The Anna Delvey Story: A Critic on Classism, Social Capital and The “American Dream” — Inventing Anna Deep Dive
This is a written version of a video essay produced for Laurie’s Wandering Mind on Youtube.
In the spring of 2018, Jessica Pressler, a journalist for New York Magazine, published an expose titled “Maybe She Had So Much Money She Just Lost Track of It” recounting the story of Anna Sorokin a.k.a. Anna Delvey, a russian-born young woman posing as a german heiress/socialite who had allegedly conned her way into the elite scene of New York City and scammed hundreds of thousands of dollars from rich people, hotels and banks over the course of a couple years.
Recently, Netflix came out with its own scripted limited series produced by Shonda Rhimes retelling Anna’s story based on Pressler’s article and it rose to number one on Netflix’s Top 10 Global.
In today’s essay, rather than simply reporting the story, I want to take a look at what this story highlights in regards to classism, the importance of social capital and the myth of the “American Dream.” I also want to take a look at the possible psychological underlying components that may have led Anna to act in the way she did. But before I can do that, I must lay the scene for you.
The Anna Delvey Story
The Anna Delvey story has been recounted hundreds of times in various articles and videos so I will keep brief in here. As I just mentioned, Anna Sorokin, who went by Anna Delvey, was a 20-something girl who arrived to New York City after interning at Purple magazine in Paris. She quickly associated herself with the right members of the Manhattan’s elite posing as a mysterious european heiress with a sizeable trust fund. She went to all the right parties, dressed very expensively, hung out with cool and important people of the party scene, ate at fancy restaurants, stayed in expensive hotels, took luxurious trips, etc. Eventually, she started talking about her new business venture, the Anna Delvey Foundation, which was an imagined exclusive private art club. She somehow convinced a lot of very influential people to be on her board of advisors and then started pitching her business plan to banks with the help of a trusted lawyer she’d met through her connections. In the end, she made some questionable bets in terms of how she tried to obtain financing for her venture and at the same time started to rely more heavily on manipulation and fraud to get her ways and it eventually caught up with her. She was arrested and charged with several counts of grand larceny and theft of services and eventually sentenced to 4-to-12 years in prison. She was released last year on good behaviour, but was then apprehended by ICE for overstaying her visa shortly after. She is currently in an ICE detention centre awaiting a decision on her case for deportation. She also has a deal with Bunim/Murray Productions for a docuseries following the next chapter of her life picking up right after the partly fictionalized show “Inventing Anna” left off.
Sorting facts from fiction is not very simple based of off the original article along with other reports versus the Netflix series, Inventing Anna. The show took some creative liberties to fill in some gaps and perhaps dramatize some events but still stayed relatively true to the story. In an interview, journalist Jessica Pressler said that some of the interviews and events that are depicted in the show that weren’t in the original article came from notes of other interviews she did for an upcoming book. As a producer, she was consulted on a lot the main elements of the show so we have to assume that the show is staying relatively true to the actual story.
Classism and The Importance Social Capital in High Society
So now that we set the tone, let’s explore how this story is a great example of classism in America and how social capital can be the key to success in business in places like New York City.
According to Classism.org “Classism is [the] differential treatment based on social class or perceived social class. [It] is the systematic oppression of subordinated class groups to advantage and strengthen the dominant class groups. […] Classism is held in place by a system of beliefs and cultural attitudes that ranks people according to economic status, family lineage, job status, level of education, and other divisions.”
Money, being one of the greatest markers of class and status in our society, really seems to dictate how we perceive one another. As we are about to see, having (real) money or even the implication that someone is wealthy is enough to shape how we behave and what we accept from them.
In the context of this story, we can easily imagine how a young, ambitious woman with no capital would have struggled to advance in her career and life at a pace Anna was able to by impersonating somebody that was already “important.” The reality is that social mobility is hard to achieve when you have no money and no connection. By manufacturing a story in which she had large amounts of foreign wealth, and dressing the part, she was easily able to fool the New York City upper-classes she was trying to emulate. It’s interesting to think that her portrayal of an average socialite which consisted of being well-dressed, staying in fancy hotels, eating at upscale restaurants and tipping with $100 bills was all these people needed to be convinced of her wealth. She has also been described as arrogant, rude, pretentious and impatient, all behaviours that are associated with some elites and their lack of relatability to the average person.
The way in which she was able to trick and defraud upscale hotels time and time again also demonstrates how classism in embedded in the service industry. They way she so easily deceived staff and managers alike through generous tipping and dressing expensively, makes the case for this. In any normal circumstance, we would expect staff to enact hotel policies like putting a valid credit card down on file upon checking into a room, but in Anna’s case, she was able to circumvent the system by abusing of the fear employees have to challenge a wealthy person’s integrity which could lead them to lose their jobs or other negative consequences if the guest decided to complain to management. All of this even though they were just trying to do their job and follow the rules. Classic rich person taking advantage of the help.
