Sentenced for scams, fake heiress not sorry 'for anything'
NEW YORK (AP) — A German con artist who was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison for swindling banks, hotels and wealthy New Yorkers says she’s not sorry for anything she did.
“The thing is, I’m not sorry,” Anna Sorokin told The New York Times in a jailhouse interview Friday. “I’d be lying to you and to everyone else and to myself if I said I was sorry for anything. I regret the way I went about certain things.”
Prosecutors said Sorokin, a 28-year-old who was born in Russia, used a fake identity as a German heiress named Anna Delvey to scam victims out of more than $200,000.
They said she defrauded financial institutions and socialites into believing she had a fortune of $67 million (60 million euros). They said her ruse included an application for a $22 million loan to fund a private arts club, complete with exhibitions, installations and pop-up shops. She was denied that loan but persuaded one bank to lend her $100,000 that she failed to repay.
Sorokin was convicted last month on multiple counts of larceny and theft and has been in custody since her October 2017 arrest. Her sentencing Thursday capped a spectacular case that drew international attention and tabloid headlines. Netflix and HBO are both working on shows based on Sorokin’s scams.
U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has said it will seek to deport Sorokin to Germany following her release from state prison.
Sorokin apologized “for the mistakes I made” at her sentencing Thursday, but she struck a different tone in two interviews with the Times at the Rikers Island jail complex.
She said she always intended to pay back her creditors, which included banks, two hotels and a private jet company.
In an interview about a week before her sentencing, Sorokin conceded that she had falsified some bank records but said it was only because she had a big dream. She said she had wanted to start a $40 million private club, and potential investors pushed her to open it before they would put up their own money.
Sorokin said she never told her wealthy friends that she had millions of dollars, they just assumed it.
Sorokin did admit to the Times, “I’m not a good person.”
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Information from: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com
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