Welcome back to the Jeep Dive. It is January
24th, 2026. And, you know, just let that date
sink in for a second. We are nearly a decade
removed from the initial arrest that sparked,
I mean, a thousand headlines. And yet the algorithm,
and let's be honest, our own curiosity, it just
won't let this story die. No, it won't. We are
talking. inevitably, about the enigma that is
Anna Delvey. Or Anna Sorokin, if we're going
by the birth certificate. Though at this point,
I think the two identities have kind of merged
into something, something entirely new. It really
has. Yeah. I was looking at the timeline while
prepping for this, and it's actually baffling.
You have a story that started with a fake heiress
scamming banks in 2017. Right. Then it goes through
this massive Netflix boom in 2022. And now here
we are in 2026 and she's still culturally relevant.
Still. I mean, she's modeling. She's modeling.
She's a subject in The New Yorker as recently
as May 2025. Yeah. It's not just a crime story
anymore, is it? It's a survival story. Yeah.
Or maybe a marketing story. Oh, it's. absolutely
a marketing story. It's a masterclass in personal
branding, albeit one built on a foundation of
larceny. I think the reason we're doing this
deep dive today and specifically why we aren't
just doing a quick recap is because the whole
Anna Delvey saga is actually a perfect lens for
understanding the last 10 years of our culture.
How so? Well, it sits right at the intersection
of the girl boss era, the rise of the influencer,
and the complete gamification of the financial
system. It touches on everything. That is exactly
the mission today. I don't want to just list
the crimes. You can get that on Wikipedia. I
want to understand the mechanics. The how. The
how, exactly. Exactly. We have this massive stack
of sources, biographies, the original New York
Magazine expose, that Vanity Fair betrayal piece,
court transcripts in the 2019 trial and all the
updates through mid 2025. My goal is to figure
out how a woman in her mid 20s with no college
degree and no actual assets nearly convinced
a hedge fund to give her 22 million dollars.
Right. Like purely logistically, how does that
happen? It happens because systems that we think
are. Rigid banking, luxury hospitality, even
the legal system are actually surprisingly porous
if you know where to poke. And Anna, well, she's
a genius at finding the soft spots. So let's
peel this back then. Before she was a fake heiress
or a house arrest celebrity, she was just a kid.
And I think the contrast between the reality
of her origin and the fantasy she sold is where
we have to start. Yeah. Because the gap is...
Well, it's continental. It is, literally and
figuratively. She was born Anna Sorokin on January
23rd, 1991 in Doma de Dovo. Doma de Dovo. Yeah.
And for those who don't know Russian geography,
this is a working class satellite town just south
of Moscow. It's industrial. It is not the backdrop
for a high society drama. Not at all. Her father,
Fadim. He was a truck driver. A truck driver.
And her mother ran a small convenience store.
This is a very, very standard blue -collar existence.
There's nothing wrong with it, obviously. But
it's light years away from the trust fund baby
narrative she later constructed. It's a whole
different universe. Exactly. And the family migration
pattern is interesting, too. In 2007, when Anna
is 16, they move to Germany. They settle in North
Rhine -Westphalia near Cologne. Her dad gets
into the HVAC and transport business. Her mom
becomes a housewife. But just... You know, try
to picture Anna at that age. She's 16 years old,
she's dropped into a German Catholic grammar
school in a town called Eschweiler, and she barely
speaks the language. That is a tough age to be
an outsider. I mean, high school's brutal enough
when you fit in. When you're the quiet foreign
kid who can't speak the language, I mean, you
retreat. You retreat, or you find an escape.
And for Anna, that escape was the internet. And
specifically the visual internet of the late
2000s, early 2010s. Right, the blog era. era.
She became obsessed with Vogue, with fashion
blogs, with LiveJournal and Flickr. She was just
consuming images of a world she had absolutely
no access to. I think we've all been there to
some degree, you know, doom scrolling through
luxury lifestyles on Instagram or whatever. But
most people look at those photos and think, I
wish I had that. Anna seems to have looked at
them and thought, I am that. I just need to get
the logistics sorted. That's the key psychological
shift, isn't it? She didn't want to earn her
way into that world. She believed she was already
of that world and reality just needed to catch
up. Yeah. So after high school, she briefly moved
to London in 2011 to attend Central Saint Martins,
which is, you know, the art school. Huge deal.
