German swindler Anna Sorokin, who passed herself off as a wealthy heiress to swindle banks, hotels and close friends as she lived a high-society, fantasy life in New York City, was sentenced Thursday to a term of four to 12 years in prison, The South China Morning Post reported.
Sorokin, 28, looked despondent as the verdict was announced, pressing her hands to her face and squeezing her eyes shut, trying to hold back tears, the report said.
Sorokin, Judge Diane Kiesel said, had been “blinded by the glitter and glamour of New York City,” turning to life of fraud to live like she could never afford, the newspaper reported. The judge denied Sorokin’s lawyer’s request she be sentenced to the time served.
“I am stunned by the depth of the defendant’s deception,” Kiesel said in court, the Post reported.
Last month, Sorokin was convicted on multiple counts of grand larceny and theft of services and has been in custody since her October 2017 arrest, the newspaper reported.
Moments before she was sentenced, Sorokin briefly addressed the court, saying: “I apologise for the mistakes I made,” the newspaper reported.
Sorokin used the alias Anna Delvey, the report said, when she defrauded financial institutions and Manhattan celebrities into believing she had a US$67 million fortune overseas that could cover her jet-setting lifestyle, high-end clothing and lavish hotel stays. She falsely claimed her father was a diplomat or an oil baron, falsified bank records and forged her identity to further the scam.
As part of her ruse, the Post reported, Sorokin included an application for a US$22 million loan to fund a private arts club, complete with exhibitions, installations and pop-up shops, prosecutors said. She was denied that loan but persuaded one bank to lend her US$100,000, which she failed to repay.
In all, prosecutors accused her of stealing US$275,000, including a US$35,400 bill she failed to pay for a plane she chartered to and from the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha, Neb., the newspaper reported.
She went to great lengths to ensure others paid for her extravagance, the report said, even as she had “not a cent to her name, as far as we can determine,” prosecutor Catherine McCaw said following Sorokin’s arrest.
But jurors acquitted her of two counts, including an allegation she promised a friend an all-expenses paid trip to Morocco and then stuck her with the US$62,000 bill, the report said. She was also found not guilty of one of the most serious charges in the indictment: Attempting to steal more than US$1 million from City National Bank.
– WN.com, Jack Durschlag
Photo:
AP / Mary Altaffer
