transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:09] The elite fashion scene of New York City, where it girls and celebrities rub shoulders with designers and trust fud kids have a ball spending daddy's money like they can't get rid of it fast enough. Until April 2019, Anna Delvey moved through that world like she was born into it. Stylish, aloof, and just enough of a bitch. She seemed every inch the spoiled European heiress taking Manhattan as her personal playground. The only problem was that it was all made up. Because Anna Delvey wasn't born into money and Anna Delvey wasn't even her real name. Instead, she built an elaborate house of cards out of thin air, playing the rich girl shtick so convincingly that she fooled a whole city, almost. Because now, in a federal courthouse facing multiple charges of grand larceny and theft of services totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Time's up for the so-called fake heiress. But who is, was Anna Delvey? How did she con the New York elite and some of the biggest financial institutions in the world? Despite all of the public attention, Anna Delvey is still a mysterious character, and her true motivations are far from those we see with traditional con artists. I'm Hannah, I'm Suruthi, and this is Rich Girl RedHanded.

Speaker 2:
[01:37] The Anna in the Dock was miles away, literally and figuratively, from where it all started back in January 1991. She was born Anna Sorokin in the working class commuter town of Domodedovo near Moscow in the final days of the crumbling Soviet Union. In her New York days, acquaintances would whisper rumors about Anna's father being a Russian billionaire who made his fortune in antiques or solar power. But in reality, Anna's dad Vadim worked as a truck driver in her childhood, while her mum owned a small local convenience store. Anna always considered herself to be an only child, as her younger brother didn't come along until she was already 12. And her teenage years brought even more changes, including a move to the German town of Eschweiler, just west of Cologne, where Vadim started his own modest heating and aircon business. The family were comfortably middle class, but an oligarch, Vadim certainly was not.

Speaker 1:
[02:39] In Germany, Anna attended a Catholic grammar school, where her peers remember her as quiet and struggling with the new language. Eschweiler was an ordinary, and at least according to Anna, boring suburban town. But even in these decidedly beige surroundings, Anna found joy in one thing, fashion. Long before you could find her swanning around Manhattan hotels and trendy bars as Anna Delvey, young Anna Sorokin was just an awkward teenager like the rest of us in a small town, hungrily scrolling through fashion magazines and blogs. To her family's bemusement, she collected endless issues of Vogue and idolized Marie Antoinette after studying her at school, declaring her a scapegoat, which, kind of, she even got a tattoo of her in her honor.

Speaker 2:
[03:28] A bow.

Speaker 1:
[03:30] A bow, tattoo of a bow. Does say tacky tattoo here, but as someone who has a Virginia Hall tattoo, I don't think I can say anything.

Speaker 2:
[03:40] Yeah, it's a Marie Antoinette inspired bow that she's got, but look, that was the choice.

Speaker 1:
[03:50] Far from seeing Marie Antoinette as some doomed icon, but cautionary tale, Anna took the ill-fated French queen as an inspiration instead, starting by swapping her idea of suburban hell for somewhere a little more glamorous. Because in Eschweiler, the devil wears Primark, certainly not Prada. And Anna wanted more. And I suppose Marie Antoinette did just show up not speaking the language, she didn't know anything.

Speaker 2:
[04:17] Yeah, I think Anna's choice of like, idol is very telling. And the fact she doesn't see like, yes, of course you can say Marie Antoinette became a figurehead for everything that was wrong with the monarchy. And that's why, ultimately, she was torn down and turned into this, like, if you want to call her a scapegoat, sure. And she never said the thing about fucking bread and cake, and that was never proven. And apparently she did actually do some quite nice things for the starving people, but not enough to like, not wear all the fancy jewels and all of that. But like the fact that she idolizes her is very, very symbolic of how she views everybody else as peasants. And how she views herself as being something more. So yes, telling. So after finishing school in June 2011, Anna enrolled to study fashion at the Central St. Martin's College of Art in London. Well, her parents didn't really get it. They supported Anna by paying her rent, and reckoned it was all worthwhile if it made their daughter happy. But Anna's London dream had barely started, when for unknown reasons, she dropped out of uni and returned to Germany. She briefly interned at a PR company in Berlin, before making her next big move, this time to Paris. She nabbed a role as an intern at a very lardy darn magazine named Purple, where she earned about 400 euros a month. The pay might have been a bit shit, but the connections, well, they were priceless. For Anna, this was her very first taste of proximity to the wealthy and creative elite. She latched on to the trendiest, coolest, most popular people she could find like a leech. But Anna was not content to just be a tourist in this world. She wanted to belong. So around this time, she ditched her surname and started calling herself Anna Delvey, which is how her reinvention arc truly began.

Speaker 1:
[06:14] Anna first visited the Big Apple for Fashion Week in 2013, and she loved it so much that she decided not to leave. Transferring to Purple's New York office, Anna quickly immersed herself in the city's artsy fashion scene. She dated a self-described futurist called Hunter Lee Soich, whose lucrative startup company gave her access to tech bros founders, investors and the inevitable cluster of it girls who followed them around. Hunter later moved to Dubai, shocker. But for Anna, New York was it. She drifted between Soho house type members clubs, gallery openings and vibey downtown clubs. The sort of spaces where there was really only one ticket required for entry, money. The trick is, you don't spend any of it once you're in there. That's how they keep it. Anna didn't have any anyway. She just pretended to and that was enough.

Speaker 2:
[07:08] Because Anna has always claimed that she never actually said she was an heiress, which is just so untrue. She just said she never corrected anyone when they assumed that. But nobody just randomly assumes you're a European heiress with a massive trust fund, unless you are laying down some pretty thick, fat hints at that.

Speaker 1:
[07:34] I don't know. I think if you're in that echelon of society where everyone is that, I think you do just assume. Because it's terribly uncouth to talk about money.

Speaker 2:
[07:45] Yeah, and you've got a bonkers accent like Anna has. Maybe.

Speaker 1:
[07:48] That is the obvious conclusion.

Speaker 2:
[07:50] But she's also lying. She did tell people this, I'm certain of it. But she claims that she never told anybody. She just never corrected them when they assumed that she was some sort of European aristocrat or something. Apparently, members of that ritzy social bubble didn't know what Anna's origins really were, but they figured that she must be someone. Maybe it was the strange, like I said, mashed up European accent that no one could quite place. Or the way she spoke about her father handling things, or even her haughty, often dismissive attitude towards service staff. Although, that hardly screamed class. Maybe to these people, it spoke of something they recognized in themselves. Anna often behaved like a spoiled brat, threw money around in a vulgar way, and lacked the polished manners that one might expect of some sort of old money heiress. But rather than giving her away, this all weirdly seemed to add to her legitimacy. It contributed to the mysterious allure of being a sort of old school European princess, like her idol Marie Antoinette. Anna seemed utterly ignorant to the real world outside of her gilded playground.

Speaker 1:
[09:01] I went to uni with so many international school kids, they're all fucking like that. I have no problem believing that she slotted right in.

Speaker 2:
[09:07] That's the thing, it's just a world I do not understand. I don't know anyone who even comes close to thing into that social bubble. But I can understand what she's saying. I don't believe she never told anybody, but I can understand that all the things that are like so bonkers about her and they're like unbelievably brash way in which she behaves. People must have looked at her and been like, well, no one will behave like that if they weren't fucking loaded. Do you know what I mean? It's like the audacity she has, and the total lack of any filter she has, I think makes people think, well, no one will behave like that if they didn't have the power, and the privilege, and the influence, and the money that she obviously must have to behave like that. That's how she gets away with it. We'll obviously talk about Anna's motivations and all of that stuff later in the episode. But the one thing I find so interesting about Anna and people like her, is that if she had just worked hard, like she gets these internships at these magazines, she's a very magnetic person. Otherwise, none of this would have worked, right? She is a fucking con woman through and through. To do that, you have to be somewhat magnetic. Of course, yeah. She's obviously very smart, she's obviously very capable, she's obviously very driven. She's just done the work. She could have been successful in fashion or in something, but she's like, no, I want it all and I want it now. It is the ultimate. I'm writing another case that we'll do in a few weeks. It's that instant gratification that the narcissist demands. I don't want to do the work or put in the effort. I just want everything I'm entitled to, but I want it now. That is Anna's story.

Speaker 1:
[10:40] In New York City, nobody really cared. As one of her acquaintances put it, there are so many trust fund kids running around, everyone is your best friend, and you don't know a thing about anyone. Even when Anna did things that in retrospect seem to break the illusion like crashing on acquaintances' couches or relying on others to pick up her tab because of emergencies like forgetting her card, it barely caused a ripple in those circles. The whole package seemed legit, so there really was no reason to doubt her. And people just figured maybe she had so much money, she just lost track of it, to quote the title of journalist Jessica Pressler's notorious expose piece on Anna for the New York Times. One thing is for sure, Anna certainly wasn't afraid of showing how much cash she supposedly had. She lived out of suitcases in luxury hotels, dined exclusively in Michelin star restaurants, and downed endless cocktails in high-end bars. She splashed out thousands on fatty beauty treatments like cryotherapy, and even hired a celebrity personal trainer called Casey Duke for $300 a session.

Speaker 2:
[11:53] But most striking of all were Anna's ostentatious displays of generosity. At 11 Howard, the hotel where she stayed for several months in 2017, Anna was known to flounce around the lobby like she owned the place, and tip staff members $100 bills for the most minor tasks. But those who saw Anna regularly gradually came to realize that while she seemed to have an endless crowd of acquaintances and lackeys, she didn't really have any actual friends. Neff Atari, Neff Davies, a concierge at 11 Howard, clocked that what Anna really wanted from her was the only thing she didn't already have, and it was her time. Neff and Vanity Fair photo editor Rachel Williams ended up falling into a close-knit friendship circle with Anna very much at the centre. Their girly trio was mainly based on Anna taking them out for swanky experiences like private spa sessions, lavish dinners and giggly rooftop drinks. The girls noticed that Anna was a bit of an oddball, but her zest for life was infectious. I also think she gets away with being quite odd because she has the European accent. If she was American and acting like that, I think people would be like, what the? But I think people are just like, maybe this is just how European people act.

Speaker 1:
[13:10] Totally. Also, I wonder if there was a level of like, she's so out there that all of the rich people are like, oh my God, she must be even richer than me. I wouldn't act like that. There must be another level above me where they're all like this. I remember the first time I realized that I was essentially Ron Weasley in my school. A friend was telling me that her grandma would correct her not to say pardon, to say what because common people say pardon. I was like-

Speaker 2:
[13:42] Standing there in your brown dress robes.

Speaker 1:
[13:44] Yeah, literally. My hand-me-down jumper is from Fred and George. I was just like, what?

Speaker 2:
[13:50] And that is-

Speaker 1:
[13:52] I was like that- Pardon?

Speaker 3:
[13:54] Yeah, right.

Speaker 1:
[13:55] And I had to like, it took me about a week to process, oh, there is a whole other way that people exist that I don't know about. So maybe they're just having that experience.

Speaker 2:
[14:03] Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1:
[14:04] I'm New York Ron Weasley.

Speaker 2:
[14:08] So yeah, and just to give a little bit of a context into how people were viewing Anna, Rachel, the Vanity Fair photo editor, who you will get to know very well throughout this episode, described Anna as, quote, the girl who fell to earth, grandiose, ingenious, one of a kind and out of place. It very much speaks to like this kind of fish out of water, thing that people are observing this person and they're like, of course she's acting bonkers. She doesn't belong here. She's slumming it with us and we should be grateful. Put simply to everyone's mind that met Anna, there was simply no one like her.

Speaker 1:
[14:45] Anna seemed to genuinely enjoy treating her pals. So naturally, Neve and Rachel didn't protest too much whenever she insisted on picking up the tab. And crucially, that money just seemed like a drop in the ocean to Anna. So surely there was no harm in letting her spoil them. But little did they know, Anna's ocean was barely a puddle. Because while Anna might have looked like she was paying for everything, if you looked a little bit closer, she actually wasn't. She very cleverly met her friends at restaurants connected to whichever hotel she was staying in. She would imperiously tell the staff to put the check on her room. Massive bills racked up on her suite. But for a long time, nobody ever thought to question this glamorous young heiress' ability to eventually cough up. And whenever she did get caught out, she'd try the usual excuses. She'd forgotten her card or her funds were tied up abroad. And if none of those things worked, then she would ask Neff or Rachel to pay for her. And while their wallets felt the strain, they always agreed. After all, Anna had done so much for them in the past.

Speaker 2:
[15:54] It is just audacity is the word, right?

Speaker 1:
[15:58] It's the word of the day here at RedHanded on Sesame Street, A for audacity.

Speaker 2:
[16:05] It is just, it takes a type of person to just be like, yeah, just charge it to the room, charge it to the room, knowing full well you haven't got a penny to pay it off. It is just staggering. She really, really is the embodiment of the idea of fake it till you make it in the most terrifying way possible. She is just manifesting all over the place.

Speaker 1:
[16:31] But this is it. I think, I'm writing something about the Enhanced Games at the moment, and the fucker behind that is just, Silver Spoon doesn't even cover it. It's like what happens when you are literally never, ever, ever, ever, ever at risk of something bad happening to you. When you can just be like, oh Chuck is 10 million, I'll have a go. These are the people that she's aspiring to be, but is also surrounded by all the time. When you have that much, like when you've got helicopter money, doesn't matter.

Speaker 2:
[17:00] Or the pretense of it.

Speaker 1:
[17:01] Well, quite, but I can see how being exposed to those kinds of people and having the brain that she has, being like, well, why should I? They're all idiots.

Speaker 2:
[17:12] It is a master class in just not giving a single fuck. This is also a classic, classic confidence trick, what she is doing here. One that goes back centuries, this idea of like making people believe that you have actually paid for loads or given people money and then demanding more back from them. This is classic, absolutely classic. For most ordinary people, just the mention of aristocratic lineage or old money wealth is enough to lull us into not asking too many questions until it's too late. The clue is in the name. It's all about the confidence. After all, con man is confidence man. We are dealing with a very, very confident lady here. Let me tell you that. As long as you have the balls, the bravado and the personality disorder to do it, these cons in the words of Anna herself are so basic. I can't do the accent, but you know what I mean. Maybe we can just cut to Julia Garner saying so basic.

Speaker 3:
[18:20] You're all so basic.

Speaker 2:
[18:22] We've come across so many cases where people will be like, here's a little sprinkling of money, I will lend you or I will give you because I'm so rich, I'm so wealthy, and then I'll ask for it back tenfold, three months down the line. It's like the Tinder swindler. He does buy her, the woman in it, that blonde Norwegian lady, he does buy her flights and he does take her out to fancy dinners. So she's like, of course. Then when he turns around and said, my cards have been blocked, can you please lend me the money temporarily? She's like, of course, because you're good for it. They're never fucking good for it. So yes, it's all about this sort of subtle sleight of hand that enabled Anna to perform the illusion of wealth without actually having to ever prove it. And she probably could have kept coasting along like this for a lot longer. But Anna's ultimate downfall, as we see so often with con artists, cult leaders and all the other people that we encounter on this show, their downfall is their ambition.

Speaker 1:
[19:20] Anna wasn't just in it for the vibes. She had a Marie Antoinette vision. Anna dreamed of launching a private arts foundation and members club because God knows we need more of those. Basically, an even more pretentious version of core Five Hartford Street or Annabelles, but specifically for art lovers. She had the perfect spot for it too. Anna wanted to rent the entire Church Missions House, an incredibly grand six-story Victorian building on Park Avenue, and fill it with exhibition spaces, pop-up shops, art studios, and upscale bars for Manhattan's glitterati to hang out in.

Speaker 2:
[19:59] I'm laughing because I've been watching Owning Manhattan on Netflix, and I think they're trying to now sell this building on the show. I was just watching it, and obviously, I'm still at my parents' house because my house is apparently, I'm just doing a grand designs on a fucking mid-terrace house in London. Yeah, I was there, and I was watching it. My mom came in, she was just sat there for a while watching it with me. I was like, oh my God, when a deal came in, my mom just like, and then after half an hour, she was like, is this real? I was like, yes, mom. Did you think I was just sat here watching a dramatization of a bunch of people pretending to be in a reality show, pretending to sell stuff? I was like, I'm glad that's where you think my viewing is.

Speaker 1:
[20:39] Hey man, the way we're going with second screen shows, we're not far off, we're really not.

Speaker 2:
[20:44] Also, you thought that my reaction to this dramatization was, oh wow.

Speaker 1:
[20:48] Hey man, patent pending. That's your million dollar idea.

Speaker 2:
[20:51] Thank you. I was like, 36 million. But yeah, sorry, I'll let you carry on. But yes, very beautiful building.

Speaker 1:
[21:00] As for what this artsy-fartsy Shangri-La would be called, Anna fretted to her acquaintances that it might sound a little bit too narcissistic. But she wanted to call her art house members club cocktail bar, Pretzel House, the Anna Delvey Foundation, or ADF. And why not? The SS narcissist had set sale a while ago, to be honest. No one's going to tell her no.

Speaker 2:
[21:28] No, of course not. She's buying a fucking, I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying. I can't remember how much it's worth. Sadly for Anna, a dream like this would not come cheap. The whole project would cost about $50 million to finance. Now, Anna had been going around by this point and telling everyone and their mom that she was about to get full access to her $60 million trust fund in just a few short months. But until then, well, she'd have to go cap in hand and secure a loan from the big boy banks. Borrowing money on that magnitude would be a daunting prospect for even the most seasoned financial pro, let alone a 26-year-old girl from the suburbs of Germany. But Anna, as always, had a plan. And what is it? Fake it till you make it.

Speaker 1:
[22:24] Don't say pardon, say what?

Speaker 2:
[22:25] Yes, exactly. Exactly. That's what she tells herself every day when she gets up and she looks in the mirror, she's like, don't say pardon, say what? And this point where she stops just lying to people and like defrauding hotels and lying to her friends, this point where she steps up to the banks is where this whole story escalates from social buffering to full-blown institutional financial fraud.