Yeah. But she dropped out almost immediately.
She couldn't hack the structure or maybe the
reality of it just didn't match the dream. So
she went back to Germany for a bit, but then
made the pivotal move to Paris for an internship
at Purple Magazine. And purple is critical here
because it's not just a fashion magazine. It's
an edgy cultural touchstone. It's where the cool
kids are. It gave her instant credibility. Precisely.
And she was making peanuts about 400 euros a
month, which her parents were subsidizing. But
this is where Anna Delvey is born. The name changed.
The name changed. She starts introducing herself
as Anna Delvey. She claims it's her mother's
maiden name. Which her parents later went on
record saying is completely false. Totally false.
Delvey doesn't exist anywhere in the family tree?
Nope. It was a brand name she invented. And when
she transfers to Purple's New York office in
mid 2013, she brings that brand with her. OK,
so she's in New York now. She's in New York.
And this is where that outsider status becomes
her greatest asset. In New York, being a German
heiress is a very specific, very powerful currency.
Because nobody can check. Nobody can check. And
she had this European accent that Americans couldn't
quite place. It was a mix of Russian, German,
maybe some affected British vowels she picked
up. She just sounded. exotic. She sounded like
old world money. That is such a huge part of
the con. If she had been a girl from Ohio trying
to pull this off, nobody buys it for a second.
Not a chance. But because she's European, Americans
just assume there's a castle somewhere. We assume
there's old money with complex structures we
don't understand. Exactly. It's the unknown known.
People filled in the blanks of her backstory
with their own assumptions about European wealth.
She didn't have to explicitly say, I have a trust
fund every five minutes. She just had to act
like someone who did. And she quit her job pretty
quickly. Oh, yeah. She quit Purple pretty quickly
once she got to New York. And that's when the
real work began. She wasn't just trying to be
a socialite. She wanted to build an empire. Okay,
let's talk about the Anna Delvey Foundation,
because this wasn't a lemonade stand. The scale
of what she was pitching is actually kind of
impressive, in a delusional way. It was incredibly
detailed. She wanted to lease the Church Missions
house. Which is a massive deal. It's a landmark
building on Park Avenue South, owned by the real
estate titan Abby Rosen. We were talking six
floors, 45 ,000 square feet. It's an iconic space.
And her vision was what exactly? A private members
club mixed with a visual arts center. So think
Soho House, but with a much heavier focus on
high art. She wanted pop -up shops curated by
the artist Daniel Arsham, exhibitions by Urs
Fischer, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons. So all the
biggest names. All the blue chip artists. And
she wasn't just daydreaming this in a notebook.
She was taking meetings. She had a team. She
enlisted the son of Santiago Calatrava, the famous
architect. She was talking to Rue Rogers, the
son of another famous architect, about beverage
programs. She was putting together a legitimate
looking business proposal. The vision was actually
quite coherent then. That's the tragedy of it.
If she had the money, it probably would have
been a successful business. It was a good idea.
But the problem always was the capital. She needed
roughly $25 million to get this off the ground.
And to get a loan of that size, you need collateral.
A lot of it. And her collateral was a complete
fiction. She claimed she had 60 million euros
sitting in Swiss bank accounts. But. But, and
here's the classic excuse, she couldn't access
it because it was tied up in these complex trust
structures. It was always just about to be released.
The trust fund excuse is the grifter's best friend,
isn't it? Yeah. It's just plausible enough. It
is. It's plausible enough that wealthy families
do have complicated trusts, but it's nearly impossible
to verify without documentation. And this is
where we get into the nuts and bolts, the mechanics
of the fraud. How do you prove you have 60 million
euros when you have zero? You use Microsoft Word.
You use Microsoft Word. This part kills me. In
an era of blockchain and encrypted banking and
all this high tech security, she's sitting there
with a laptop, literally editing numbers on a
PDF of a bank statement. It's solo tech. It was,
but it was effective enough to get her in the
door. But she knew documents weren't enough.
