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This week on The Hidden Third, I speak to Anna Sorokin, better known as “Anna Delvey”, the infamous “fake heiress” whose real-life story was later dramatized in Netflix’s “Inventing Anna”.
Anna posed as a wealthy German socialite, worked her way into New York’s elite circles, and used deception and manipulation to get banks, luxury hotels, and even friends to bankroll her lifestyle – a modern case study in scams, grifting, and image.
She was convicted of theft of services and grand larceny and served time in prison, becoming one of the most recognizable names in high-society con artistry.
Today, her notoriety has morphed into a new kind of power: Anna has become an influencer with a massive social media following, taking on paid promotional partnerships and selling some of the illustrations she made in prison for tens of thousands of dollars.
I wanted to understand who she is - behind the con artist. But Anna rarely opens up about her past and often comes across as unrepentant and dismissive about the harm she caused.
That guardedness made this one of the hardest interviews I’ve ever done. There were several moments I thought she would walk out. But in the end, through a game of cat-and-mouse, she shares some of her past thinking and strategies for conning people, what life was like in prison, the friends she made there, the marriage proposals she received, and her plans for what comes next.
About The Hidden Third: From Emmy and Peabody Award–winning journalist Mariana van Zeller comes THE HIDDEN THIRD, a weekly dive into the underground markets that quietly power a third of the global economy. Every episode, Mariana sits down with people who know these worlds firsthand - the hustlers, smugglers, scammers, kingpins, and those trying to shut them down. The series reveals how they function, why they endure, and the profound ways they impact us all.
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