Anna Sorokin proves we’re all soft touches for glamour scammers | Rebecca Nicholson
There’s a reason why the story of the sham heiress is fascinating – in our phoney world any one of us could be conned
On Thursday, in a New York courtroom, Anna Sorokin was convicted of a litany of charges: four counts of theft of services, three of grand larceny and one of attempted grand larceny. The story of her brief, bright career as a scammer, when she floated around the city claiming to be an heiress called Anna Delvey, on a cycle of borrowing and defaulting, has proved so gripping that it is already being turned into competing projects. A New York magazine report from 2018 was optioned for Netflix; a Vanity Fair story, written by the photojournalist who had been swindled by Sorokin (and who testified against her), is being adapted for HBO by Lena Dunham.
Sorokin’s convictions, for which she faces a prison sentence and deportation to Germany, make her the latest in a line of high-level fakers elevated to celebrity status by our fascination. It’s no wonder that Netflix and HBO are involved in turning the saga into entertainment: from the Fyre festival to Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced CEO of Theranos (not, in a week of Avengers overload, to be confused with Thanos), tales of people promising something they could never, or never intended to, deliver are everywhere.