She needed a human element to vouch for her.
So she invented a wealth manager. The legendary
Peter. The one and only Peter Haneke. She gave
him a fake email address and a phone number that,
of course, she controlled. She would use a voice
disguising app to pretend to be him on the phone.
I mean, the sheer audacity of that. But here
is the detail that I find fascinating, and it
should have been a huge red flag. She used an
AOL email address for him. An AOL address in
2016 for a high -powered European wealth manager
handling 60 million euros. Yes. And that should
have been a screaming red flag to any banker.
But again, she banked on the idea that These
American bankers would just think, oh, maybe
that's how eccentric old Europeans operate. They're
old school. It's all social engineering. But
the cracks did start to show, right? People started
asking questions. Of course. People started asking
why Peter was so hard to reach or why his email
sounded exactly like Anna's speech patterns.
They were getting suspicious. And her solution
to this problem is one of my favorite details
in the whole saga. She didn't just fire him.
No, no. She killed him off. What? When the questions
got too hot, she started telling people that
Peter Heneke had died. It just passed away suddenly.
You're kidding me. I'm not. And then she immediately
invented a new persona, Bettina Wagner, to take
over the account. It's like a soap opera. And
prosecutors later found her Google search history.
She was searching for things like, create fake
untraceable email. That is just. It's improvisation
at its finest. So, she has the fake documents,
the dead fake manager, and the new fake manager.
She takes this whole package to City National
Bank and asks for a $22 million loan. A huge
ask. And City National, to their credit, eventually
balked because they just couldn't verify the
Swiss assets. They did some digging and it wasn't
adding up. But she didn't give up. No. She went
to Fortress Investment Group. Now, Fortress is
a serious, sharp -elbowed private equity firm.
These guys are not known for getting played.
They're the big leaguers. Yeah. But they were
interested. They were interested enough to enter
due diligence. The project itself sounded plausible,
but due diligence costs money. Fortress told
her, OK, we will. look into this we'll have our
lawyers review everything but you need to send
us a hundred thousand dollars to cover our fees
and background checks a hundred grand yeah which
she obviously didn't have so we enter this circular
financial loop that makes my head spin she goes
back to city national right correct she goes
back to a contact she'd made at city national
and somehow manages to charm them into giving
her a one hundred thousand dollar temporary overdraft
so basically a short -term loan a short -term
loan based on the promise that her wire transfer
from europe is coming any day now it was just
a paperwork So she gets $100 of real money from
City National based on a lie. And she immediately
sends that money. Straight to Fortress. Exactly.
She uses the proceeds of one attempted fraud
to finance the application for a bigger fraud.
It's just incredible. But Fortress actually did
their job. They did. They started digging. They
noticed discrepancies in her passport versus
her stated birthplace. They were asking tough
questions. And then the kill shot. Fortress said,
OK, the next step is we need to send a team to
Switzerland to physically meet your bankers and
see the assets. And that is the moment the music
stops because there is no vault. There are no
bankers. There's no Peter, dead or alive. It's
all smoke. Anna knew it was over. She panicked.
She withdrew the loan application halfway through
the process. Fortress had spent about $45 ,000
of her deposit on their work, so they wired the
remaining $55 ,000 back to her. So she is now
walking around New York with $55 ,000 in cash.
She still owes City National $100 ,000, so she's
technically deep in the hole, but she has liquidity
for the first time. Yep. And what does she do?
Does she go pay down the debt? Of course not.
She treats it as revenue. She goes on a spending
spree. She hires a celebrity personal trainer,
Casey Duke, who costs a fortune. She gets $800
hair highlighting. She gets $400 eyelash extensions.
She was investing in the image of Anna Delvey,
hoping that if she just looked the part long
enough, the money would eventually materialize.
And this brings us to the lifestyle section.
or what I call the tipping economy, because $55
,000 burns fast in NYC when you're living at
a luxury hotel. She checked in to Eleven Howard
in Soho in February 2017. A very trendy, very
expensive spot. She booked a room for roughly
$400 a night, but, and this is a massive failure
of hotel protocol, she didn't put a credit card
on file for a long time. Wait, how is that even
possible? I can't book a Motel 6 without a credit
card. I know, but she managed to stay there for
months. How? By weaponizing the $100 bill. This
is such a specific and brilliant strategy. She
would just walk around handing out hundreds.
