I guess, a book deal and a film option.

For the trial, I only attended on the day of my testimony.

It took so much to get up during that trial and testify,

especially, like, to recount something

that was so painful and personal.

I just kind of melted. It was so raw.

So raw.

Unfortunately, Anna's lawyer kind of played up the fact

that I had been emotional

and said I deserved an Oscar for my testimony, and --

and I think used that humanness, the humanity, the emotion of it

against me, as though I were being dramatic on purpose.

The verdict -- jurors agreeing with the prosecution

that Anna Sorokin built her fairy-tale life

on a foundation of lies.

Reporter: 28-year-old Anna Sorokin

making that short statement in a Manhattan courtroom,

sentenced Thursday to up to 12 years in prison.

Spodek: Even though we didn't prevail across the board,

the fact that we got two of the charges acquitted

was pretty remarkable. We were ecstatic.

We really were so happy that our hard work paid off.

She was convicted on attempted grand larceny.

Anna tried to steal millions of dollars.

She was found guilty of successfully taking

some $200,000.

The jury said there wasn't enough evidence

that Anna really had gone far enough

to legitimately be considered for a $22 million loan.

And they just didn't empathize at all with Rachel,

who frankly, uh, wasn't a very empathetic character.

To have the jury come back and decide against me,

like, in her favor, as one of the two

charges that she was found not guilty towards,

was just salt into a wound.

And then walking down the street and seeing people wearing

Fake German Heiress T-shirts

just felt like

a punch to the gut.

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Anna was never interested in proving her innocence.

She said, you know, a trial isn't about the truth --

it's about the story.

Reporter: Sorokin's story caught the eye of both Shonda Rhimes

and Lena Dunham, who are both reportedly

producing TV shows centered on her.

Corvacho: Anna Delvey is probably laughing all the way to the bank.

What is next?

Fake heiress: the theme park?

[ Laughs ]

It surprised me, how big it got.

I never thought the story was going to get this big.

Kremers: Going through Anna's Instagram feed, you can see

this cleverly curated vision that she wanted to project.

Instagram has normalized that.

We are all living on a digital surface.

We project ourselves on that surface,

and we all have a bit of Anna Delvey in us.

But there's projection, and there's deception.

I'm telling you now that in her head,

there is no Anna Sorokin.

There is really just Anna Delvey.

And I think in her head it's Anna Delvey,

and in our heads it's Anna Delvey.

You know, it's a fabricated story that we choose to believe.

Palmer: So many people want to just get up one day,

leave their life, and be someone else.

And that is one of the real reasons

everybody is so infatuated --

not because she faked bank statements,

but because she actually became somebody else.

By the way, Andy Warhol would've loved Anna Delvey.

You know what I mean?

Because his whole thing was about pop icons.

She had the gumption,

and it starts with that.

Spodek: Anna was a dreamer.

And I know that with the right resources, we'd all be having

a drink at this arts foundation being like,

"I can't believe she did it.

How delicious is this margarita?"

Like, that's the conversation we would have,

but she just didn't get that opportunity.

But the beauty of this is she's young and life is long.

And when she gets out, she'll make something happen.

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