Speaker 1:
[22:51] Anna set out to secure multi-million dollar loans from major banks to finance ADF. Submitting forged documents she'd knocked up on Microsoft Word as proof of her enormous wealth back in Germany, Anna sent emails from an AOL account in the name Peter Wenneke, who she claimed was the head of her elusive family trust in a bid to convince these financiers that she was the real deal. Incredibly, it seemed to work. She managed to pass the vetting process of respected law firm Gibson Dunn who vouched for Anna's credibility as a serious player worthy of investment. I feel sick just saying that.

Speaker 2:
[23:32] Oh, Mae, it is mind-boggling. The idea that you would like get yourself in this deep…

Speaker 1:
[23:39] This is prison. This is prison.

Speaker 2:
[23:43] And I'm also like how it goes a certain level of far. And as we already said at the start, it does end up in a court. But like, I can't believe it even got this far. I can't believe that it even got to the point that they're like, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[23:56] I mean, I don't have an enormous amount of faith in our financial institutions and certainly don't now.

Speaker 2:
[24:02] It's truly mind boggling.

Speaker 1:
[24:06] So, Anna was put in touch with Fortress Investment Group. The law firm explained that Anna needed these loans because her substantial assets totalling over 60 million euro were quite annoyingly tied up in those pesky European banks with all of their rules. It genuinely looked like Anna was one step closer to making her dream a reality.

Speaker 2:
[24:30] But Fortress wasn't just going to hand over the 22 million dollars that Anna needed to set up ADF.

Speaker 1:
[24:37] Are they sure? Sounds like everyone else is like, fine, go ahead.

Speaker 2:
[24:39] It's weird that she's getting cleared up until the point that she's even being introduced to Fortress. Sure.

Speaker 1:
[24:45] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[24:45] They said that they needed to carry out the required due diligence, legal checks and investigations and that this would cost $100,000. So basically, they tell Anna, you need to cough up that money to us so that we can check this all looks legit. And if it all does look legit, we will give you the $22 million that you need for your project.

Speaker 1:
[25:08] I mean, fair enough, because if she doesn't have $100k, just kicking about.

Speaker 2:
[25:12] Exactly. And I think this does make sense to me because if you're borrowing $22 million, giving them $100,000 to get you that, that's like pennies, right? And why would they take on that risk? Why would they put in the work hours to investigate whether you are legit because you've just come to them and been like, yeah, I'm a fucking European heiress. Of course, they're going to push that risk onto you. Now, Anna doesn't have $100,000, but somehow she managed to convince City National Bank to provide her with a temporary overdraft of $100,000, which she actually used to start the vetting process with Fortress. And look, this to me is just so bizarre. Because that $100,000 is not a guarantee that Fortress is going to give her the money. It's giving them the money so they can investigate whether she is legit. She knows full fucking well that they're going to find out the truth. So why is she spending $100,000 she doesn't have for them to find out the truth that she doesn't have the $60,000,000 in a trust fund?

Speaker 1:
[26:21] I genuinely think she has the ability to just be like, I'll solve that problem when I get there, this one first. I wish I had a bit more of that. I'm terrible for like, well, what the hell am I going to do in 17 years when this exact thing I've invented happens? She's just like, okay, one thing at a time.

Speaker 2:
[26:38] Totally. She is very much, she's like a dog living in the moment. I think this is also a really, really interesting part of the story. It's the psychology of not having 100,000, getting 100,000 by ill-gotten means, and then spending that 100,000, she doesn't spend all of it, giving that $100,000 to even start a process that you know is ultimately going to end in failure because she knows she's not an heiress, right? She knows they will discover there is no $60 million inheritance waiting for her. Yet she managed to con City National into giving her 100,000. Why waste it on this pointless endeavor? The only thing I think is because she actually ends up giving Fortress $45,000. She lets them spend $45,000 of the 100,000 on due diligence before she pulls out of the deal, before she's like, no, no, no, stop. I don't want you to spend any more money on this. Stop. It's like even when she knew it wasn't going to work because she knew what they would find, and even though it actually cost her money she didn't have, she still goes through with it to the tune of $45,000 because I think to her, maintaining the facade of who she is or who she says she is, is more important than just keeping that $45,000. She pulls out and she uses the remaining $55,000 to continue to fund her extravagant lifestyle. Fuck me, did she need it because Anna's grifting tactics were starting to catch up with her on the ground. Because you see, there's only so long that the mystique of Anna Delvey could survive on the hazy promise of charge it to my room. Sooner or later, the bill would have to be paid. In early 2017, the pressure began to build for Anna with her stacking debts. Her inner circle found themselves paying for stuff more and more often, and it seemed like Anna had ongoing cash flow issues that never seemed to end. Neff's manager at Eleven Howard tasked her with the very awkward job of nudging Anna to settle her unpaid bills that now stood with that hotel alone at over $30,000. I feel sick.

Speaker 1:
[28:46] My heart fell out of my bum like two pages ago.

Speaker 2:
[28:48] Oh my God, it's so despicable. We were literally just having lunch talking about how we both spiral about money issues.

Speaker 1:
[28:55] This is not helping.

Speaker 2:
[28:56] It is just diabolical.

Speaker 1:
[28:58] Actually, no, I'm reframing it. It is helping, because at least I'm not doing that.

Speaker 2:
[29:01] No, exactly, exactly. Anna had somehow managed to get away with not putting a credit card on file when she had checked into the hotel, and basically how she'd managed to do this is act like she was a business associate of the hotel's owner, and so they were like, oh, OK, of course, don't worry about it, Miss Delvey. Why doesn't anyone check anything? But then I answered my own question, it's because she's a confident woman. So when Neff passed on the news that her manager had made her pass on to Anna, Anna promised that she would definitely, definitely sort it out. And the very next day, she showed up in the lobby of the hotel with an extravagant gift of champagne bottles for all of the staff, but not one penny of that $30,000 that she needed to pay towards the bill.

Speaker 1:
[29:47] But if Anna was trying to paper over the cracks with bubbles, which she very obviously is, it wouldn't work. The hotel management got tough, threatening to kick her out if she didn't pay.

Speaker 2:
[29:59] And just to be clear, like, I'm sure she got that champagne in some sort of other lie.

Speaker 1:
[30:03] Oh, she didn't buy it.

Speaker 2:
[30:04] She didn't buy it. So it's not like she has money to buy a bottle of champagne for everybody. Why doesn't she just use that money to settle the debts? It's, if I start settling the debts, when does it end? No, we never ever settle the debts and say what not part of the motto, right? It's like she'll have got the champagne in some other lie by being like, oh, I'm doing a charity champagne fucking auction.

Speaker 1:
[30:24] I really do want to buy a wine farm, but I simply must have 80 bottles of your finest champagne so I can think about it.

Speaker 2:
[30:29] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[30:30] I'd be great at this if I could get over my crippling fear of lying.

Speaker 2:
[30:35] Just imagine, I could barely tell a pointless lie to somebody. It's just too much. It's too much. My teeth hurt. I'm upset.

Speaker 1:
[30:47] Eventually, Anna settled her debts at 11 Howard by depositing $160,000 worth of bad checks and cashing out 70 grand before the banks noticed. It was a trick that she would go on to repeat over the coming months. But just a few weeks later, Anna was still hanging around the hotel like nothing ever happened. They still didn't have a credit card on file for her.

Speaker 2:
[31:13] It's bonkers.

Speaker 1:
[31:14] And enough was finally, finally, finally enough for the management at 11 Howard. While Anna was hobnobbing with the world's most famous and wealthy investors at a financial conference in Omaha in May, to which she traveled in a $35,000 private jet that she'd wrangled by forging a wire transfer confirmation from Deutsche Bank, the hotel changed the lock on her room and chucked her stuff in storage.

Speaker 2:
[31:37] This is what I mean about, had she just actually applied herself to something she probably could have achieved quite a lot? Like even to understand enough about financial institutions to commit this kind of fraud, you already have so much knowledge.

Speaker 1:
[31:50] Yeah. When Anna returned from Omaha, she was not happy. Kicking off, she threatened the staff that one day, they'd be paying her and announced her intention to take her business elsewhere. And they're like, good, that is the outcome we wanted.

Speaker 2:
[32:06] But also pay us all this money.

Speaker 1:
[32:10] But before moving out totally with the net closing in, Anna decided that she needed a holiday.

Speaker 2:
[32:17] Telling her mates that she needed to take a break from the US as part of a visa agreement, Anna hurriedly organized a luxury group trip to Morocco. And this wasn't your average jet two holiday. Oh no. Anna chose the five-star La Memonia Resort in Marrakesh, a gorgeous Riyadh-style hotel that cost $7,000 a night to stay in and came with his own private butler.

Speaker 1:
[32:44] Bloody hope so, for seven grand a night.

Speaker 2:
[32:46] There's a car every night as well. Here you go. Good. Check it out. So while Neff couldn't make it work due to work commitments, presumably to make up for all the money that's been lost for that hotel, the crew ended up being Anna, Rachel, Casey the trainer and a videographer named Jessie. So why is Jessie there? Who is this Jessie? Well, Anna invited them along because still entertaining delusions of grandeur, she was keen on getting some glam footage of her flouncing around bazaars to promote the Anna Delvey Foundation.

Speaker 1:
[33:20] Hey man, if it's not on the grid, it didn't happen. Everyone knows that.