For everything. If she asked the concierge for
a restaurant recommendation, here's $100. If
a bellhop brought up a package, $100. She became
known as the most generous guest in the hotel.
So the staff loved her. They loved her money.
And when you were tipping like that, the staff
just assumes you're incredibly wealthy. They
stop asking questions. They don't want to annoy
the golden goose by asking for something as mundane
as a credit card imprint. It's a bribe, essentially.
It's a bribe for goodwill and for them to look
the other way. But the reports say the staff
didn't actually like her, did they? No, that's
the irony. The reports say she was incredibly
rude, classist, and demanding. She would walk
around the lobby in just leggings and hotel robes,
treating the staff like servants. But the money
kept them quiet. She ate at Le Cucu, the high
-end French restaurant attached to the hotel,
constantly. She befriended the chef, Daniel Rose.
She just billed it all to her room number. But
eventually, even with all the tipping, the accounting
department has to wake up. The bill hits $30
,000. And they realize... There is no card. And
this leads to one of the most pathetic and hilarious
moments in the story. The hotel demands payment.
They are locking her out of her room. Anna, stalling
for time, sends a case of 1975 Dom Perignon to
the front desk staff. No. Yes. Like, sorry I
owe you 30 grand, but, you know, have some vintage
champagne. It's so childish. It's like giving
a shiny object to a baby. Here, look at this,
please. Go away. And the staff couldn't even
accept it because of hotel policy, so it just
sat there, this monument to her delusion. Meanwhile,
she is scrambling. She's scamming her friends
to float her lifestyle. We have to talk about
Michael Zufu Huang. Young art collector. Yes.
He was a student at UPenn at the time, but very
wealthy and connected in the art world. Anna
latched onto him. They went to the Venice Biennale
together in 2015. Anna asked if she could tag
along, but then asked him to book the flights
and hotel on his card, promising to pay him back.
And the phrase pay you back is a concept Anna
really struggles with. She never did. And this
highlights a very specific social vulnerability
of the elite. When you are genuinely rich, talking
about money is considered tacky. It's gauche.
Right. You don't want to seem petty. Exactly.
Michael felt awkward asking her for the $2 ,000
or $3 ,000 she owed him. He just assumed she
was good for it and forgot. He didn't realize
he was being scammed until much later when a
restaurant called Siddell's contacted him. Oh,
right, for the birthday party. Yes, she threw
this lavish birthday party there, hired a PR
firm, the whole nine yards, and then just didn't
pay the bill. The restaurant saw Michael in the
Instagram photos and tracked him down to ask,
hey, do you know this woman? Do you know how
we can get paid? That's when the penny dropped
for him. But she just kept escalating. The Blade
incident is another classic example of social
proof overriding basic business sense. This one
is amazing. She wanted to go to Omaha for the
Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting to meet Warren
Buffett. As one does. Just a casual trip to see
the Oracle of Omaha. So she books a private jet
through Blade, the helicopter and jet charter
company. The cost is $35 ,390. And she does her
usual move. She sends a forged Deutsche Bank
wire confirmation. Now, Blade has a very clear
policy. Payment must clear up front. But the
CEO, Robert Weisenthal, had perhaps seen her
around at parties or she name dropped enough
of the right people. They overrode their own
policy and let her fly before the money cleared.
They let a $35 ,000 service happen on an IOU.
That is wild to me. And she flew to Omaha. Claims
she snuck into a party at the zoo and met Bill
Gates, which is completely unverified, and then
came back. Blade, of course, never got the money.
They eventually had to involve the police. So
the net is really tightening at this point. Eleven
Howard has locked her out of her room for good.
She's bouncing between hotels, the Mercer, the
Beekman, the W New York, getting evicted from
each one after a few days of nonpayment. She's
literally homeless, but homeless in designer
clothes. And this desperation, this is what leads
to the climax of the story. The Morocco trip.
