Anna Delvey, Subject of 'Inventing Anna' Doc, Released From Jail, Put on House Arrest

Anna Sorokin, aka Anna Delvey, the convicted scam artist who inspired the Netflix scripted series Inventing Anna, has been released from a federal detention center after a judge granted her a $10,000 bond.

Sorokin's defense attorney, Manny Arora, confirms to ET that she was released from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Orange County, New York late on Friday Oct. 7, and is living in New York City where she will remain under house arrest as her deportation case continues.

According to multiple reports, the fake German heiress also must stay away from social media. Sorokin has more than one million followers on Instagram and over 35,000 followers on Twitter.

In a previous statement to ET, another attorney for Sorokin, John Sandweg, said that "after 17 months of immigration detention, an immigration judge recognized that immigration detention was no longer necessary for Anna and ordered her release subject to various conditions of supervision."

Sandweg added, "This ruling does not mean that Anna will get a free pass. She will continue to face deportation proceedings and her release will be closely monitored by ICE and the State of New York. Nevertheless, as the court found, Anna does not pose such a risk that continued detention was necessary."

In the hours after her release, Sorokin conducted an interview with the New York Timesat her apartment in the East Village of Manhattan and addressed her decision serve jail time rather than continue to fight her immigration status from Germany.

"Letting them deport me would have been like a sign of capitulation — confirmation of this perception of me as this shallow person who only cares about obscene wealth, and that’s just not the reality," she told the outlet. "I could have left, but I chose not to because I’m trying to fix what I’ve done wrong. I have so much history in New York and I felt like if I were in Europe, I’d be running from something. But if jail does not prove people wrong, then what will?"

She also noted, "I’m really happy. Nothing was guaranteed. They denied bail before. It was an exercise in perseverance. So many immigration lawyers told me I’d get deported to Mars before I’d get out in New York. And I just had to find the person who’d align with my vision, not accept 'no' for an answer and make it happen."

Now that she is out of jail, Sorokin said that she is simply most excited to be "Finding my way back."

Sorokin was arrested in 2017 and found guilty of grand larceny in 2019 for having stolen more than $200,000 in a scheme where she defrauded some of New York City’s social elites and financial institutions. Sorokin pulled off the scam by convincing her would-be victims she was an heiress worth millions of dollars.  

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

Sorokin, who was 28 years old at the time, was sentenced to between four and 12 years in prison before eventually being released on Feb. 11, 2021. Her freedom didn’t last long. Less than a month later, she was taken into custody by ICE for violating the terms of her visa. 

The news of Sorokin's release comes just over a month after writer Rachel DeLoache Williams sued Netflix alleging defamation and false light invasion of privacy for its portrayal of her in the series, Inventing Anna. Williams had documented her one-time friendship with Sorkin in her 2019 book, My Friend Anna.

"This action will show that Netflix made a deliberate decision for dramatic purposes to show Williams doing or saying things in the series which portray her as a greedy, snobbish, disloyal, dishonest, cowardly, manipulative and opportunistic person," the docs, obtained by ET, alleged. "... This action is based firmly on statements of fact which are demonstrably false and the attribution of statements that she never made."

The docs went on to claim that Williams "has been the subject of thousands of such abusive messages" since the series' release.

"As a result of Netflix’s false portrayal of her as a vile and contemptible person, Williams was subjected to a torrent of online abuse, negative in-person interactions, and pejorative characterizations in podcasts, etc. that were based on the series," the docs claim, "which establish that Netflix’s actions exposed her to public contempt, ridicule, aversion or disgrace, or induced an evil opinion of her."

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