Speaker 2:
[33:23] But what started as a dream trip quickly turned into the holiday from hell for Rachel Williams.

Speaker 1:
[33:31] It all started when Anna couldn't pay for the group's guided tour of the luxurious Chardin-Margeral, putting Rachel on the spot to cover the eye-watering donation of almost $2,000.

Speaker 2:
[33:43] Yeah. So I did not understand this because I went on the website for this Chardin-Margeral and I was like, how much is it to buy a fucking ticket to go to this place? Why is it so expensive? What it is, is if you just want to buy a ticket to go in there, it's like 80 US dollars.

Speaker 1:
[33:57] Right.

Speaker 2:
[33:57] Right. What Anna does, because she's Anna, is she wants to book out the entire place and nobody else is allowed to come in. So this is what I mean about how unnecessary this is. She could have just gone in. She could have probably just paid for the $80 to go in. But no, she wants Jessie to get footage of her in this jada looking all fancy for the Anna Delvey Foundation. So she is like, Rachel, pay the man for something so unnecessary. It just makes it even worse.

Speaker 1:
[34:31] Anna insisted that this is all down to a temporary hold and promised to pay Rachel back the second she managed to unfreeze one of her many European accounts, which must have been blocked for a pesky admin reason when she traveled out of the country. Also, this girl is on a sponsored work visa. They are A, so difficult to get, and B, you have to maintain them. It is so hard. I'm sure it's like absolute last thing she's thinking about, but it's really hard to stay on a work visa in a country where you're not working.

Speaker 2:
[35:05] I don't know what she's doing by this point because she's definitely not working as an intern or anything anymore. So maybe she's just there illegally.

Speaker 1:
[35:14] She has to be because even for, I always find this quite annoying when in any TV or film, they transferred me to the New York office. I'm like, you're not worth anything. You're an intern. Why would a company sponsor your visa, which is so expensive and boring, unless you're very important? So I always find it like a bit of a plot hole, but obviously she's pulled it off, so maybe I'm full of shit.

Speaker 2:
[35:39] Even the fact that she got it again speaks to her ability to do that. That's what I want. I want to go to New York. I'm done with Paris. Make it happen. She does, but she's not working at this point. I think she is very much there. But then I don't know how she leaves, goes to Morocco and comes back. Who knows? She's a very confident lady.

Speaker 1:
[35:55] Maybe on private jets they don't look.

Speaker 2:
[35:57] Maybe.

Speaker 1:
[35:58] Anyway, Rachel, very, very flustered. She just works at Vanity Fair. She's just a normal person. She handed the garden people her expenses credit card.

Speaker 2:
[36:11] Company credit card.

Speaker 1:
[36:12] Praying that her boss just wouldn't realize and she would have time to pay it back before anyone noticed what had happened.

Speaker 2:
[36:20] Yeah, that Anna would pay her back and she could pay it back.

Speaker 1:
[36:25] Then a few days into their trip, the hotel management began pushing Anna to provide a working card for payment, something she had once more failed to do. An anxious people pleaser who just had no idea what to do next, Rachel felt torn. The whopping bill stared up at her from the receipt.

Speaker 2:
[36:46] My God.

Speaker 1:
[36:48] But Anna was an heiress for crying out loud, surely. She meant it when she said she'd pay it back. So trusting in Anna and all of her lies and her weird European-ness, Rachel handed over her credit card. While she didn't know it, that decision would haunt her for years.

Speaker 2:
[37:08] That decision is going to haunt me for years.

Speaker 1:
[37:10] I was just going to say it's haunting me right now. Boo.

Speaker 2:
[37:13] With the holiday vibes distinctly flattened by the financial drama.

Speaker 1:
[37:18] I'd spend the rest of the week with my head in the toilet if I'd done that.

Speaker 2:
[37:21] I just feel sick. I feel sick. I can't even think about it. We have to keep moving. I'd be going looking for those horrible snakes that hang out in the fucking square in Marrakesh. No one can blame me if I'm dead. So yeah, holiday vibes have gone bad. And so Rachel opted to leave Marrakesh early, while Anna stayed on with the videographer. See, you pay for the whole holiday and then you're like, I'm also going to leave because I feel so sick. Now, Casey, the trainer, had already left after picking up a nasty stomach bug. But it wasn't the last either of them would hear from Anna on her Moroccan adventures. A few days later, Casey got a frantic call from a Casablanca hotel, where Anna was stranded and unable to pay for her suite. Not knowing what had happened with Rachel yet, Casey assumed that there was just a problem with cash flow and agreed to temporarily foot the bill. In an unbelievable display of nerve, Anna even asked Casey to buy her a plane ticket back to the US and make it first class.

Speaker 1:
[38:25] Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Speaker 2:
[38:30] Oh my God. Come on. She knows. Casey has done very well for herself. She's a very successful celebrity trainer, but still, and she knows damn well she's never going to pay Rachel back. They're like, psychopathy. The mentality would have to be like, whatever. Is she honestly delusional enough to think that's not going to ruin a person's life like Rachel's or does she not care? That's the mystery of Anna Delvey. I think she doesn't care.

Speaker 1:
[39:00] I don't think she cares, and I think if she ever did, maybe at one point she thought, because it's not uncommon for mega rich people to have multiple bankruptcies, and then eventually something comes good in the end and they settle everything else out.

Speaker 2:
[39:17] That's what she said she was going to do.

Speaker 1:
[39:20] Maybe there was a period of time where she thought that's what she was doing, and then she gets into deep, but because she's not a normal person, instead of realizing that she couldn't go on, she just keeps going, but not out of desperation of making it happen. She was just like, literally, why would I do a normal job when I can do this?

Speaker 2:
[39:39] I'm better than that. I'm better than that. And it's not my fault that everybody else doesn't see that. I know I'm better than that, so I'm going to carry on with this.

Speaker 1:
[39:47] I'm investing in myself.

Speaker 2:
[39:49] But that's the thing with her. I was going to make this comparison later, but a very obvious comparison is to someone like Elizabeth Holmes. It was like, fake it till you make it. I know I will come good in the end. And it doesn't matter who I hurt, or who dies, or what happens on my journey there. I will get there because I know I will. I know I'm good enough. I just haven't cracked it yet. And fuck everything else. And once I get there, nobody will worry about how I got there. But the difference between Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey is, the stuff that Anna Delvey is doing is unnecessary towards her ultimate goal, as she sees it. Going to Morocco on a little holiday doesn't move the needle in terms of getting you this foundation that you think is going to make all this money, and then you'll be able to like square it with everybody else. I'm not making excuses for Elizabeth Holmes, but at least she was just single-mindedly focused on making Theranos work. It was never going to work, obviously not because everybody told her it wasn't going to work. But here, what Anna's doing is just ruining people's lives for the gratification she gets from an instant thing like a holiday. Doesn't serve the end goal of her success, other than maybe in her mind, the vision and the image of Anna as being wealthy and rich. But come on, that's a bit of a stretch.

Speaker 1:
[41:05] Well, I suppose it's the difference between idolizing Steve Jobs and idolizing Mary Antoinette.

Speaker 2:
[41:10] That's so true. It's so true. Elizabeth Holmes is a thinking woman's con woman, whereas Anna Delvey is fucking Anna Delvey. This is why it's very important who you idolize. So anyway, she's like, buy me a first class ticket. I'm coming back to the US, which again, I'm just like, why does nobody question this? Even if you were like, oh, she couldn't pay for that hotel she's stuck in, let me wire her the money. Who goes on holiday without a return ticket? Why isn't Casey like, but where's your ticket? Why do you need another ticket to come home? Nobody asks any questions. Back in New York, Anna checked into another swanky hotel, this time the Beekman. But after just a fortnight and surprise, surprise, yet another unpaid bill of $12,000, she was evicted. At first, Anna hopped from hotel to hotel, but those stays only lasted a few days before she was inevitably booted out after failing to cover the cost. I don't know why all these five-star hotels in New York don't just have a picture of her behind the desk. Do not serve this.

Speaker 1:
[42:15] Well, like casinos do. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[42:18] She found herself at this point essentially homeless, roaming around the streets of Manhattan with just a suitcase and her trademark oversized shades. Anna's perfectly crafted house of cards was toppling around her, and her inner circle were finally starting to wake up to the reality of their bonkers brilliant brazen friend.

Speaker 1:
[42:46] What happened in Morocco changed everything. Anna treated anything below 100K like pocket change, but for her friend Rachel, it plunged her into impossible debt that she just couldn't pay off. For weeks, she chased Anna relentlessly for the money that she'd promised her. Well, Anna just shrugged off with excuse after excuse. She sent bogus receipts claiming to show that she'd sent money via wire transfers, which are always mysteriously delayed. Rachel started suffering daily panic attacks as the terrible truth started to dawn on her. I'm not fucking surprised. For whatever reason, Anna was either unwilling or worse, unable to make good on her IOU. So Rachel had been left to pick up a tab she couldn't afford.

