Every episode Netflix’s limited series Anna Invented, Video streaming February 11 begins with a disclaimer: “This whole story is completely true. Except for all the parts that are totally made up.” It’s a tongue-in-cheek warning to viewers that fact-checking Shonda Rhimes’ latest Show for the streamer won’t be easy. Anyone who’s heard of it will be able to appreciate its value. Anna Delvey (née Sorokin)Most likely, you already know this.
2018 New York Magazine broke the internet with journalist Jessica Pressler’s story about an alleged German heiress who was accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from banks, financial institutions, and her friends between the years of 2013 and 2017 in hopes of launching a member’s only club called the Anna Delvey Foundation. Turns out, Sorokin was really a Russian-born, German-raised scam queen who somehow fooled New York’s super rich and powerful to bow down to her to the tune of more than $275,000. Her parents confessed to her New York Magazine that despite their daughter’s claims, there was no trust fund to speak of and “Delvey” was not a family name.)
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The story of Sorokin’s spectacular grift quickly turned the “fake German heiress,” into a scammer that the internet either loved to hate or hated to love. Her story was both a legend for people who feel the wealthy don’t pay enough or an illustration of millennial malaise at it’s worst. Despite being Eight counts were convicted of Grand Larceny in 2019.Sorokin claims that Sorokin’s plans to establish the Anna Delvey Foundation are legitimate. “I’d be lying to you and to everyone else and to myself if I said I was sorry for anything,” she told the New York TimesIn 2019. “I regret the way I went about certain things.” (Sorokin was in custody of the Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement agencyAfter her March 2020 release, she overstayed her visa.
Anna Invented is inspired by Pressler’s extensive reporting. The nine-episode series has a total of nine episodes. It follows Vivian (journalist), a character loosely based upon Pressler, and played by Veep’s Anna Chlumsky, as she investigates Anna’s complicated story. The stylish drama attempts to tell Sorokin’s story through the eyes of those who knew her—or thought they did. (Sorokin reportedly received a payment from NetflixHer life was transformed into a TV series for $320,000, she said. Insider she doesn’t plan to watch.)
Anna InventedEasily shows Anna, a German-accented) how she does it. Julia GarnerAnna (or, as she was known) could control everyone. Anna is portrayed as a visionary genius with a knack for business, but the show doesn’t deny that she was also a liar, manipulator, and all-out hustler. Fun fact: Pressler wrote the inspiring article. Jennifer Lopez’s 2019 Film Hustlers.)
This dichotomy is what leaves so many who cross paths with her on the show—and in real life—puzzled by the “Soho grifter.” “For every three crazy things you hear about her, one usually turns out to be true,” Vivian says. She’s not wrong. The “facts” of this story need to be taken with a grain of salt since Anna is an unreliable narrator who prefers to live in her delusions of grandeur. The truth is, the more you know about Anna Delvey, the less you might understand her—but that’s part of her appeal.
Read on to discover more Anna Invented Depending on your beliefs, you can be right or wrong.
Is Jessica Pressler trying repair her journalistic standing with the Anna Delvey Story?
In the beginning Anna InventedViewers learn Vivian has been made persona nongrata by many newsrooms because of a past Manhattan MagazineShe wrote an article which turned out not to be accurate. The story was about a 16-year-old New York high school student named Donovan Lamb, who claimed he had made $80 million on the stock market “before he could drive.” Vivian alleges that the boy lied to her, while the teen claims that she was just after a flashy story and didn’t care about the facts.
Vivian’s job offer has been rescinded in light of the article. Bloomberg News and is relocated to the dregs of the magazine’s office, affectionately known as “Scriberia.” For Vivian, Anna’s story is a way of proving she is not the “bad journalist” everyone thinks she is.
Pressler did experience some redemption through Anna Delvey’s story, whether or not it was intended. Dec 2014 saw the release of New York ObserverThe results showed that New York MagazineStory she had written earlier in the month on a Senior at Stuyvestant High School named Mohammed Islam, who claimed to have made $72 million trading stocks, It was a hoax. “It is not true,” Islam told the newspaper. “I run an investment club at Stuy High, which does only simulated trades.” A spokesman for the teen told the publication, “Mr. Mohammad Islam fibbed to a reporter and for this he is very apologetic.” His parents were reportedly furious with him.
Pressler was fired for lying to the media. Bloomberg Investigative Unit before it was established. This journalist Her reporting on the story was defended by she. “I still think the piece is skeptical enough,” she told CNNMoneyIn 2014. “The story says, ‘This is a rumor and draw your own conclusions.’” Instead, she said she felt the real problem was the article’s headline, “A Stuyvesant senior made $72 million trading stocks on his lunch break.” “I feel like the headline was pretty glib,” she said at the time. “I feel comfortable about what’s in the actual piece.”
New York MagazinePressler is still employed by. an apology to its readers for the story’s inaccuracies: “We were duped. Our fact-checking process was obviously inadequate; we take full responsibility and we should have known better.”
Did Anna Delvey pretend to be her family’s alleged business manager Peter W. Hennecke?
