Not in prison, but not free: imposter Anna Sorokin is back home

Anna Sorokin swaps her prison cell for her own four walls: the impostor who fooled New York's high society under the name Anna Delvey is free from detention pending deportation.

Not in prison, but not free: imposter Anna Sorokin is back home

Anna Sorokin swaps her prison cell for her own four walls: the impostor who fooled New York's high society under the name Anna Delvey is free from detention pending deportation. However, the German is still under house arrest.

The German impostor Anna Sorokin has been released from custody pending deportation in the USA. The 31-year-old was allowed to leave the institution on Friday evening (local time), the responsible authority said. NBC reported that Sorokin posted $10,000 bail and is being placed under house arrest in New York, requiring her to wear an ankle bracelet.

The release does not change the intention of the American authorities to deport Sorokin. Born in 1991 near Moscow, Sorokin moved to Germany with her parents as a teenager and then graduated from high school in Eschweiler near Aachen. She then moved to New York via London and Paris, where she posed as an heiress to millions in Manhattan's high society under the pseudonym Anna Delvey and - according to a court ruling in 2019 - stole services worth more than $ 200,000.

Sorokin was sentenced to four years in prison but was released in early 2021 for good behavior. Shortly thereafter, she was arrested again because of an expired visa and has been in the facility of the immigration service ICE ever since. She has appealed several times to being deported to Germany - even if she has little to fear from a legal point of view here.

Sorokin has sold her story to the Netflix streaming service, where it is currently available under the title Inventing Anna. However, she did not become rich with it. From the proceeds, she covered the costs of the court process and partially settled the outstanding claims of her creditors. According to Sorokin, he is now working on another documentary series, a book and a podcast, among other things.