Speaker 2:
[43:33] Eventually, Anna's inner circle cornered her into an intervention style meeting at a restaurant, where they demanded to know what on earth was going on. At this point, they still believed that she was an heiress, but they were starting to suspect that maybe she'd been like cut off by her parents or something, and that she was just too in denial to admit it. Dodging questions about repaying them, Anna insisted everything she was doing was to make her art foundation a reality. And she clung so hard to this delusion that even when news broke that her beloved church mission's house had recently been leased to another client, it had little effect on her. She turned off the temporary waterworks and went blank, claiming it was fake news. Anna seemed to have blinkered herself to the unavoidable reality that ADF was never going to happen. Pathetically clinging to her dream, like a child with like a pop balloon or something. She just can't let it go. They're literally confronting her with the fact that you keep going on about ADF, like the building's been sold. And she's like, no, no, it's lies, it's lies, it's lies in the newspaper. It's quite a level of delusion.

Speaker 1:
[44:47] Meanwhile, Anna's financial situation turned even stickier, if you can believe it. As the loan bids for her, Pi in the Sky Foundation rumbled on, emails to Peter Winnick started bouncing back, which prompted concerns from banks. Anna claimed that he died and instructed them to email his replacement, a new fake account, under the name Bettina Wagner, in an attempt to stall for time.

Speaker 2:
[45:13] Bettina's got to get up to date with all of this.

Speaker 1:
[45:15] As if someone who manages an estate has no plan for if they drop dead.

Speaker 2:
[45:20] Poor Peter.

Speaker 1:
[45:20] Rather than an email forward.

Speaker 2:
[45:22] Poor Peter. He died in some horrible rich person way and nobody saw it coming, and now poor Bettina is having to pick up all the slack without so much as a handover document. So you have to, you know, just be patient, give us some time. What's the richest person way to die? Unexpectedly.

Speaker 1:
[45:41] Unexpectedly.

Speaker 2:
[45:43] Rich person, final destination. All I can see is golf carts.

Speaker 1:
[45:49] I don't know, getting some sort of horrible parasite from a really rare caviar or eating some of that honey that they found in the pyramids that you can still eat. Something like that.

Speaker 2:
[45:59] Yeah, like how, because honey never goes off, which I just feel like, is that true?

Speaker 1:
[46:02] Yeah, bullshit. There's gone off honey in my kitchen right now.

Speaker 2:
[46:05] Is it just crystallized? If you put it in hot water, it might be all right.

Speaker 1:
[46:07] I've got stuff to do.

Speaker 2:
[46:10] Or maybe it's putting some of that forbidden honey on like the forbidden meat. Like they finally got together and like ate a person and then all died. Maybe that's a bit too like Epstein-y. I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[46:21] Yeah, a bit too like what they're actually doing.

Speaker 2:
[46:24] Poisoned batch of adrenaline. That's what Peter Winnocki died of.

Speaker 1:
[46:31] When the investment managers began digging deeper into their mysterious client and the even more mysterious Bettina Wagner, suspicions increased. When one of the directors from Fortress questioned why Anna's passport, thank God someone's fucking looking at it, Border Patrol aren't.

Speaker 2:
[46:49] The first fucking thing you look at, the passport. They've spent $45,000 by this point. Nobody's looked at our passports. They just had an AOL email account for someone named Peter Winnocki, who sadly succumbed to honey poisoning or some shit. Like, it is staggering. What did they spend that $45,000 on?

Speaker 1:
[47:09] When one Bright Spark at Fortress did actually look at her passport, he had to ask the question why it said she was born in Russia as a German heiress. He also threatened to send agents to Germany to investigate who she was. Anna freaked out and hit the brakes. Desperate to press undo on the whole thing, Anna withdrew her loan applications. But the walls of Wall Street were already closing in.

Speaker 2:
[47:40] By summer 2017, the NYPD had started investigating Anna after reports began circling that she wasn't actually maybe quite so legit and that she owed money to various establishments. In July, she was finally arrested while leaving the swanky La Parca Meridian restaurant after attempting a dine and dash, which is just so tacky.

Speaker 1:
[48:06] That is tacky, that's more tacky than a tattoo for sure.

Speaker 2:
[48:09] Very, very tacky and it just gets worse. Even when she had been arrested for this, because she had not been arrested for the fraud, she had been arrested for running out of this very fancy restaurant. But even after she's arrested in handcuffs, Anna just remains typically haughty and indignant. She just rolls her eyes and asks why the officers are making such a big deal of this. She claimed if they just gave her five minutes, that she could phone a friend and get them to pay the bill. It was a strategy that had served Anna well in the past, but this time no friends were coming. A humiliated Anna was arrested and charged with theft of services from multiple upscale establishments around the city, including the Beekman and W Hotels. The New York Post ran a frothy headline that caught the attention of Manhattan's elites. Wannabe Socialite busted for skipping out on pricey hotel bills. Finally, the bubble had burst. Everyone in New York City now knew that Anna Delvey was a big fat fraud.

Speaker 1:
[49:13] But if there's one thing we know about Anna, it's that she does not take no for an answer. In August, whilst awaiting a court hearing for misdemeanor charges, she filed even more bad checks to pocket around $8,000. Like many classy Manhattanites during the heat of summer, Anna hired a posh car and got the hell out of town. But this sweating socialite was not heading for the Hamptons. For months, Anna Delvey went dark. The authorities had no idea where she'd gone. She missed her court date and posted a series of cryptic Instagram photos of her lounging by a pool somewhere. There was one question on everyone's lips. Where the hell was Anna Delvey?

Speaker 2:
[49:59] And these summer snaps of Anna lounging about on the beach in Bayapul were, of course, a slap in the face for her friend Rachel, who was still, of course, struggling to repay those enormous debts that she'd been saddled with after their little Marrakesh disaster. And unluckily for Anna, Rachel had a sleuthing streak. She recognized details from the photos that placed Anna at the bougie Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, confirming police suspicions that she'd fled out west.

Speaker 1:
[50:34] The Chateau Marmont is incredibly recognizable. It is such a famous place. Try a bit harder.

Speaker 2:
[50:39] She can't help herself though. I think she knows that, and part of her is like, I am here. I am on the run, but I am at Chateau Marmont.

Speaker 1:
[50:48] I could just go and get an Airbnb in Palm Springs, but I won't.

Speaker 2:
[50:53] But I have to tell people I'm here. So, yeah. So she gives it away, and Rachel has figured it out. Seeking justice and definitely a little bit of vengeance, Rachel got to work. Reaching out to Anna, like an old friend, she learned that Anna had checked herself into the famous Passages Rehab Center in Malibu, which was clearly a strategy to hide out from the law, since Rachel wasn't aware that Anna actually had any issues with drugs or alcohol. So Rachel innocently suggested that they meet up for lunch while she was in LA for work. But, psych, it was all a sting. Thanks to Rachel's cooperation in smoking Anna out, NYPD officers arrested Anna on the street on the 3rd of October, and hauled her back to New York to face the music.

Speaker 1:
[51:42] After Anna's capture made headlines, the story went absolutely viral. A glamorous socialite living out of luxury hotels, sipping champagne on jets and pulling the wall over the eyes of New York's wealthiest financiers, and all of it had been total bullshit.

Speaker 2:
[51:56] It is a very, very compelling story. Because I think one of the reasons it is so compelling, we'll talk about the victims later on in the episode, is that I think for a lot of people looking at it from the surface, even if you don't like Anna, they also didn't care that much that she had been ripping people off. Because they are thinking purely about the fact that she's ripping off people that can afford it.

Speaker 1:
[52:18] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[52:18] When as we have seen, that's not the case, but I think that was the image. She's just gone in and nicked a bunch of stuff off rich people, who cares?

Speaker 1:
[52:26] Yeah. It's not like they're paying tax. It was perfect, headline fodder, and it also birthed an unlikely anti-establishment icon. There was something impressive about how ballsy this woman was. Now outed as Anna Sorokin, an ordinary girl from the German suburbs, she tricked an entire city and taken what she wanted without apologizing. And her October arrest was ideal timing for a slew of fake heiress Halloween costumes. The general consensus was that Anna Delvey might be a con artist, but way to get after it.

Speaker 2:
[53:01] It really is the attitude of like, good for her, good for her.

Speaker 1:
[53:04] Which Americans are so much better at than we are.

Speaker 2:
[53:06] Yeah. But needless to say, the New York justice system didn't quite share this attitude. In legal terms, Anna Delvey, or should we say Sorokin, was a fraud and a thief. In 2017, she was officially charged with four counts of grand larceny, two counts of attempted grand larceny, and theft of services totaling around $275,000, as well as scamming her friend Rachel Williams in Morocco. In December 2018, she was actually offered a plea deal that would have meant she only had to serve a year in prison in New York before being deported to Germany. That is very, very important. They're literally like, we can't be fucking bothered with you. Take this plea deal, you spend a year in prison here, and then you have to fuck off back to Germany forever. But Anna's like, no, no, I refuse, and she demanded a trial. With what evidence? None, but loads and loads of audacity. It is mind boggling, and I think the brazenness of this decision tells you everything you need to know, even then she doesn't know when to quit. So yeah, she either delusionally believes that she can beat the charges in court even though she is absolutely 100 percent guilty, or maybe the other thing is that she wants the fame and attention of a trial, or both. But the key thing to understand about Anna Delvey is that she was willing to risk the outcome of this trial, which would have been way more than one year in prison, just to achieve one or either of those goals. So the legal process was very long and very drawn out, with Anna serving over a year behind bars at the notorious Rikers Island jail, just while awaiting trial. If she had just taken the plea deal, by the time the trial starts, she could have been going back to Germany. So as for how Anna adapted to her jailbird era, again, this tells you everything you need to know about Anna. Because again, she is a chameleon, and just like she had slotted into New York City's elite fashion crowd, Anna once again seemed to blend seamlessly into this very different type of private members club.