As Garner’s Anna inches closer to getting her loan for the Anna Delvey Foundation, viewers are introduced to her family’s business manager Peter Hennecke. Well, we never see him, but we hear his calm, cool, and collected voice in long distance phone calls from Germany, swearing to Anna’s bankers that the wire transfer he sent would come through any day now. In the end, it is revealed that Anna faked Mr. Hennecke to conceal her voice. She used a virtual sim card and voice changer app to make a German number.
Hennecke may have a more extraordinary story. 2018. New York Magazine reported that Hennecke’s cell number “belonged to a now-defunct burner phone from a supermarket.” Anna was also probably the one who had been writing emails from Hennecke’s AOL address—an odd choice for anyone in 2018, but especially someone working for UBS, the world’s largest private bank.
Sorokin claimed that Hennecke was dead later, as emails began to bounce back at him. “Peter passed away last month,” she wrote in correspondence with her business partners, according to New York Magazine. “Please refrain from contacting or mentioning any communication with him going forward.”
Following the loss of her supposed accountant, she introduced her family’s new advisor “Bettina Wagner,” who was also believed to be a figment of Sorokin’s imagination. Prosecutor Catherine McCaw revealed that according to Rolling Stone, that Sorokin created fake email addresses for Bettina by Googling “send untraceable fake emails” and “non-existent email that is not going to bounce back.”
Continue reading: Anna ‘Delvey’ Sorokin Almost Ruined My Life. Now She’s Being Rewarded for Her Crimes
Did Anna Delvey steal a jet?
Viewers may think “steal” is too strong a word for what Anna did. Garner’s Anna requests a private jet to take her to Omaha, NE for billionaire businessman Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Conference by pretending she was friends with the jet company’s CEO. Anna can basically walk on a plane without having to pay anything.
Sorokin really did convince workers for Blade, an app used by the rich and famous to book private planes, to “charter her a $35,000 jet to Omaha by sending them a forged confirmation for a wire transfer from Deutsche Bank,” according to Pressler’s New York Magazine article.
Like her onscreen counterpart, the real Anna claimed to know Blade’s CEO Rob Wiesenthal, whom she had met at the popular New York City night spot Soho House, which is why she wasn’t required to pay before boarding. “We’ve let people slide in the past, quite frankly, and they’ve paid,” Kathleen McCormack (ex-CFO, Blade) testified at the 2019 hearing, according to Rolling Stone. Also, she said that it was because Wiesenthal “He had socially briefly met her and she knew. [Sorokin] through those circles, we felt she was good for payment so we booked her for the flight.”
Following McCormack’s testimony, Spodek told Rolling Stone that, in his opinion, Sorokin didn’t steal a jet. It was just a matter of quid proquo. “They believed she was some German heiress,” he said. “They believed she was some trendsetter who was gonna Instagram it up. And they gave her the plane.”
Did Anna Delvey’s former friend Rachel Williams help set up a sting operation while the fake heiress was in rehab?
Inventing Anna’s portrait of Anna’s former friend Rachel (Katie Lowes) is not sympathetic. After Rachel’s credit cards have been declined by Anna, Rachel is forced to pay Rachel $62,000 for the Moroccan hotel room. Later, Rachel helps police arrest Anna while she’s at a rehab center in Malibu.
The true Rachel WilliamsHe was also a photo editor. Vanity Fair At the time of the alleged events mentioned, Sorokin met him for the first time in 2016, and they became fast friends. “For the rest of 2016, I saw Anna every few weekends,” Williams wrote for 2018 Vanity Fair. However, the couple had an argument in 2017, when Williams was allegedly not paid back by Sorokin over a $60,000 hotel bill that Williams was charged for on a Marrakech trip. “The vacation was Anna’s idea,” Williams wrote in Vanity Fair. She claimed that Sorokin chose to stay at La Mamounia, “a five-star luxury resort ranked among the best in the world, and knowing that her selection was cost-prohibitive for my budget, she nonchalantly offered to cover my flights, the hotel, and expenses.”
Williams claimed that Sorokin promised to “forward a wire confirmation as soon as possible” and she believed her friend was good for the money. However, once Williams returned to New York, she said Sorokin’s “texts became increasingly Kafka-esque: assurances of incoming reimbursements through varying methods of payment that never materialized.”
Her 2019 memoir is here Anna, my friendWilliams stated that Williams was integral to Sorokin’s October 2017 arrest and bringing her to justice. Williams claimed she was asked by New York’s law enforcement to find Sorokin, after Sorokin did not show up for court in September 2017, on misdemeanor steal of services charges. “My goal was to re-establish contact, and uncover her location,” she wrote in her memoir, noting she figured out Sorokin was staying at the luxury Malibu treatment center, Passages.
Sorokin, like on the show, was apprehended by the police on Oct. 3, 2017 as she left Passages thinking she was going to meet Williams for lunch at the restaurant Joan’s on Third. In her memoir, Williams wrote that following Sorokin’s arrest, she texted her former friend, pretending as if she was at the restaurant and couldn’t find her. “I never went to Joan’s on Third for lunch, so why bother pretending that I had?” Williams wrote. “Was I afraid that she would discover my involvement in her arrest? Most definitely. But that wasn’t the only reason. As Anna had done with me, I wanted her to believe my lie.”
