Anna Delvey / Fake Heiress | The Hidden Third with Mariana van Zeller

10 snips

Jan 7, 2026

Anna Sorokin, the convicted fraudster who posed as heiress Anna Delvey, now builds media and art projects while appealing her case. She talks about life under an ankle monitor and immigration limits. Short stays in luxury hotels, the pressures that led to falsified documents, prison life and its underground economies, and how fame and social media shaped her post-prison plans.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Art Foundation Dream Turned Urgent Real Estate Push

Anna framed her original project as an art foundation with a members club to monetize it.
She shifted tactics when the ideal building was only for lease and felt intense time pressure to secure the location quickly.

INSIGHT

Rationalizing Risk By Imagining Escrowed Project Funds

Anna justified risky moves by believing the project would generate profit and everyone would be repaid.
Her rationale included bank-controlled escrow and vendor payments, so she thought she personally wouldn't directly pocket the funds.

ANECDOTE

Hotel Bills Fueled Constant Crisis Management

Anna described the scramble of big hotel bills and constant problem-solving while trying to keep the project afloat.
She says she paid the 11 Howard bill in full and relied on loans and continuous attempts to find solutions rather than passively waiting.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Go to http://rocketmoney.com/hiddenthird to reach your financial goals faster.

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.

The Hidden Third Show Sponsors

Go to ⁠http://rocketmoney.com/hiddenthird⁠ to reach your financial goals faster.

THE HIDDEN THIRD: ⁠⁠YouTube

⁠ ⁠Spotify⁠ ⁠

MARIANA: ⁠⁠YouTube

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices