5/16/2023 0 Comments New york socialite“She walked into my life in Gucci sandals and Céline glasses,” wrote Rachel DeLoache Williams in a Vanity Fair account of the Moroccan trip. She upped her look to Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent and settled into a life of boutique hotels and private jets, once booking one on credit to fly to Omaha, Nebraska, for an investor conference by the multibillionaire American investor Warren Buffett. After interning in Paris for Purple magazine, she moved to New York in 2014 with a new ambition. She was reportedly born in Russia and in 2007 emigrated to Germany where her father runs a heating and cooling business. In truth, Sorokin was nothing like the Cologne heiress with a $60m fortune she claimed to be. “As proven at trial, Anna Sorokin committed real white-collar felonies over the course of her lengthy masquerade,” said the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, after the verdict, thanking prosecutors in his office for their “resolve to ensure that Sorokin faces real justice for her many thefts and lies”. “Making up fake accountants, making up fake documents – those are not white lies,” argued the lead prosecutor, Catherine McCaw, in her summation earlier this week. But she succeeded in obtaining $100,000 from City National Bank, spending $40,000 of it on clothing and hotels, the court heard.Īnna Sorokin arrives for her trial at New York state supreme court earlier this month. Sorokin’s problems started when one group of financiers from whom she sought the $22m loan noticed that her passport showed she was from a Russian town despite her claim to be from Germany. Forging financial statements, establishing email addresses for a fictional accountant and a fake financial adviser are not the actions of an idle fantasist. “Everyone wanted to believe she was a German heiress” because, in effect, “the rich help the rich”. Sorokin had merely allowed people to believe what they wanted to believe, Spodek added. “Any millennial will tell you,” he said, “it is not uncommon to have delusions of grandeur.” Spodek conceded that his client’s practice was unethical but, he claimed, not illegal because she planned to pay everyone back. “‘Fake it until you make it,’” lawyer Todd Spodek said during opening statements in her trial last month. Prosecutors said that Sorokin’s ambition was to “live the fantasy of an extravagant lifestyle beyond her means” her lawyers countered that her lavish presentation – court proceedings were suspended early on in the three-week trial while the defendant fussed over her choice of stylist-supplied designer outfits – were nothing more than a woman who understood that superficial glamour was key to acceptance in the circles she aspired to join. But some of the charges in a case that has transfixed Manhattan society didn’t hold, including an alleged attempt to fraudulently obtain a $22m (£17m) loan, and an accusation that she had swindled $60,000 from a friend who had paid for a lavish trip to Morocco.īut for the most part, a jury agreed that Sorokin had fraudulently manoeuvred herself into “the best position to take money” from a social milieu that exists in a twilight of openings and events on the periphery of a tight-knit world of wealthy art collectors, dealers and auctioneers.
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