New York — Anna Sorokin travelled in celebrity circles and tossed $100 tips — all the more reason to believe she was the German heiress she said she was. But behind the jet-set lifestyle and pricey threads, prosecutors have said, was a fraudster who bilked friends, banks and hotels for a taste of the high life.
Sorokin, 28, lived in luxury New York City hotel rooms she couldn't afford, promised a friend an all-expenses paid trip to Morocco and then stuck her with the $62 000 bill, and peddled bogus bank statements in a quest for a $22m loan, the Manhattan District Attorney's office has alleged. On Wednesday, the one-time darling of the Big Apple social scene went on trial on grand larceny and theft of services charges alleging she swindled various people and businesses out of $275 000 in a 10-month odyssey that saw her jetting to the Midwest and Marrakesh before landing in a cell at Rikers Island.
"Her overall scheme has been to claim to be a wealthy German heiress with approximately $60m in funds being held abroad," prosecutor Catherine McCaw said after Sorokin's October 2017 arrest.Sorokin's lawyer said she never intended to commit a crime. Lawyer Todd Spodek told jurors in an opening statement that Sorokin was exploited a system"easily seduced by glamour and glitz" after she saw how the appearance of wealth opened doors.
"Anna had to fake it until she could make it," Spodek said. Sorokin, jailed since her arrest, faces deportation to Germany regardless of the outcome of the trial because authorities say she overstayed her visa. Her story, however, may stick around.