Photo courtesy of Insider

Anna Delvey – also known as Anna Sorokin or “Soho Grifter” – is a Russian-German socialite who was arrested on multiple charges of grand larceny and theft of services through her self-concocted fraud of expensive hotels and restaurants. After her parole release last February, she attracted attention through social media posts and sightings. As of Thursday, April 1, she turned herself into immigration authorities facing the conclusion of her criminal trial and awaits potential deportation back to Germany, according to Business Insider.

In her personal writings dubbed “The Delvey Diaries” she documents her time spent in prison and reflects on the uselessness of the penal system. Delvey, in her tried and true, fabulous faux-heiress tone, summed up her prison sentence as a blasé waste of time. Sadly, readers will have to wait for the NFTs of her blog posts to resurface.

Born in Domodedovo, a town on the outskirts of Moscow, Russia, Delvey (then, Sorokin) was raised in Germany and briefly moved to London to attend Central Saint Martins College before landing in Paris – when she first started going by Delvey – to intern for Purple magazine. In 2013, she hopped the pond to New York and began her ascension of the social circles of Manhattan’s elite.

In a series of longform reporting from The Cut, journalists describe how Delvey had drifted from hotel to hotel, all the while attempting to secure funding from various banks and financial institutions, meeting the likes of Martin Shkreli and traveling to Omaha, Nebraska, to meet with Warren Buffet’s real estate giant Berkshire Hathaway. Her project to establish the “Anna Delvey Foundation” – what would’ve been her art club, magnum opus and safeguard into New York’s higher society – had been thwarted when her debts eventually caught up to her. Thus, she was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but had her sentenced shortened to four due to good behavior.

Delvey’s continuous fights with mainstream media and tabloids have positioned her as a new form of celebrity, as she takes to Twitter to dispute what she perceives to be false reports and invasions of her privacy, labelling reporters as nuisances prodding for a “newsworthy” reaction, as she tweeted. Nonetheless, Delvey remains stalwartly consistent in keeping her narrative straight.

A Netflix film titled “Inventing Anna” following Delvey’s life in New York began production in 2019, and since has gotten caught up in legal troubles under New York’s “Son of Sam” law, which prevents criminals from directly profiting from of their crimes. Notwithstanding these minor hiccups, her new street fashionwear brand, DelveyMail.com, which parodies the British tabloid, The Daily Mail, is coordinating with fashion designer Paul Cupo.

What makes Delvey unique is her stance at the nexus of life and art. Through the silver screens of television and films, aspirational youth can only think of her life through the lens of fantasy. She is not a perpetrator of but a mirror to the seemingly unaffordable and hyper-competitive social atmosphere of modern day. While betrayal and theft are condemnable actions and fame and riches don’t translate to happiness, there is no moral prescription to Delvey’s crimes. She has apologized for her crimes and has used funds she received from her Netflix deal to issue restitution to her victims.

One can only speculate on the fairytale-to-hellhole life experience Delvey has endured. However, one thing is for certain: don’t mess with Anna Delvey. As she wrote on Twitter, “I don’t have a pattern, you can never figure me out.”