Sorokin has “never admitted any guilt” for what happened in Morocco, according to New York Magazine. However, she showed some remorse over what Williams had to go through. “I am very upset that things went that way and I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Sorokin told the magazine in 2018. “But I really can’t do anything about it, being in here.”
Williams was concerned about Anna Invented’s A 2022 film depicting her relationship to Sorokin Time. “It will be seen by more people than will ever meet Anna or do the work to understand her real nature or what really happened,” she wrote. “And that is a dangerous reality.”
Continue reading: Anna ‘Delvey’ Sorokin Was My Friend. Here’s How I Helped Bring the Fake Heiress to Justice
Anna Delvey was Billy McFarland’s friend?
In episode 4, Anna is working in a communal workspace alongside a guy named “Billy,” who is putting together a Fyre Festival is a luxury music festival with “This is the freaking rule.” When he tells Anna about the name of the fest, she poo-poos the whole thing. “Fyre with a ‘Y’?” she asks as he lets her know the letter is important in numerology. “Are you serious?” Oh, he was.
McFarland crossed paths with Sorokin before he defrauded investors and tricked people into attending the “festival” for $1,000 a ticket. He is currently in prison for six years on fraud charges. 2018: New York Post McFarland was reported to have owed Sorokin money for the Soho Loft she stayed in five year earlier. She allegedly moved into the headquarters of McFarland’s credit card company Magnises in 2013 and didn’t pay her rent. “Anna knew people on Billy’s team,” an insider told the Post. “She just asked to stay for a few days … then she wouldn’t leave.”
The same source said that McFarland “hinted” for her to leave, but she only left after the company moved its headquarters to a different location. “That’s the only way they got her out!” the insider said. “She had been there for four months!” (Sorokin has not commented on the claims.)
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Was Anna Delvey friends with “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli?
In episode 5, Anna’s friend Neff—played by Alexis Floyd and inspired by Sorokin’s real friend Neffatari “Neff” Davis—recalls a rather eventful night out with the fake German heiress. She claims they partied with a Culkin (she’s not sure which one) and Martin Shkreli, better known as the “Pharma Bro,”Former drug industry executive sentenced to 7 years imprisonment for securities fraud in 2018. He’s also the guy who bought Wu Tang Clan’s rare album Shaolin once upon a time In 2015This is why there are more than one character. Anna Invented refers to him as the “One man who disregarded the Wu Tang Clan.”
In Pressler’s article, the real Neff explains that during a dinner at Le Coucou she was introduced to Sorokin’s “dear friend” Shkreli, who told New York MagazineIn a 2018 penitentiary letter, she stated that one of her executives was her friend. That night was the one and only time they hung out, but “Anna did seem to be a popular ‘woman about town’ who knew everyone,” he wrote. “Even though I was nationally known, I felt like a computer geek next to her.”
What about whether Shkreli listened to leaked tracks? Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter VDuring that meal Anna Invented Neff claimed he did. Sorokin actually was offended by the tweet she sent about the encounter. “I wanted everybody to know that I heard this album that the world is waiting on! But Anna was pretty mad,” she told New York Magazine. “She didn’t come down to my desk for maybe three days.”
Shkreli, who was convicted on March 2018, was ordered to forfeit Lil Wayne’s album along with the Picasso painting, and the Wu Tang Clan recording. Six months later, Shkreli would finally release his seven-years-in the-making project.
Anna Delvey commissioned a professional stylist to assist her in court appearances.
In preparation for her trial, Garner’s Anna enlists a stylist friend of Neff’s to help her look like a “HBIC, but also young and coquette.” In real life, Sorokin’s personal dresser, a close friend of the real Neff, was more of a rocker at heart. 2018. GQ Anastasia Walker was the stylist who dressed Sorokin. Courtney Love, MadonnaG-Eazy and?
To send an email GQ, Spodek justified hiring the stylist by explaining that it was “imperative that Anna dress appropriately for the trial. Anna’s style was a driving force in her business, and life, and it is a part of who she is. I want the jury to see that side of her.”
Walker retorted ElleShe spoke with Sorokin by phone. “I couldn’t show her photographs, but as people interested in fashion, we spoke in references about the themes she wanted to come through [in her outfits],” said Walker, a former Glam staffer. “I selected some timeless pieces, given that everything is so public today and [trial] photographs can be saved, potentially, forever.”
Walker helped Sorokin because of his mutual friend. “Because of our mutual friend [Neff]. I’m always happy to help, and I love what I do,” she said. “If it works and I can make it happen, then why not?” (She also confirmed to ElleShe was paid for her labor.
It @annadelveycourtlooks Instagram accountI kept track everything Sorokin wore to court. Outfits that reportedly featured pieces from Miu Miu were also included. Victoria BeckhamSaint Laurent. For high-end look, here’s the answer. Spodek told The New York Times in 2018 that his client’s clothes had been “borrowed on her behalf via a secret benefactor.” It has yet to be revealed who footed the bill for Sorokin’s wardrobe.