Speaker 1:
[55:24] I bet she fucking loved it.

Speaker 2:
[55:25] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[55:25] It's like it's the perfect environment for emotionally abusive manipulative people is when no one can leave. Yeah. I'm sure she fucking loved it.

Speaker 2:
[55:34] Absolutely. Because Rikers Island, just that name is a bit like, oh yeah. Like it has a very infamous reputation for having particularly harsh conditions like overcrowding and violence. But Anna just shrugs it off saying she saw it as a sociological experiment. And despite racking up several infractions while she was there for clashing with other inmates and breaking petty rules, even spending one Christmas in solitary confinement, Anna said, wasn't as bad as people make out. Again, is it really that or is she just like putting on that like hard face? Maybe both. And even behind bars, Anna clung to fashion as a way of expressing herself. She apparently customized her drab jail jumpsuit with any basic sewing tools that she could find and even helped the wardens alter their own fits. Anna might have missed New York Fashion Week that year, but for her, orange really was the new black.

Speaker 1:
[56:37] Anna's trial kicked off on the 20th of March 2019, presided over by Judge Diane Kiesel. And as ever, Anna couldn't resist making a scene. She hired who is allowing themselves to be hired by the woman who famously has no money. Anyway, Anastasia Walker, that's who. Anna hired the stylist Anastasia Walker to curate her courtroom looks. A Michael Kors shift dress one day, a Seller on top and a Victoria Beckham trouser the next.

Speaker 2:
[57:08] I'm sure that Anastasia Walker did this pro bono because she fucking knows everyone was watching this shit. And she's like, Anna, when you're out there, if they like who you're wearing, you're wearing Michael Kors, which like, ugh. But start by me, start by Anastasia Walker.

Speaker 1:
[57:24] Each ensemble was faithfully posted for Anna's rapidly growing Instagram follow account with details of how to copy her style.

Speaker 2:
[57:32] Oh my God, I seen on Anna.

Speaker 1:
[57:36] On one famous occasion, Anna actually threw a strop and refused to go into court at all. Because she didn't like the court-ordered prison garb that they had asked her to wear.

Speaker 2:
[57:47] Yes, in a documentary about this case, she wants to wear stilettos. And they're like, no, you can't wear stilettos. And she's like, well, why? I'm not going out there then. You're trying to strip me down to make me look like a prisoner, which is obviously prejudicial. That's not why. They're like, it's a very stabby piece of footwear. And that's why you can't wear it.

Speaker 1:
[58:12] Anna treated her trial like a spoiled muddle on a runway. And that may have amused her adoring public, but it did not win brownie points with the judge. Judge Diane Keesel slammed Anna for her bad attitude, noting how she seemed more concerned about who would play her in a future film rather than the harm she was causing to her victims. Yeah, duh. Throughout the trial, Hannah seemed bored and lacked even a single crumb of remorse. She even admitted in a mid-trial interview, I'd be lying to you and to everyone else and to myself if I said I was sorry for anything.

Speaker 2:
[58:51] There's another interview I watched with her that's like after the trial, it's like years later and she's being interviewed for, I think it's Australia 60 Minutes and they're like, you know, where are you now? And she's like, I've learned so much. I've learned so much. And I'm like, that's not a sorry. What you mean is when I do it again, I won't make the same, that's what I heard. I won't make the same mistakes I made last time because I've learned so much. But anyway, let's stick with the trial. Cause this whole like, I'm not sorry about anything. Well, that changed on the 25th of April, 2019, when after two days of deliberation, the jury returned with a verdict. Anna Delvey was unsurprisingly found guilty on eight charges of grand larceny in the second degree, attempted grand larceny and theft of services. She was crucially, however, not found guilty for allegedly stealing $62,000 from her former friend Rachel Williams in Marrakesh.

Speaker 1:
[59:45] That's the only one I care about.

Speaker 2:
[59:46] I know. I feel like the police and the prosecution only really tacked it on because Rachel helped them catch her.

Speaker 1:
[59:53] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[59:54] I don't think they really cared about it. Not that they're heartless, but we've seen this when we did Filthy Ritual, go listen to our series Filthy Ritual, that unless the money reaches a really, really staggering amount, it's just not something that they take seriously when it comes to fraud.

Speaker 1:
[60:08] Also, it's similar to Filthy Ritual in that those people did give Juliette D'Souza that money, and for all they knew, she did what she said she was going to do with it, and in this case, Rachel didn't have to give her the money. She did because of all of the scams, and because she believed she would get it back, but it's not technically fraudulent in the same way.

Speaker 2:
[60:28] And I think it was the only thing you could argue was that she said Anna was going to give it back to you, but I think it would have been a stronger case had Rachel not been on that holiday. Like, if Anna had just been on that holiday and then phoned her and been like, can you pay this? I'll pay you back in a couple of weeks. But because Rachel is also there, I think the jury would have had a hard time, as much as they would have probably empathized with her, of like, but you were also there and nobody made you go.

Speaker 1:
[60:49] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[60:51] But I do feel very sorry for Rachel. Now, after hearing these verdicts, but before sentencing, Anna did change her tune slightly. She made a very half-assed apology for her actions, stating she was sorry people had suffered, but she thought she wasn't doing anything wrong at the time. Very convincing. Now, Anna's family also submitted a letter to the judge claiming that their daughter had made some mistakes but didn't deserve to be behind bars. Instead, her father Vadim urged the judge to just deport Anna back to Germany, where they could find her an honest job in the family business. But Judge Diane Kiesel was unimpressed. With Anna's form for faking communications from made up trust fund managers, how was she meant to believe this letter from her family was the real deal? Ultimately, Judge Kiesel came down hard on Anna, sentencing her to between four and 12 years in federal prison. She was also fined $24,000 and urged to pay hefty restitution fees to the various financial institutions that she had conned out of money. And the judge hoped that this would be a lesson for Anna's fans outside the courtroom. That crime, even when it's committed against fat cats, doesn't pay. I think she gets off very lightly.

Speaker 1:
[62:08] And actually, in the end, way lighter than anybody expected. Anna was released on parole in February 2021 for good behavior after serving just 19 months behind bars. After her release, she immediately checked into another ritzy Manhattan hotel and hired a camera crew to follow her around.

Speaker 2:
[62:29] This is when it goes like Firefest style. She's like, I will tell my story.

Speaker 1:
[62:35] Anna wasn't sure what she was going to do with the footage, but she was already gearing up for her second act. However, Anna's newfound freedom was short-lived. Just six weeks later, she was re-arrested for overstaying her visa and taken into ICE custody to await deportation to Germany. Anna launched a legal appeal that if you believe it, is still going on today. Anna would take cell block couture over the German countryside any day of the week. Held in an ICE detention center in New Jersey, Anna moaned to the press that Germany was worse than jail. Look angler in the eye and say that, you will die instantly, just evaporate.

Speaker 2:
[63:25] But even in an orange jumpsuit, Anna wasn't going to let her 15 minutes of fame end. Here is where things get murky, legally speaking. New York has what's known as the son of Sam Law. Introduced after 1970 serial killer David Berkowitz raised fears that he might profit by selling his story to publishers. The idea was simple. Criminals should not be allowed to cash in on their notoriety while their victims are left with nothing. After money hungry publishers fought back against this rule, a revised law was made in 2001 that meant convicted felons could receive payment, but any sums over $10,000 must be declared and redirected to pay off their legal costs and restitution fees.

Speaker 1:
[64:13] To get around that, follow the OJ. Simpson method of just making sham companies and having your children run them.

Speaker 2:
[64:19] Yeah, and not being convicted of the murder you definitely did. Now, the state of New York hadn't actually had to use the new law ever until Anna came along. Less than a fortnight after Jessica Pressler's viral article in The Cut was published, streaming giants Netflix bought the rights to Anna's life story for a whopping $320,000. They do not miss a beat.

Speaker 1:
[64:47] So, Anna was right in the end.

Speaker 2:
[64:51] Who am I to question Anna? Because yeah, she nailed it. And this prompted the New York Attorney General to sue Anna under the son of Sam Law, seeking to block payments including a $70,000 lump sum and a $15,000 per episode consulting fee. And also, just to sweeten the deal, a $7,500 per episode payment in the form of royalties.

Speaker 1:
[65:21] Anna, who is your agent? Can I have their number?

Speaker 2:
[65:25] The court agreed that most of the money should go towards repaying the banks that Anna had targeted. But it wasn't all shabby for our fraudster fashionista because she was still, after all the restitution that she had to pay, left with a tidy $22,000 after all her costs were paid. The resulting TV adaptation Inventing Anna premiered in February 2022 and was Netflix's most watched show that week, notably featuring Julia Garner, who absolutely nails Anna's very bizarre hybrid accent. Julia Garner is a fantastic actress and she is particularly standout in this. Have you seen Inventing Anna?

