‘Inventing Anna’ Fake Heiress Anna Sorokin Facing Imminent Deportation

Anna Sorokin, the convicted swindler whose criminal adventures formed the basis of the hit Netflix 2022 series Inventing Anna, will soon be deported to Germany.

According to various media reports today, Sorokin – the real name of the self-invented Anna Delvey – was released from ICE custody yesterday and was no longer being detained in an upstate New York detention facility. Though her criminal defense lawyer Todd Spodek has declined comment, sources have told both The New York Times and the New York Post that Sorokin’s deportation was imminent, with the Post reporting that she was expected to board a flight to Frankfurt last night.

Manny Arora, her attorney in the criminal appeal, told GMA on Tuesday that he hadn’t heard from her, which was unusual. (The attorney later confirmed that Sorokin was indeed still in ICE detention as of Tuesday, March 15, and that he was “working under the presumption that she is being deported.”)

Sorokin had been fighting deportation for a year, having completed her prison stint for the crimes depicted in the Shonda Rhimes-created series in February 2021. Last March, she was detained at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Lower Manhattan after a routine check-in, and was then arrested on charges of overstaying her visa. She’s been held at detention centers in New Jersey and New York since her ICE arrest.

Last month, Sorokin confirmed that she was working with Surviving R. Kelly producer Bunim/Murray Productions on a new limited documentary series that would chronicle her life following the events portrayed in Inventing Anna. According to the announcement, the new series “aims to give audiences an insight into what makes Sorokin tick, and where she plans to take her recently cemented infamy.”

Michael Driscoll, who is Director of Development, Bunim/Murray Productions, is leading the project with Rupert Dobson, BMP’s EVP, Development and BMP President Julie Pizzi, said last month, “Anna’s story is very much alive and still unfolding as we speak. We’ve been developing this project with her for months now – and spent countless hours on phone and video calls with her. She is a complicated and fascinating character, and we are looking forward to telling the next chapter of her ever-evolving tale.”

Inventing Anna stars Julia Garner as Sorokin/Delvey, a Russian-born woman claiming to be a German heiress who, in 2017, was arrested on grand-larceny charges. She was found guilty in 2019, with her complicated web of lies and schemes to defraud elite New Yorkers becoming a public fascination.

Last month, it was revealed that Sorokin received about $320,000 from Netflix for the story that eventually became Inventing Anna. Of that sum, she paid $199,000 in restitution, $24,000 in state fines, and $75,000 in attorney fees. After she paid the restitution, the courts let her keep what little is left.