Anna Sorokin, who posed as a German heiress in order to defraud individuals and financial institutions of hundreds of thousands of dollars, is released from detention pending deportation and placed under house arrest for the time being.
Anna Sorokin sits at the defense table during jury deliberations in her trial in the New York State Supreme Court on April 25, 2019 in New York.
(dpa)
The German imposter Anna Sorokin (31) has been released from custody pending deportation in the United States. The 31-year-old was allowed to leave the institution on Friday evening (local time), the responsible authority said. NBC reported that Sorokin had posted $10,000 bail and was being placed under house arrest in New York, requiring her to wear an ankle bracelet. The release does not change the intention of the American authorities to deport Sorokin.
Sorokin, born near Moscow in 1991, moved to Germany with her parents as a teenager and then graduated from high school in Eschweiler near Aachen. She then moved to New York via London and Paris, where she posed as an heiress to millions in Manhattan’s high society under the pseudonym Anna Delvey and – according to a court ruling in 2019 – benefits worth more than 200,000 dollars (about 175,000 euros) surreptitiously
Sorokin was sentenced to four years in prison but was released in early 2021 for good behavior. Shortly thereafter, she was arrested again because of an expired visa and has been in the facility of the immigration service ICE ever since. She has appealed several times against being deported to Germany. Sorokin’s story can currently be seen under the title “Inventing Anna” on the Netflix streaming service, and according to her own statements, she is also working on another documentary series, a book and a podcast, among other things.