Speaker 1:
[66:09] I've seen.

Speaker 2:
[66:10] Enough.

Speaker 1:
[66:11] I do not have time for this. I do not have time for you.

Speaker 2:
[66:13] It's so good. I actually want to go home and watch it again. It's so good. Julia Garner smashed it. Let's play a clip of the two accents side by side actually. Hi, I'm Anna Delvey and it's some of my favorites.

Speaker 3:
[66:29] So first, I had to do like a European, like a German accent, right? You know, but it's very subtle. It's like, you know, have a vocal fry at the end of it, whatever, right? And then, and then, you know, I had to add like some little Russian for certain words. It was very bad Russian accents. But then, I start to do like a, this is more of an Anna Delvey accent, and then it gets Americanized, because you know how Americans kind of add a question at the end of everything? Like, you know what I mean? Like Europeans don't do that, right?

Speaker 2:
[67:01] It's so good! I love it, I'm obsessed.

Speaker 1:
[67:09] To no one's surprise, Anna's get-rich-quick schemes didn't end with Netflix, if anything, they just encouraged her. In 2022, she signed a deal with Bun & Murray Productions to star in a future reality series about her life after prison, like Gypsy Rose, which hasn't come to fruition yet, but just you fucking wait. But most bizarre of all was Anna's so-called artist era. In March 2022, while still in ICE detention, she collaborated with artists to put on a pop-up show named Free Anna Delvey in Manhattan. Anyone who went to that deserves to get scammed. The exhibition was based around Anna's prison drawings, which looked like they were done by a precocious 10-year-old, and each piece was listed at $10,000. Another show allegedly launched in May that year featuring works from artists inspired by Anna's story made a big splash in the New York hipster art scene. The organizers lauded Anna as a disrupter and visionary, who represented the post-isolation era of the prankster and the absurdist. These people deserve it.

Speaker 2:
[68:17] They deserve it. Oh my God. It's a racket. Look, this is her drawing.

Speaker 1:
[68:22] I don't want to look at it.

Speaker 2:
[68:23] Look at it. Everyone look at it.

Speaker 1:
[68:26] That's the next installation. It's just you forcing me to look at it.

Speaker 2:
[68:29] Look at it.

Speaker 1:
[68:30] I'm just there with a bag on my head like Sheila Booth.

Speaker 2:
[68:35] Anyway, these fucking hipsters, man, they deserve it. I'm glad you all got conned.

Speaker 1:
[68:40] They're also doing exactly the same thing because they're following the same law of celebrity shit cells to the shit munchers like you. That's what they're doing.

Speaker 2:
[68:49] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[68:51] In June 2022, Anna launched a collection of NFT tokens.

Speaker 2:
[68:56] Remember those?

Speaker 1:
[68:57] Oh, I deleted them from my brain on purpose.

Speaker 2:
[69:03] What was the most anyone ever paid for an NFT? Most expensive NFT. That was the breath leaving my body. Sweet baby Jesus. Hannah, please guess. The most expensive NFT ever sold. I'll tell you what it's called. It's called The Merge by Pac. It was an artist, apparently. Do you want me to show you a picture of it?

Speaker 1:
[69:36] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[69:40] For our audio only listeners, we are on YouTube. You can go watch this on YouTube as well. For our audio only listeners, it's a black background with a white orb on it. Just a plain white orb.

Speaker 1:
[69:51] It's shit like this that breeds Anna Delvey's. When we're in a world where people are doing this shit with a straight face.

Speaker 2:
[69:57] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[69:57] I can totally see.

Speaker 2:
[69:59] That is why Anna Delvey is a creature of our making. She is a reflection of everything that is wrong with our society, and this obsession with consumerism and image, and an obsession with what's cool and blah, blah, blah. This is embarrassing. Please, please guess how much it's worth so we can get on with our lives forever.

Speaker 1:
[70:18] Seventy-five billion.

Speaker 2:
[70:20] Okay, less. Ninety-one point eight million dollars. Oh, good. That's more than Anna Delvey even pretended to have. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1:
[70:32] Anyway, her NFT was called Reinventing Anna, and it gave buyers exclusive access to her with perks like phone calls to her behind bars. Anna told the press that it was a way for her to tell her narrative. And as Anna admits herself, it is truly ironic how her criminal status has made her a bigger name in the art world than she ever was when she was trying to build a foundation.

Speaker 2:
[70:58] Of course it has, because now you've got a bunch of fucking stupid elite people and stupid hipsters, and people with too much money sat around quantificating about who Anna Delvey is.

Speaker 1:
[71:09] And if you're in jail, you got nothing but time to come up with NFTs.

Speaker 2:
[71:14] In October 2022, Anna was finally released from ICE detention, although she wouldn't be sashaying through her old stomping grounds anytime soon. She was placed under 24-hour house arrest with electronic monitoring to be served in the 470 square foot apartment that she was renting in the East Village. At first, she was also banned from social media, although this was eventually lifted. Over time, Anna's house arrest restrictions also eased to allow her to travel up to 75 miles. And believe us, her ankle tag did nothing to slow down the juggernaut that is Anna Delvey.

Speaker 1:
[71:51] 75 miles?

Speaker 2:
[71:53] That's a long way.

Speaker 1:
[71:54] That's like to Birmingham.

Speaker 2:
[71:55] Yeah, it's like half this country. Where is she? Why? Guess the US is bigger, but still. So after appearing on every celeb-adjacent podcast that she could get her mitts on, in 2023, Anna launched her very own venture. The Anna Delvey Show. In September that year, she even staged a New York Fashion Week show from her apartment for the designer Xiao Yang. Which like, that's quite smart.

Speaker 1:
[72:25] At this point, I'm like, you know what? Do whatever the fuck you want. Everyone knows who you are. Everyone knows what you've done. Everyone knows what you're capable of doing. So anybody who is collaborating with her at this stage is doing it with their eyes wide fucking open. So anything that befalls them, they deserve.

Speaker 2:
[72:40] I completely agree. In 2024, Anna co-produced three more fashion shows and even modelled in some of them, cheekily showing off her ankle tag on the runway.

Speaker 1:
[72:52] Lindsay did it way before you. You're not a disrupter.

Speaker 2:
[72:56] These ventures are part of her ongoing partnership with publicist Kelly Catrone, who's described Anna as a genius performance artist. Kelly, anything that happens to you, any money she steals from you, you at it fucking coming. You, you're asking for it. Now Elle magazine has noted that in today's fashion world, staging viral moments is just as important as designing the codes. And that's where Anna shines.

Speaker 1:
[73:25] And also the truth.

Speaker 2:
[73:26] And I'm like, in today's fashion world, come on. I just watched the America's Next Top Model documentary.

Speaker 1:
[73:32] And in September, 2024, Anna Delvey courted controversy in an unexpected way.

Speaker 2:
[73:42] Say it.

Speaker 1:
[73:45] When it was announced that she had been cast in the new season of Dancing with the Stars.

Speaker 2:
[73:50] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[73:54] How did Anna manage to wangle a TV show appearance while fighting deportation with the notoriously brutal ICE? Again, who is your agent?

Speaker 2:
[74:05] It's because people are giving her attention. She's getting attention left, right and center. People are obsessed with her. People can't get enough. And so, of course, I'm trying to think of the equivalent of if it bleeds, it leads. Like, what is the equivalent here? If it's Anna, it's gonna make you some money. I don't know. Come on, it's Anna. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[74:33] So, whilst making a complete joke out of the system and inspiring outrage, the nation over, completely unbothered, Anna Delvey danced a quick step inspired by the Devil Wears Prada, making a feature out of her ankle tag that she had encrusted with rhinestones.

Speaker 2:
[74:48] Beautiful.

Speaker 1:
[74:49] Yet again, Paris did it well. But in an awkward twist, Anna had to hang up her dancing shoes early because she was voted out in the very first week and that is humiliating.

Speaker 2:
[75:00] I love that. Good work, voters.

Speaker 1:
[75:03] In classic Anna fashion, she dryly commented that she would take nothing from her Dancing with the Stars experience and that her favorite part of the whole thing is getting eliminated.

Speaker 2:
[75:13] She is the ultimate troll. She's like, whatever. My favorite bit was when you voted me out. Fuck you. Yeah, great.

Speaker 1:
[75:18] I only had to do one week. Dancing is really hard.

Speaker 2:
[75:20] I'm actually so busy anyway. I did actually say before I came on here that I could only do one week. Now, despite everything, Anna hasn't completely burned all of her bridges. Neff Davies, if you remember, the friend who worked at Eleven Howard, says that Anna is her friend and always will be. Why, I will tell you. She explains that lack of saltiness, at least in part, to the fact that she was able to leverage her friendship with Anna for clout.

Speaker 1:
[75:51] Fair enough, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[75:52] After bagging a cushy consulting gig on the show Inventing Anna, Neff joked about Anna saying, thank you for committing your crimes because it got me on a Netflix set. Yeah. Then you've got celebrity trainer, Casey Duke, who also turned the other cheek, shrugging that Anna did her time and now she should be allowed to do whatever she wants with her life. Did she?

Speaker 1:
[76:15] She did 19 months.

