- Netflix's new show "Inventing Anna" chronicles scammer Anna Sorokin, AKA Anna Delvey.
- It offers up a tense family backstory that helps explain why Sorokin did what she did.
- The real-life Sorokin told Insider it isn't off-base.
In Netflix's "Inventing Anna," Anna Sorokin is a mystery.
The enterprising reporter Vivian Kent, played by Anna Chlumsky, pores through documents and interviews dozens of sources to figure out how a twenty-something woman using the name Anna Delvey scammed New York bankers and businessmen while posing as an imperious European heiress with a $60 million trust fund.
But why did Sorokin do it? And where does she get the confidence to pull off her con?
Looking for answers, Kent — a stand-in for real-life journalist Jessica Pressler, who wrote a blockbuster New York magazine article about Sorokin in 2018 and produced "Inventing Anna" — goes to Germany. Sorokin, played by Julia Garner in the show, grew up in Eschweiler, an unassuming town where her family moved after leaving Russia when she was seven years old.
In Eschweiler, Kent finds a family with a chip on their shoulder. Vadim Sorokin, her father, moved the family to Germany to create a better life for them, only to be dogged by unsubstantiated rumors that he was in a Russian mob. Anna, he said, wasn't the best-behaved child. And she had disgraced the family once again with her "fake heiress" scandal.
The complicated family dynamic in "Inventing Anna," the real-life Anna Sorokin told Insider in a series of interviews this week, isn't off-base.
When she finished schooling at the age of 19, she said, she "just couldn't wait to get out of there."
"Generally, I would definitely agree that my parents did not really know what to do with me," she said.
Sorokin, now 31, developed her interest in fashion and art — displayed with no expense spared on "Inventing Anna" — from an early age. She pored through copies of Vogue delivered to her house and obsessively followed fashion blogs and image accounts on LiveJournal and Flickr.
"I think my parents still have my archives of Vogue somewhere in their attic," she said.
'We just have different interests'
Sorokin briefly pursued a college degree at Central Saint Martins in London before hopping to Paris where she landed an internship at Purple magazine. (Sorokin told Insider she also interviewed at Vogue Paris but preferred Purple because she didn't want to spend all her time "making coffee.") She traveled to New York at the end of her internship, in 2013, and stayed there.
Sorokin told Insider she simply didn't keep her parents in the loop about her life in the early 2010s. "We just have different interests," she said.
"I don't feel like my parents were really involved in like day-to-day life," Sorokin told Insider. "Sometimes, they would not even know what country I'd be in. There would definitely be a time they didn't know if I was like in Paris, Germany, or the states."
The lack of communication continued for the next few years. Using the name Anna Delvey, she latched onto wealthy socialites and entrepreneurs in New York. All the while, she falsely told financial institutions she had a $60 million trust fund back at home so that they'd loan her money for the Anna Delvey Foundation, a Soho House-like business plan she had concocted. Her lawyer Todd Spodek later told jurors at her trial that she was trying to "fake it 'til she made it."
"I just never really needed the approval with my parents," Sorokin told Insider. "I guess I was just doing my thing."
"It meant a lot to me to just go and do something on my own," she continued. "I was never really like sitting and waiting, like, 'Oh my gosh, what are my parents going to say about this?'"
Sorokin's parents didn't attend her criminal trial, in 2019, where she was very selective about her outfits. After she was convicted, her father Vadim gave a few interviews. He told a Russian media outlet that he "knew nothing about her life in [the] US" before her arrest in 2017 and that his daughter had "a selfish personality" that "came from nature," according to a translation from The Daily Mail.
"I really do hope my daughter finds what she is looking for, whatever it is," he later told The Daily Mail.
Before her sentencing, Vadim struck a kinder tone. Vadim and Sorokin's mother and brother wrote a joint letter, obtained by Insider, to New York State Supreme Court Judge Diane Kiesel, who oversaw Anna Sorokin's criminal trial. They asked the judge to go easy on her.
"Our daughter is young; she took a series of incorrect decisions to accomplish her goals, but Anna is not a person who should be behind bars," they wrote. "We have been in contact with her through phone calls these last few months. She has done her, time and learned from her mistakes in the past and she is bettering her life. We believe that our daughter will not make such mistakes again and we are confident in our statements."
Kiesel was scathing at the sentencing hearing.
"For all I know, these letters are from Bettina Wagner," Kiesel said, referring to another persona Delvey invented to pull off her scheme.
Sorokin's father implored judges to release her
Sorokin was released from prison in February 2021, finishing three-and-a-half years of the four-to-twelve-year sentence Kiesel gave her.
She was arrested by immigration authorities a month later for overstaying her visa and remains incarcerated in Orange County Jail while fighting possible deportation.
In her interviews this week, Sorokin seemed to care deeply about whether others perceive her as an honest person. When she ran late to our scheduled calls, she apologized profusely and explained the minutiae of how the jail's process slows things down.
She said she was quizzing other contacts on the outside about whether "Inventing Anna" would make her seem like a terrible person. Two people, she said, assured her they trusted her so much that they'd hire her to babysit their children.
For an immigration court hearing in late 2020, Vadim Sorokin wrote another letter of support, obtained by Insider. He told the judge he would welcome his daughter with open arms in Duren, another German town where the family now lives. He wanted to make sure Anna Sorokin could see her elderly grandmother again and help care for her. She could work at their family-owned electrical installation company, he said.
"We will support her with adaptation to the company's workflow," Vadim wrote. "Anna will have every chance to integrate herself back into normal life."
Sorokin cooperated with the creation of "Inventing Anna" after selling her life story rights to Netflix. In the show, Kent goes to Germany and tracks down Sorokin's parents and childhood home. She sneaks into their yard before her parents shoo her away and then, finally, relent and speak with her.
The reality, Anna Sorokin said, wasn't that dramatic. Pressler went to Germany to conduct more research for "Inventing Anna," and Sorokin helped arrange it. She got her in touch with her parents and directed her to restaurants and museums she went to when she was younger.
"I was trying to make sure she sees the place the way I would've shown it to her had I been out," Sorokin said.
More recently, Sorokin said, she has been in touch with her family members again.
"I talk to my parents a couple of times a week, and I guess they are learning to deal with the whole situation," she said.
Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member.
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