Anna Sorokin is still in ICE detention in US after deportation mix-up

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Fake German heiress Anna Sorokin has thwarted efforts by the US authorities to deport her from the country today after her lawyers intervened before she boarded a flight in New York, according to reports in Germany.

The fraudster, 31, who conned New York socialites out of $200,000 by pretending to be German a heiress by the name of Anna Delvey, was supposed to arrive at Frankfurt airport this morning after being deported by US authorities.

But instead of getting on the flight from Newark to Frankfurt, German reports have said lawyers for the Russian-born scammer found a way to block her deportation, arguing her deadline for an appeal has not yet passed.

Sorokin remains at Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, New York.

A source from the jail – where she is being held as an ICE boarder – told DailyMail.com on Tuesday that she did not leave the facility at any point yesterday, despite reports she may have been on her way to the airport.

She will stay there until ICE agents come to collect her. 

‘They don’t give us a heads up, she’s with us until they come to collect her,’ they said.

The fraudster previously called the facility ‘lawless’ and worse than Rikers island prison in a post on Instagram. 

In an interview with Good Morning America that was recorded overnight, Sorokin’s deportation attorney Manny Arora said they had until ‘the 18th or 19th’ of March until the case expired.

An ICE spokesman said this morning: ‘In November 2021, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) granted Sorokin’s emergency stay request; she remains in ICE custody pending removal.’ 

The DailyMail.com has contacted Sorokin’s attorney and United Airlines for comment, but is yet to receive a reply.

Daniela Hoffmann, reporter for the German broadcaster RTL, had a phone call arranged with Sorokin last night for 8.30 p.m., but although the message went through, she was unable to reach her.

Speaking to DailyMail.com this morning at Frankfurt Airport, she said: ‘[Sorokin] absolutely has not arrived today, and we have been waiting several hours for her. 

‘Anna supposedly fought so hard against getting onboard the flight, that in the end she was not allowed on board,’ Hoffmann said.

‘I’ve been in touch with Anna for a long time. I interviewed her lawyer and then her when she was released last year, and I would say there is mutual respect there.’

‘I find her very, very nice, and I can really understand why the New York high society liked her – she is well-read, she knows about art, she knows about fashion, and she is actually very grateful.’

‘She didn’t want to be deported to Germany, because she wanted to stay in the USA – and for this, she wanted to be given a second chance. I think everyone deserves a second chance in life!’

Sorokin was expected to arrive in Frankfurt at 09:15 this morning on a United Airlines flight, but German police confirmed she was not on this flight, and none of the passengers who arrived at Frankfurt airport this morning said they had seen her board the airplane. 

German news outlet Der Spiegel also reported that Sorokin had failed to arrive in Frankfurt when expected, saying that her lawyers had been able to stop the deportation at the last minute as the deadline for her appeal had not yet passed. 

Speaking overnight on Monday, Arora said that he had been unable to contact his client on Monday, and presumed she was leaving the country. He also said the appeals deadline had not yet passed.

‘I haven’t heard from Miss Sorokin this afternoon, and so I am working under the presumption that she is being deported,’ the attorney told Today on Monday.

‘Legally, they should not be able to deport her until the 19th. That is due to the deportation order being signed on February 17 and that allows us to have 30 days to file an appeal,’ he said.

Sorokin made headlines around the world after pretending she was a super-rich heiress called Anna Delvey with a $60 million trust fund to gain access to her wealthy targets, and to take our tens of thousands of dollars in bank loans.

She was convicted of fraud in 2019 over the long-term scheme that has since been depicted in the Netflix series ‘Inventing Anna’, starring Julia Garner. 

After serving nearly four years of her sentence of between four and 12 years, Sorokin was released from jail in February 2021, and went about returning to her previous life of luxury by renting a swank apartment in Chelsea.

Weeks later, after bragging in a TV interview that ‘crime pays, in a way’ she was arrested by immigration agents for allegedly overstaying her visa and has been in ICE custody at the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, NY ever since.

Sorokin tried to apply for asylum in the United States – but German newspaper Spiegel Panorama reports that her plea was denied.

Capable of weaving skilful lies with extraordinary aplomb, the young woman posed as a German heiress with a fortune of $60 million, allowing her to obtain tens of thousands of dollars in loans from several banks.

Between November 2016 and August 2017, she traveled for free by private jet, lived on credit in Manhattan hotels, without ever paying anything, according to the New York justice department, which estimated her frauds were worth around $275,000.

But before she acquired a taste for the glamorous lifestyle, Sorokin grew up in a working class suburb of Moscow as the daughter of a truck driver whose mother ran a small convenience store. The family emigrated to Germany when she was 16.

Her father, Vadim, has said that Anna did manage to make friends in Germany and was often out socialising with them or staying over for parties – regardless of how she was portrayed in the Netflix programme. 