This is where the genre shifts from quirky con
artists to something much darker, almost a psychological
thriller. This is May 2017. She needs a break.
Or, more likely, she needs to flee her problems.
So she invites Rachel Deloach -Williams, who
is a photo editor at Vanity Fair. Right. And
her trainer, Casey Duke, and a videographer to
Marrakesh, she promises it's an all -expenses
-paid trip. A creative retreat, she called it.
And she books La Mamounia. Which is not just
a nice hotel. It's one of the most expensive,
opulent hotels on the planet. And they aren't
just in a room. They are in a private riad, a
whole villa with its own pool and a dedicated
baller. The cost is $7 ,000 a night. I can feel
the anxiety just thinking about this. They arrive.
They are living the dream, eating amazing food,
getting massages. And then the hotel manager
knocks on the door. The credit card machine.
The ultimate villain in Anna's life story. Her
guards aren't working. Nope. She blames the bank.
She blames the time zone. She blames typos. But
days go by. The bill is ballooning. The hotel
staff stops being polite. They start standing
over them at dinner. They send two large men
to their villa and they start threatening to
call the police. And in Morocco, you can go to
jail for unpaid debts. This isn't like the U
.S. The threat of a Moroccan prison is very,
very real. And Anna is just sitting there seemingly
unbothered while Rachel is basically hyperventilating.
That's the trap. That's how she gets her. That
is the trap. Anna turns to Rachel and says, just
put your card down for the hold. It's just a
hold. I'll wire you the money as soon as we get
back to New York. It's just a hold. The famous
last words of so many scams. And Rachel, under
extreme duress and wanting to avoid going to
jail, hands over her personal American Express
and her corporate vanity fare card. The hotel
doesn't just put a hold. They charge it. All
of it. How much was it? $62 ,000. Oh, my God.
That is more than Rachel earned in a year. That
is a life -ruining amount of debt for a normal
person. It absolutely destroyed her financial
stability. And the betrayal is the worst part.
They get back to New York, and Anna gives her
the runaround for weeks. She wires $5 ,000 here,
promises a check is in the mail there. Rachel
has to borrow money from her parents to pay her
rent. She is having panic attacks. This is what
finally pushed Rachel to go to the police and
help set up the sting operation. We'll get to
the sting in a second, but I want to pause on
the check kiting aspect. Because while she was
destroying Rachel's life, she was also committing
serious federal bank fraud just to stay afloat
back in NYC. Right. This was her last ditch effort
for cash. She started depositing bad checks into
a Citibank account. She would write a check for,
say, $50 ,000 from an account that had zero money
in it and deposit it. OK. Now, banks have this
policy where they usually make a portion of those
funds available immediately before the check
actually clears. It's called the float. So she
deposits the bad check. The bank says, here is
$10 ,000 of it while we wait for the rest to
clear. And she just withdraws that cash immediately.
Exactly. And then she runs. So by October 2017,
everyone is looking for her. The hotels, the
banks, Blade, and now Rachel and the NYPD. And
where is Anna? She is in California at Passages
Malibu. A luxury rehab center. Of course she
is. It's the perfect hiding spot. And that's
where the trap is set. Rachel Williams, working
with the NYPD and Officer Michael McCaffrey,
arranges a lunch date. She tells Anna she's in
the area for work and wants to catch up. A total
sting. A total sting. Anna walks out of the facility
to meet her for lunch at a restaurant, and the
LAPD is waiting in the parking lot to arrest
her. And so begins the legal saga. The trial.
This was a circus. It was 201s. The media was
obsessed. But Anna seemed to treat the courtroom
less like a legal proceeding and more like a
runway. It was the trial of the century for the
Instagram generation. Her defense attorney, Todd
Spodek, actually hired a professional stylist
to dress her for court. Wait, I need to emphasize
this. A stylist for a defendant facing up to
15 years in prison. Yes. And the logic, Spodek
argued, was if she looks like a criminal in a
jail jumpsuit. the jury will convict her. But
if she looks like a misunderstood businesswoman
in Saint Laurent and Victoria Beckham, maybe
they won't. So it was all about perception, even
in court. It was all perception. She wore Michael
Kors. She wore high -end designer clothes. There
was one day where she refused to come into the
courtroom because she didn't like her outfit.