Speaker 2:
[76:17] I think, look, here with Casey, she is a very successful and wealthy person in her own right. I think the money that Anna cost her, paying off that hotel in Casablanca and buying her a first-class ticket, it didn't really have a life-altering impact on Casey. So I think she's just like, I don't want to get dragged through the mud. I'm sure her association with Anna probably got her even more clients of people being like, what was she really like? Blah, blah, blah. I don't think she cared. Neff also did benefit in a way. Now, the same can't be said, however, for Rachel Williams. While she eventually did somehow get her money back from American Express, which I'm like, how the fuck did you do that? Apparently, it was a really long and exhausting battle, but I'm like, I bet. Why? I'm glad she did, but why? She didn't pay for something that turned out to not be the thing she paid for.

Speaker 1:
[77:11] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[77:12] She paid for a hotel that she stayed in. She just wasn't expecting to pay for it. So I don't know how she managed that, but she did. But Rachel, other than getting the money back, has said that the ordeal with her ex Bestie has left her traumatized with emotional scars. Rachel even wrote a book called My Friend Anna, which was released shortly after Anna's trial in July 2019, where Rachel reveals how Anna's deception almost ruined her life.

Speaker 1:
[77:37] Still, despite Rachel's best efforts, Anna has paradoxically emerged from her story as an unexpected Gen Z role model, with several high-profile figures defending her actions. Oh, for God, give me strength.

Speaker 2:
[77:51] I know.

Speaker 1:
[77:52] Actress Julia Fox.

Speaker 2:
[77:54] Who is Julia Fox?

Speaker 1:
[77:55] She went out with Kanye for a bit. She was in Uncut Gems.

Speaker 2:
[78:00] Oh, yeah. She's got a very distinctive face, I remember.

Speaker 1:
[78:03] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[78:03] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[78:05] Julia Fox argues that Anna only did what rich finance bros have been doing for years, borrowing money that they don't really have to fund their project. And while that's true, they do have money somewhere. They have credit cards that go through. How they pay off those credit cards is someone else's problem. It's not the same thing.

Speaker 2:
[78:23] No. And look, yes, of course, the whole thing that happened with the subprime mortgage crisis, all of that was banks trading with money that they didn't have in order to do things and that ultimately led to a big crash. But I think to compare the two and to be like, well, who cares what Anna did and who cares how many people's lives she ruined? I'm just like, it's so flippant. Yeah. You can say that she's doing the exact same as what the banks have done and all of it should be condemned, not that, well, if they're doing it, then why can't she do it? Well, then why can't everybody do it? Why can't we all be little fucking psychopaths that steal money off each other? It feels like the moral bar is set so low and it feels like a race to the bottom when we start saying things like that.

Speaker 1:
[79:01] Well, yeah. Anna's exploits blew a hole in the hollow facade of the wealthy elite, exposing how easy it is to fuck over a system that's built on bluffs and loans rather than actual cash if you're hard enough. Like if you've got the steel to just hold on just long enough, which I absolutely do not.

Speaker 2:
[79:21] No, just long enough and then some.

Speaker 1:
[79:26] As Anna puts it, capital isn't as important as intelligence. So if the top banks were stupid enough to lend her money, is that really her fault? You could argue there's an inspirational element to her story, and I agree begrudgingly, that the only thing I admire is the absolute spherical size of her balls. She is living proof that you can fake it till you make it, if you manifest hard enough and don't go to Morocco.

Speaker 2:
[79:55] Yeah. Again, I can't help it, and I know this isn't in her DNA, but I can't help but come back to the idea that she is brilliant. It's like how people who are evil can still be brilliant. I'm not saying Hannah is evil, but you know what I mean? You can be a bad person and still be brilliant. She is, but she applies herself in the most nefarious ways, and in the most ill-gotten ways to achieve what she thinks she deserves as quickly as possible rather than taking the right route, which is to work hard. I think I'm sad that people see this as an inspirational story, and it is reflective of the fact that if you go into any average classroom these days and you ask kids what they want to be, they're not like, oh, I'd like to be a nurse, or a teacher, or a doctor, or an engineer. They're like, I want to be a footballer, I want to be a YouTube star. And it's like this culture of instant success and instant gratification. And I'm not saying either of those things are football star or YouTube star is instant, but that's how it's perceived. And I think that's sad. So at first, I think it feels easy to get behind, for some people at least, the cultural recasting of Anna as this kind of anti-establishment folk hero. A kitschy sort of like girl boss icon who stuck her middle finger up to the man, stealing from the rich like Robin Hood in Celine sunglasses. Love it. But as Rachel Williams points out, Anna wasn't motivated by some sort of Robin Hood altruistic nobility. She wasn't even doing it to point out the holes or the flaws or the hypocrisy of the banks or the elite. She wasn't trying to dismantle the system or make a political statement. She just really wanted to be part of that world. She wanted to feed from the same trough they were all eating at.

Speaker 1:
[81:36] While her shenanigans have tended to be dismissed by most as a victimless crime, that's not true. Rachel's story alone is proof that beyond the banks, which sure, I don't give a fuck about them either, but real people, ordinary people got really hurt, and she probably has never recovered financially or emotionally. There are three types of victim in the Anna Delvey story. Each one is driven by something else, when it comes to how and why they fell for her bullshit. Number one, there's the legitimate elite. For these people, Anna carried herself with the arrogance and sort of rules don't apply to me pretentiousness that they recognized, and also the confidence with which she pulled off that attitude, gave her the keys to their shallow, frankly, quite foolish world.

Speaker 2:
[82:20] That is the word, I think, when I think of the elite that she stole from or conned. It's foolish. Then you have number two on the list of victims. You have the hotels, restaurants and bars that Anna conned. Or specifically, we should say, the people who worked front of house in these places. Because it's not like she's actually conning the institution, she's conning the person who's in front of her. Here again, Anna used that attitude of impatience and how dare you, with a few hundred dollar tips thrown in and bottles of champagne, to make them flip-flop from fearing her outbursts, to wanting the perks. Like the tips and the champagne and honesty, who can blame them?

Speaker 1:
[83:02] And then there are Anna's friend, who overlooked her less than desirable behavior to feel close to greatness, wealth and celebrity, to feel special and chosen and closer than ever to the elite. They were taken in by it all because those things can be very alluring. And we do live in a world that makes it really easy for people like Anna to keep on hustling. Even with the son of Sam Laws, technically limiting the amount of money that goes into Anna's pocket, the fame that Anna has milked from her story is priceless. She's getting more free shit now than she ever has in her whole life.

Speaker 2:
[83:34] It's literally when people say, that's PR money can't buy. This is what it is.

Speaker 1:
[83:39] Yes, that's true. By turning the fake heiress label into a brand, Anna has bought herself access to the exact same bougie circles that she conned her way into before. And they don't care. This is the thing. They don't care that that's what she's done. So take them. Fine.

Speaker 2:
[83:58] So let's end this episode by talking about Anna's motive. Because I find it really fascinating. Anna is often described by people as a classic con artist, which yes, okay. But to me, is she? Because she doesn't steal a bunch of money and just run off into the sunset. She's not just like filling her boots and being like disappearing and like going and running the con somewhere else under a new name or whatever. She's not always on the make for money. With Anna Sorokin, it's all about image. She needs the money to become who she believes she already is. And she reminds me of like we said earlier in the episode, Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Fake it till you make it. And the cost along the way, who cares? Because you are amazing and in the end, you will deliver and that's all that matters. I think Anna decided, probably quite young, that she was important and that she was a big deal. All she has to do is convince everyone else of that. I think she truly believed that she just had to be who she was, commit to the act and the money would follow. You know the thing when people say like, dress for the job you want? She is like, be the person you want, be the person you are, and everything else will fall into place. Her constant shrugging off of, why are you making such a big deal out of this when she's called out about the money? I think to me feels like she's saying, money isn't really what makes you elite. It's a vibe, it's the class, it's the taste, it's the fashion, it's the art, the appreciation of finer things in life. So I think Anna genuinely truly saw herself as elite, and the fact that she didn't have any money, that's just like a boring side note, who cares about that? I've got everything else that matters when it comes to being elite. I don't have the money, but like, I think in her mind, the money, anyone can get that. That's the easy part. The real definition of elite, well, she's got that in spades. And it really made me feel like, I was quite proud of this line I wrote, money can't buy you class, but in Anna's world, class, or at least what she perceives as class, was going to buy her money. And I think that is the best summary of Anna Delvey, that I could think of anyway.

Speaker 1:
[86:26] And she's right. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[86:28] I'm exhausted.

Speaker 1:
[86:30] I just, fucking hell. You can't argue with it.

Speaker 2:
[86:33] No, no. It's a very, very interesting story, a story of our time. I know people say that all the time, but I genuinely think this is, it's a very like, it's a case that is like an absolute microcosm of everything that is wrong.

Speaker 1:
[86:44] It's a real reflection of how far we've fucked it.

Speaker 2:
[86:48] Yeah. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed that. You learned something, the true story behind Netflix's inventing Anna and like, follow, subscribe, do all of those things. Share this podcast with your friends if you wouldn't mind, and just generally maybe do all the things you would do to support a podcast that you enjoy. We appreciate it and we will see you next week for another episode. Goodbye.