Another clear way in which classism is prominent in this story is how Anna was able to befriend and eventually try to take advantage of social climbers like Rachel Williams. Williams and other friends of lower (perceived) status than Anna’s were more than content to accept Anna’s initial generosity in the first year of their friendship where they benefited from access to exclusive events, free luxurious meals and clothes, meeting famous people, etc. They were undoubtedly motivated by a desired to feel approved by elites like Anna. Being associated with her felt like a privilege, and a potential ticket to a greater future. It’s interesting to see how people like that were also ok with Anna’s poor behaviour and violation of social norms, probably attributing it to her superior status. I think, a lot of the time, we forget how we excuse rich people’s shallowness and lack of touch with reality just because they have money.
Lastly, I think another important depiction of classism in this case is highlighted by how far Anna was able to take her business venture despite lacking any tangible credibility or fund. Through networking at the various events she had attended, Anna was able to collect enough social capital to legitimize her credibility in the business world. Social capital is “the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively.” (lexico.com) While I cannot confirm whether this unfolded the way it is presented in Netflix’s show “Inventing Anna,” the show does a wonderful job at depicting the importance of connections in the business world perhaps even more particularly in the Manhattan business world. In episode four, we see Anna’s character change her appearance and get in touch with the right people to legitimize her business proposal using some existing connections. While she did in fact have to submit some falsified documents to advance in her loan application process, she was still able to work with a reputable lawyer from a prestigious firm who put her in touch with multiple large financial institutions including City National Bank and Fortress Investment Group even having one of them extend an $100,000 overdraft limit, again with no tangible proof of assets or any tangible collateral. That isn’t something banks will usually do for anyone and clearly highlights how classism is deeply embedded in our financial institutions.
As Jessica Pressler concludes beautifully in her New York Magazine article, “[…] Anna looked at the soul of New York and recognized that if you distract people with shiny objects, with large wads of cash, with the indicia of wealth, if you show them the money, they will be virtually unable to see anything else. And the thing was: It was so easy.”
The Myth of the “American Dream”
It’s hard to tell if Ms Sorokin came to America with a clear plan and intended to defraud major banks and scam her way into higher society. From what the show demonstrates which is hard to verify, she grew up with aspirations to belong to the American upper class. She was very into appearance, fashion and luxury. In most of the interviews she gave, you will find her still referring to herself as business woman, and defending her business plans for the Anna Delvey Foundation. It’s unclear if Anna always had criminal intent or if she just reacted to her worsening situation and web of lies, and it kind of all snowballed into what it eventually became.
In one case, if her primary objective when she came to New York was to “become someone”, to become a part of the higher society she had always deeply admired and envied, the frauds and scams she perpetrated would have been a pure means to an end. She may have just longed to belong. And while her actions are not excusable because normal people don’t just commit crimes to get where they want to go, in her mind, it may have felt necessary to achieve the appearance of wealth she was so desperate to portray.
In another case, if she came to America with her primary goal being to become a business woman, seeing the high barrier to entry for someone like her, a foreign young woman with no money and no connection, perpetrating this con may have been the easiest way she saw to achieve her dreams.
In either case, it kind of speaks volumes to the myth of the “American Dream,” which “is the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in a society in which upward mobility is possible for everyone” according to Investopia.com. While she was obviously too impatient to pay her dues and climb the ladder like most young professionals do in business, she recognized the fact that the odds are stacked against average people and highly favor people of higher social standing and wealth. So she capitalized on that and faked her way to the top. Before she got caught of course.
Was Anna Sorokin a Sociopath?: The Psychology of Anna Sorokin
That actually brings me to my last segment which doesn’t really have anything to do with classism and social capital but I wanted to included because it totally fascinated me. What kind of person makes the decisions Anna made and behaves the way she did? I want to do a quick informal analysis of Anna Sorokin’s potential mental condition.
While I’m obviously no clinical psychologist or psychiatrist, and I doubt any member of the profession would want to officially pronounce themselves definitely and give a diagnosis without proper assessment of Ms Sorokin, the way she is portrayed in the show does point to the possibility of her having some kind of mental condition. Perhaps chronic delusions or maybe even downright sociopathy. She seems to have been quite manipulative, calculated and cold.
There is this great article from the Harvard Gazette that interviews Maria Konnikova, a psychologist studying scam artists that give some great insights into the mind of grifters like Anna Sorokin. She explains how con artists are amazingly confident storytellers which I reckon does sound like the Anna Sorokin we have come to know. She also explains that the general psychological profile of most con artists can include psychopathy and narcissism among other things.
I believe that narcissism probably has a tangible claim here since it is about this sense of entitlement and the confidence one is able to exude as a result of this.
In an interview with 60 Minutes Australia, Maria Konnikova says “people who are such deep narcissists they don’t think twice about manipulating others about taking everything from them about stealing their identities stealing their lives because they deserve it and if you deserve it did you do anything wrong why of course not.”
Her obsession with her appearance during the court proceedings going as far as hiring a celebrity stylist and capitalizing off of the media circus by creating an Instagram account displaying her various looks also denote this deeply narcissistic tendency.
Delusion of grandeur is another possibility since she still maintains that she did not do anything wrong. According to WebMD.com, “It’s when you believe that you have more power, wealth, smarts, or other grand traits than is true.”
