Is Inventing Anna a true story? Yes. The Netflix series is based on the real Anna Sorokin, who went by Anna Delvey and posed as a wealthy German heiress while scamming banks, hotels, and friends across New York. Even the show’s opening joke admits the mix: “This whole story is completely true, except for all the parts that are totally made up.”
📌 Key Takeaways
- Inventing Anna* is based on the real Anna Sorokin, who used the name Anna Delvey.
- She faked a €60 million trust fund to defraud banks, hotels, and friends of around $200,000 to $275,000.
- She was convicted in 2019, sentenced to 4 to 12 years, and later faced deportation.
This article is for: anyone who watched Inventing Anna and wants to know what really happened.
Who Anna Really Is
Anna Sorokin was born near Moscow in 1991 and moved to Germany as a teenager. In New York, she reinvented herself as “Anna Delvey,” a supposed German heiress with a roughly €60 million trust fund held overseas. In reality, there was no fortune, no trust fund, and no heiress background.
From about 2013 to 2017, she moved through Manhattan’s upscale social world in designer clothes and luxury hotels, dropping hints of European family wealth to make the story believable.
The Scams
Anna’s biggest scheme centered on the “Anna Delvey Foundation,” a members-only arts club she wanted to open in a landmark Manhattan building. To fund it, she approached banks for loans in the tens of millions, using forged financial documents and fake emails from supposed wealth managers.
Alongside that, she sustained her lifestyle by not paying:
- Hotels. She ran up large unpaid bills during long stays, claiming wire transfers from Europe were delayed.
- Friends. One widely reported trip to Morocco left a friend stuck with a bill of around $62,000 when Anna’s cards failed.
- Services. She used bad checks and unpaid invoices, and once arranged a private jet with a forged payment confirmation.
Prosecutors put the total she stole or tried to steal at roughly $200,000 to $275,000.
The Trial and Sentence
Anna was arrested in a sting operation in 2017. After a month-long trial in Manhattan, a jury found her guilty in April 2019 of multiple counts, including grand larceny, attempted grand larceny, and theft of services. She was acquitted on a couple of counts.
She was sentenced to 4 to 12 years in state prison, fined about $24,000, and ordered to pay roughly $199,000 in restitution. She was released in February 2021, then taken into immigration custody, with authorities moving to deport her to Germany.
The Article Behind It
The show is directly tied to real reporting. In 2018, journalist Jessica Pressler published a New York Magazine feature, “How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People,” which reconstructed the scams from interviews and court records. Netflix and Shondaland adapted that article, and the journalist character in the show is a stand-in for Pressler, who is credited as a producer.
What’s Dramatized
The broad strokes are accurate: the fake heiress persona, the foundation, the forged documents, the hotel and Morocco scams, and the conviction. What’s changed is the usual TV shaping. Some friends, lawyers, and media figures are renamed or combined, timelines are condensed, and private conversations are invented. That’s what the opening disclaimer is winking at.
The Short Version
Is Inventing Anna a true story? Yes. It’s based on the real Anna Sorokin, who posed as heiress Anna Delvey, scammed New York out of around $200,000, and was convicted in 2019. The show dramatizes the details, but the fake-heiress con at the center really happened.
Sources
- Wikipedia — Anna Delvey
- TIME — Inventing Anna true story
- Netflix Tudum — Inventing Anna fact vs fiction
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