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Convicted impostor Anna Sorokin alias »Anna Delvey«: Did she also cheat on her lawyer?

Photo: John Carucci / AP

Convicted con artist Anna Sorokin – also known by her pseudonym "Anna Delvey" – is also said to have defrauded her former lawyer and owed her more than $152,000 (about €142,000). That's according to a lawsuit filed with the New York Supreme Court on Monday. Sorokin's former lawyer, Audrey Thomas, accuses Sorokin of failing to pay her bills and making false claims about Thomas in order not to have to pay.

The now 32-year-old Sorokin came to New York in 2013 and for years pretended to the high society there that her name was Anna Delvey, that she was a millionaire heiress from Europe, but that she was only a high school graduate from Eschweiler. In this way, she swindled her way through months of overnight stays in luxury hotels and flights in private jets without paying the bills. She also tried to take out a multi-million dollar loan to allegedly open an art gallery in Manhattan. Sorokin became world famous when her story was made into a film by Netflix.

She was arrested in 2017 for her scams and sentenced to several years in prison in 2019, but was released in 2021 for good behavior. However, just a month later, Sorokin was arrested again for not having a valid U.S. residence permit. In this trial, Audrey Thomas represented the impostor. Sorokin was eventually released on payment of $10,000 and is living under house arrest in an apartment in Manhattan.

Sued by her own client

The relationship between the lawyer and her former client is strained: Sorokin fired Thomas in 2022 because she was dissatisfied with their work and Thomas allegedly withheld documents from her. She publicly called her former lawyer a "thankless piece of crap" and sued her. A judge sentenced Thomas to a fine of a thousand dollars a day until she returned the documents or explained where they had gone. At the court hearing when the verdict was announced, Thomas apparently suffered a heart attack, collapsed and was taken to the hospital.

Audrey Thomas herself has also had a chequered career in recent years – she lost her license to practice law in November 2022 for allegedly stealing from one of her clients.

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