She threw a tantrum and delayed the proceedings
for hours. The judge was furious. But the defense
strategy wasn't just about clothes. It was about
the narrative. Spodek argued that she wasn't
a criminal. She was just ambitious. He literally
called it the Sinatra defense. He quoted New
York, New York to the jury. He said, if I can
make it there, I'll make it anywhere. He argued
that Anna was just digging a hole to build a
foundation. He claimed she always intended to
pay everyone back once her business launched.
He tried to reframe the entire fraud as just
fake it till you make it gone wrong. Exactly.
And here is the nuance that I think gets lost
in all the headlines. The jury. They actually
bought some of it. They did, didn't they? They
did. In April 2019, they convicted her on eight
counts, including grand larceny and theft of
services. But, and this is huge, they acquitted
her on the attempted $22 million loan from City
National. Why? Their reasoning was basically,
well, the bank didn't actually give her the money,
so no harm, no foul. And the Rachel Williams
charge, the $62 ,000? Acquitted. not guilty that
is shocking to me how did they justify that because
the jury viewed it as a civil dispute not a criminal
theft they reasoned that rachel willingly handed
over her card she took a risk on a friend who
turned out to be a liar It was a bad debt, yes,
but not larceny in the eyes of the law. That
must have been a bitter pill for Rachel to swallow.
Oh, absolutely. So Anna is sentenced to four
to 12 years. She owes $199 ,000 in restitution
and a $24 ,000 fine. And before she heads to
prison, she gives that infamous interview to
the New York Times where she says, I'd be lying
to you and to everyone else and to myself if
I said I was sorry for anything. Zero remorse.
None. She regretted the mistakes that got her
caught, but she didn't regret the ambition. She
saw herself as a businesswoman whose venture
failed, not a criminal who stole. So she goes
to prison. But in 2026, we know that prison was
just a temporary setback. This brings us to monetizing
the infamy, because while she was sitting in
a cell at Albion Correctional Facility, Netflix
was writing a check. A very big check. Netflix
paid $320 ,000 for the rights to her life story,
which became the Shonda Rhimes series Inventing
Anna. Now, normally, criminals can't profit from
their crimes. There's the Son of Sam law. So
how did this transaction work? Well, the New
York attorney general froze the funds immediately,
exactly because of that law. However, the law
allows the funds to be used to pay restitution
to victims. Oh, OK. So most of that Netflix money
went directly to the bank she stole from and
to pay her court fines. Anna didn't get a briefcase
of cash. She got her debts paid off by Shonda
Rhimes. She ended up keeping only about $22 ,000
of it for herself. Still, it cleared her ledger.
And meanwhile, Rachel Williams wrote her own
book, My Friend Anna. Which sold very well. Rachel
made about $300 ,000 plus a TV option deal with
Lena Dunham. And this sparked a massive public
feud. Anna was furious that Rachel was profiting
from the trauma while Anna felt she was the creator
of the story. It's a total narrative war. But
let's fast forward to her release. She gets paroled
in February 2021 for good behavior. She's out.
She immediately checks into the Nomad Hotel,
again with the hotels. And she has a German camera
crew following her for a reality show. She was
ready for her close -up, but she forgot about
the federal government. Six weeks later, ICE
Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested
her. For the visa. For the visa overstay. She's
a German citizen with a felony record. Technically,
she should have been immediately deported. So
she goes back into custody, this time in ICE
detention. And she fights deportation for 19
months. Finally, in October 2022, a judge grants
a release on house arrest. But strict house arrest.
A $10 ,000 bond. She's confined to a tiny 470
square foot apartment in the East Village. She
has to wear an ankle monitor 24 -7. And initially
she was banned from all social media. Which for
her is worse than prison. It is oxygen for her.
But she eventually got those privileges back.
And this brings us to the final chapter. The
pivot. From 2022 to today, 2026, she has turned
that East Village apartment into a content factory.
Let's talk about the art, because I use heavy
air quotes here. She started selling drawings
she made in jail. Art is subjective, right? In
March 2022, while still in detention, she had
a pop -up show called Free Anna Delvey. It was
co -curated by a man named Alfredo Martinez.
