The sentencing capped a case of a young grifter who spun her tale with brazen flair. Sorokin wore designer clothes, lived in boutique hotels, dined in expensive restaurants and lured investors for a $40 million private club — all without a penny to her name.
She has been held on Rikers Island since October 2017. Sorokin, 28, was convicted last month of most of the charges against her.
Her lawyer, Todd Spodek, said during that trial that Sorokin was simply an enterprising business-minded woman eager to make it in the big city.
But jurors agreed with prosecutors that her gilt-edged life was an elaborate ruse financed by lies.
In addition to the prison sentence, Sorokin was fined $24,000 and ordered to pay restitution of about $199,000.
“I apologize for the mistakes I made,” she said at the sentencing.
Sorokin stiffed hotels, persuaded a bank employee to give her a $100,000 line of credit, swayed a private jet company to let her fly on credit, and tried to secure a $25 million loan from a hedge fund. In all, she stole about $213,000 worth of money and services.
Still, the jury found her not guilty of the most serious offense — faking records in an attempt to obtain a $22 million loan. She was also acquitted of stealing from a friend who said Sorokin duped her into covering the cost of a $60,000 vacation to Morocco.
To many friends, there was every reason to believe that Sorokin was a wealthy German heiress named Anna Delvey with so much money that she frequently doled out $100 tips and flew on a private jet to Berkshire Hathaway’s annual investment conference.
But Kaegan Mays-Williams, a prosecutor, said during the trial that Sorokin’s only goal was to “put herself in the best position to take money” from the wealthy so that she could “live the fantasy of an extravagant lifestyle.”
Spodek said people believed what they wanted about Sorokin. She was enabled, he said, by a system “seduced by glamour and glitz.” She intended to pay back her creditors, he said.
“Through her sheer ingenuity, she created the life that she wanted for herself,” he said. “Anna was not content with being a spectator, but wanted to be a participant.”
Sorokin, a Russian immigrant from a middle-class family, arrived in New York from Paris in 2014. She had lofty dreams of opening a members-only arts club on Park Avenue South called ADF, for the Anna Delvey Foundation. In 2015, she enlisted architect Gabriel Andres Calatrava to create what she envisioned would be a club similar to Soho House New York, with a bar, a nightclub and an art exhibit. Calatrava is the son of Santiago Calatrava, an architect who designed the Oculus, the centerpiece of the World Trade Center transit hub.
She also solicited help from hotelier André Balazs, British-American entrepreneur Roo Rogers and real estate developer Aby Rosen.
She said she had found the perfect location for her club: 281 Park Ave. South, a landmark building. The project was expected to cost up to $40 million.
At first, Calatrava and others believed she was good for it. Prosecutors said she told people that she had a trust fund and was worth 60 million euros ($67 million).
She tried hard to get loans from banks and hedge funds, prosecutors said. She forged financial statements, and created a fake accountant and a phony financial adviser with emails that linked back to her, prosecutors said.
Sorokin tried to get a $22 million loan from City National Bank, but a banker rejected her request when he could not determine the source of her wealth. Calatrava had also stopped working with her when she could not provide proof that she could fund the project.
She then tried to secure a $25 million loan from Fortress Investment Group, prosecutors said, but she needed to pay it a fee as part of the process to secure the loan. She turned to City National Bank and talked a banker into giving her a line of credit on her account for $100,000. She promised to repay it with a wire transfer from a European account.
After Fortress began investigating Sorokin’s personal and financial information, she withdrew from the deal, prosecutors said, and Fortress returned a little more than half the money she provided. Instead of giving that money back to City National Bank, she spent it on expensive clothing and five-star hotels.
Prosecutors said Sorokin also tricked a friend, Rachel Williams, into spending $62,000 to cover the cost of a luxury trip to Marrakech, Morocco, with two other people. The group stayed at the La Mamounia hotel, where they had a private villa with a courtyard, a pool and a butler.
When they returned to New York City, Sorokin promised to repay Williams back through a wire transfer, Williams testified. Sorokin only returned $5,000 of what Williams said she was owed. A jury acquitted Sorokin of the charges associated with Williams.
In Manhattan, Sorokin moved from one luxurious hotel to the next, according to prosecutors. She was kicked out of 11 Howard in SoHo for not paying her bill. At the Beekman hotel, she had racked up an $11,000 tab. The W New York also forced her out when she did not put a credit card on file.
Her first arrest was in July 2017 at a restaurant inside the Le Parker Meridien hotel, where she was handed a lunch bill that was about $200. She could not pay it.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.