The German impostor Anna Sorokin has been released from custody pending deportation in the USA. The 31-year-old was allowed to leave the institution on Friday evening (local time), the responsible authority said. The TV station NBC reported that Sorokin posted bail of $10,000.
Her spokeswoman Juda Engelmayer told the US portal “Page Six” that Sorokin had raised the required sum through online sales of her artworks. The German-Russian made drawings in detention and distributed them via an Instagram page. However, the judge ruled on Sorokin’s dismissal that she was not allowed to continue operating her Instagram channel – either herself or through third parties.
In addition, the 31-year-old is placed under house arrest in New York and has to wear an ankle bracelet. The release from prison was initially delayed because Sorokin could not show a permanent address. According to Page Six, however, she has now found an apartment for which she pays $ 5,000 a month rent. Sorokin is said to have initially rented the apartment for six months with the help of a guarantor and has already paid three months’ rent in advance.
The release does not change the intention of the American authorities to deport Sorokin. For 18 months she has been trying to resist it.
Born near Moscow in 1991, Sorokin came to Germany with her parents as a teenager and then graduated from high school in Eschweiler near Aachen. She then moved via London and Paris to New York, where she pretended to be an heiress to millions in Manhattan’s high society under the pseudonym Anna Delvey and – according to a court ruling in 2019 – stole services worth more than $200,000.
Sorokin was sentenced to four years in prison but was released in early 2021 for good behavior. Shortly thereafter, she was arrested again because of an expired visa and has been in the facility of the immigration service ICE ever since. She has appealed several times against being deported to Germany. Sorokin’s story was filmed under the title “Inventing Anna” for the Netflix streaming service. According to her own statements, she is working on another documentary series, a book and a podcast.