Now, do you know who Alfredo Martinez is? The
name sounds familiar. He is a convicted art forger.
He went to prison for forging Jean -Michel Basquiat
paintings. No way you can't make this up. You
can't. It's scammers supporting scammers. Then
she had a solo show called Allegedly in May 2022.
Models walked around a nightclub with stockings
over their heads, holding her pencil sketches.
It's pure performance art. It's trolling. It
is. But people bought it. By the end of 2022,
she claimed to have sold $340 ,000 worth of sketches.
Original drawings were going for $10 ,000 to
$25 ,000. She used this money to pay her rent,
which was over $4 ,000 a month, and her legal
fees. She even launched an NFT collection because,
well, it was 2022. But the peak of this absurdity
has to be her mainstream media appearances. Dancing
with the Stars. Season 33. September 2024. I
still can't believe this happened. She was cast
on a family dance competition show. And she danced
wearing her icy ankle monitor. She had it bedaddled.
It was part of the costume. That image. Seeing
her do the cha -cha with a government tracking
device on her leg. It feels like a Black Mirror
episode. It's the ultimate symbol of her brand,
isn't it? She isn't hiding the criminality. She
is accessorizing it. She was eliminated first,
by the way. Thank goodness. But she kept going.
Fashion Week. She hosted a show on a roof because
she couldn't leave the building. Yep. September
2023, she teamed up with Kelly Catrone, the famous
PR maven. Models were stomping around the roof
of a walk -up in the East Village. Then, as her
restrictions eased a bit, she started modeling
herself. She walked for SHAO New York in 2024.
In February 2025, she modeled for Elena Velez,
again highlighting the ankle monitor. And now,
in 2026, where is she? She moved out of the city
in early 2024. She's living up in the Hudson
Valley now, still fighting the deportation case,
still creating content. She's seemingly pivoted
from scammer to just fixture. She's just around.
So let's wrap this up with a big question. We've
looked at the scam, the trial, the prison time
and the bizarre aftermath. Did she win? It's
the uncomfortable question we have to answer,
isn't it? If you define winning as getting the
$60 million foundation, no. She failed miserably.
She has a felony record. She faces deportation.
She is under surveillance. But if you define
winning as fame, as relevance, as staying in
the conversation. Then she won, hands down. She
hacked the attention economy. She proved that
in modern America, infamy is just as spendable
as currency. If you are famous enough, someone
will always give you a platform, a check, a reality
show. And I think there's a deeper point here
about the people she scammed. Yeah. Why do we
as a culture love this story so much? I think
part of it is that she exposed the elite. That's
the critical sociological take. She stress tested
the system. She proved that high society isn't
a meritocracy. It's a vibe. It's all transactional.
Right. She proved that a hundred dollar tip matters
more to a concierge than a background check.
She proved that powerful bankers can be dazzled
by a fake accent and a good suit. She embarrassed
them because she showed everyone that the exclusive
world is actually very cheap to buy into if you
just have the confidence. She held up a mirror
and they did not like what they saw. She was
a fraud, yes. But she revealed that they were
also faking it in their own way, playing by these
unwritten rules that she just mastered. Exactly.
And that's why we are still talking about her
in 2026. She is the ultimate trickster figure
for late stage capitalism. Well, on that cheery
note, we will wrap up this Deep Dice. From the
truck stops of Russia to the runways of New York,
it has been a wild ride. It certainly has. To
our listener, the learner. Thank you for sticking
with us through the weeds of wire transfers and
court filings. We hope this gave you a clearer
picture of not just what happened, but how it
all happened. Always a pleasure to connect the
dots. I want to leave you with one final thought
to chew on. We spend a lot of time judging Anna's
victims, the bankers, the hotels, her friends.
We think to ourselves, I would never fall for
that. But ask yourself this. In your own life,
how many times have you assumed someone was competent
or wealthy or trustworthy just because they dressed
the right way or knew the right people? What
would it take for an Anna Delvey to slip past
your defenses? That is a scary thought to end
on. Stay skeptical, stay curious, and we will
catch you on the next deep dive.