She did not have a college degree or a substantial amount of wealth.

Despite this, Vadim said Anna really struggled to cope with two main issues.

Firstly, in Russia, though she had already been given private dancing lessons and French lessons, she soon demanded her parents supply her with fancy clothes.

But instead of then being grateful, Anna would then often not even bother to wear the items, even though these items were often very hard to come by in the stores.

This did not sit well with her father, who had been raised to never waste anything – even scraps of bread. When she arrived in Germany, the problem became far worse.

Suddenly she was confronted with the massive selection of fashion items on offer, compared to in Russia, and now she wanted to have absolutely everything.

She then became frustrated with how those around her in Germany did not share her desire to always only wear the fanciest clothes on sale.

She quickly became dismissive of her social circle, of Düren where her father worked and of Eschweile, the town near Cologne where the family lived.

Instead she started setting her sights on the bustling metropolises of Berlin and Paris – always turning to her father for cash when she ran out.

In 2013, Sorokin traveled to New York City to attend New York Fashion Week, and ultimately stayed, pretending to be ‘Anna Delvey’ – an heiress with a $60m trust fund in Europe – as she scammed her way to expensive trips and hotel stays, ripping off her best friend along the way. 

The scam has now been memorialized by the Netflix show ‘Inventing Anna,’ based on journalist Jessica Pressler’s New York magazine story, which brought her scheme to light. 

She was first arrested in July 2017, A&E reports, after she skipped out on thousands of dollars in unpaid bills at two New York City hotels – the Beekman and the W New York – and dined and dashed after eating lunch at Le Parker Meridien hotel.

Sorokin was scheduled to appear in court in September that year, but never showed up.

A few months later, in October, the Manhattan District Attorney set up a sting operation with the Los Angeles Police Department and arrested her again. 

According to the indictment, City National Bank allowed Sorokin to overdraft her account by $100,000.

She managed to keep $55,000 in the account but ‘frittered away these funds on personal expenses in about one month’s time’ with fancy hotel stays, high-end fashion purchases and sessions with a personal trainer.

In 2019, she was convicted of second-degree larceny, theft of services and first-degree attempted larceny.

Sorokin, however, was acquitted of the most serious charge – attempted grand larceny in the first degree, in connection with a $22 million loan she tried to obtain from City National Bank.

She was also acquitted of stealing from her friend, Rachel DeLoache Williams, who worked in the photo department of Vanity Fair magazine and was scammed out of $62,000.

The two, and a group of other friends, went on a $7,000-a-night villa trip to Morocco in 2017. Sorokin had vowed to pay for the trip, but never did.  

Sorokin was sentenced to four-to-12 years behind bars and ultimately served four years at Riker’s Island – New York’s largest prison – before being released for good behavior in February 2021.

She then settled her debts and paid her state fines with the $320,000 she received for selling her life story to Netflix.

But just one month later, she was rearrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for overstaying her visa.

She has since been detained at the Orange County Correctional Facility, where she has complained about the conditions.

In an Instagram post on Sunday, Sorokin wrote that Rikers is like the Marrakesh hotel where she brought Williams when compared to the ‘lawless’ ICE facility.

‘Rikers could never get away with letting someone out for 15 [minutes] a day, like ICE is doing with me yet again, ‘quarantine’ or not,’ she wrote.

‘So far ICE OCJail has been giving [me] nothing but major ‘credit card declined’ vibes.’

While in ICE custody, Sorokin has announced that she is suing ICE after she allegedly caught coronavirus when she was denied a booster vaccination shot. 

She, along with three other detainees, filed the suit earlier this month alleging federal authorities violated their constitutional rights as ‘medically vulnerable individuals’ and engaged in ‘unlawful discrimination’ by refusing to issue the shot.

Sorokin tested positive for COVID-19 in mid-January after she made multiple requests for a booster shot and never received a response, according to the complaint obtained by DailyMail.com Thursday.

She also alleges she continues to experience lingering effects of the virus – including fatigue, coughing, brain fog and shortness of breath – and still seeks the jab ‘as she is concerned about getting sick from COVID-19 if she contracts it again’.  

Sorokin is also now claiming in court documents that she is finally broke, and was granted ‘poor person’s relief’ in filing her appeal against her conviction. 

Of the money she received from the lucrative Netflix deal, she repaid repaid $100,000 to City National Bank, $70,000 to Citibank, spent $75,000 on legal fees and another $24,000 on fines – leaving around $51,000 left over.

Sorokin does not appear to have paid back Blade, the air taxi service from Uber, for the $35,400 she owes to them for a charter flight from New Jersey to Omaha, Nebraska to attend the annual shareholders meeting of investment company Berkshire Hathaway.

Nor has she apparently reimbursed the $23,000 she owes to Signature Bank. 

The ‘poor person’s relief’ provides her with court-issued money to cover the cost of filing her appeal and other legal fees.