In her interview with 60 Minutes Australia, she says: “Like I did have this project and I did have this vision, and it probably would’ve worked out if I did have the money so.” The interviewer replies “But you didn’t have the money, that’s why the project was no good.” And she says “If I would’ve have gotten the money from the bank.”
Yet another possibility is sociopathy. In their podcast episode on Anna Delvey, Dr. Kirk Honda and Humberto, host of the “Psychology in Seattle” podcast speculated that Anna may be on some sort of psychopathic spectrum.
“by a psychopathic spectrum I mean someone who doesn’t have the same care about rules of society and doesn’t necessarily care about other people’s feelings doesn’t doesn’t really mind lying to people as much as other people do so she doesn’t she doesn’t mind breaking the rules she doesn’t seem to have much remorse.”
That seems possible based on some of the stories portrayed in the show including Rachel Williams’ as well as her general unapologetic behaviour. She also demonstrated a very high tolerance for risks through her various schemes. That and the fact that she actually still doesn’t believe she did anything wrong.
When 60 Minutes Australia interviewer told her that “the whole Anna Delvey Foundation, your whole business was just this house of cards. It wasn’t real, Anna.” She replied “So many businesses are just a house of cards, you just don’t know about it.”
Ultimately, we will never know to extend every move she made was either very well calculated or just acted out of pure delusion. In the show, there is a lot of implicit hints at her methodical choices but in the 60 Minutes Australia interview, she kind of sounded like it wasn’t as premeditated and calculated as it may have been implied.
She told 60 Minutes Australia, “It’s like I had no idea what was going on, so I just, I kinda like… did things [laugh].” The interviewer then asked “so you weren’t that calculated.” And she replied “No. I don’t see myself exactly as a ladder climber. [laugh]. No, I just kinda doing whatever I wanted at the time.” He then replied “So you just wanted to go straight to the top?” To which she responded “Kind of yes. Why waste my time.”
Regardless of her mental state, while the show doesn’t quite portray this, she falsified bank statements to pretend she had a legitimate trust fund overseas, fabricated wire transfer confirmations to fool hotels into believing she had sent the money to pay them, and also cashed in a large amount of fraudulent cheques she wrote to herself on multiple occasions. Whether she initially intended to resort to criminal means to bankroll her lavish lifestyle and unrealistic dreams, the defence’s argument that she was never close to commit any crime seems completely ridiculous in my opinion.
Final Thoughts
In the end, if we can get anything other than a few hours of entertainment from this story, we can see a critic of the rules our society is based upon and how Anna Sorokin played the game of classism against itself and almost won.
Not unlike other recent cons that were very publicized such as Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos or Billy McFarland and the Fyre Festival, we have this deep fascination to understand these con artists and perhaps how they were almost able to fool us all. After all, for every exposed failed con, there might be a successful one we will never be able to see through.
It’s funny because I think a part of us wants to root for Anna in a way despite her not being the most likeable character because we just want to see how far she can go and how many rich people she can screw. Just as how we cheer and enjoy watching movies and shows like Ocean’s 11, Fast and Furious, or my personal favorite and deeply underrated White Collar where con artists and thieves are portrayed as these characters with higher motives and perhaps even decent moral values. They are going after the big banks, the crooked casinos or worse bad guys than themselves.
I also wonder if she could have kept up this charade forever if she had stuck with the socialite angle and never pursued her business idea. We’ll never know but this whole saga surely gave her some fame and she will likely capitalize on that in the future. She already got paid handsomely by Netflix for the rights to her story and has this deal for an upcoming docuseries. Maybe we will also see her publish a book some day or try to launch another business?
Please let me know your thoughts on this topic in the comments below! I would love to hear what you think of this whole social commentary or even your speculations as to Anna’s motives and intentions.
Watch full video essay here:
Sources
- Maybe She Had So Much Money She Just Lost Track of It by Jessica Pressler https://www.thecut.com/article/how-anna-delvey-tricked-new-york.html
- Inventing Anna on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/81008305
- Seen ‘Inventing Anna’? Here’s What It Gets Right (and Wrong) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/12/arts/television/inventing-anna-true-story.html
- Anna Sorokin, a.k.a. Anna Delvey, Is Getting a Docuseries by Chris Murphy https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/anna-sorokin-aka-anna-delvey-is-getting-a-docuseries/amp
- Anna Sorokin Case Analysis | Defrauding the “Elites” by Dr. Todd Grande https://youtu.be/C2xXcqnTPog
- The Psychology of Anna Delvey by Psychology in Seattle https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzku_2n5tKw
- Pro at Cons by Christina Pazzanese https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/04/harvard-grad-studies-cons-and-how-to-avoid-them/
- How con-artist Anna Sorokin ripped off the New York elite and became a star | 60 Minutes Australia https://youtu.be/GQbNnUW_xqw
- https://classism.org/about-class/what-is-classism/
- https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/social_capital
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Sorokin
- https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/american-dream.asp
- https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/delusions-grandeur
