Streaming Spotlight by Cindy Summers
Inventing Anna – Netflix
Breeze rating from 1 to 4 palm trees, 4 being best.
Inventing Anna is based on the true life of Anna Sororkin, aka “Fake German Heiress” Anna Delvey (Julia Garner) who scammed thouands of dollars in gourmet meal, luxury hotels and private jet flights. She posed as a socialite in an attempt to steal millions of dollars from multiple sources including big banks, financial advisors, hedge funds, law firms, real estate developers, philanthropists, galleries, art dealers, all of Fashion Week and half of New York society.
Anna claimed to have a family trust in Germany and gave numerous different reasons why she could not access her money like that she was not old enough to get the money yet or her father is controlling and cuts her off all the time. She also knowingly used bad credit cards, often agressively blaming the service or business, which caused others around her to conveniently step forward and take care of whatever financial issues arose.
Most of Anna’s fradulant activity centered around an exclusive private club she was trying to build she called the Anna Delvey Foundation (ADF). Anna’s vision was for ADF to be a private club and dynamic visual arts center, an exclusive with place for people with taste, a step beyond the VIP room, series of small cozy lounges with butlers, clubs within clubs, with a luxury hotel and three restaurants. She selected a historic New York building at 281 Park Ave. with 6 floors and 45,000 sqft, which with the $4 million a year lease and $35 million for renovations required a total investment of $40 million.
Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky) was a reporter for Manahattan Magazine who had been banished to the far corner of the office known as Scriberia with three other long time reporters: Maud, Lou and Barry who all supported each other. Vivian defied her editor and jumped on Anna’s case after reading the enditment and learning that Anna had been extridicted from LA to New York.
Anna was denied bail and remanded to Riker’s Island until trial, so Vivian wrote a letter to Anna and asked to visit her to share her story. Anna called and agreed, though wasn’t willing to give up very much information, implying it would take Vivivian multiple visits to get the whole story. In the meantime, Maud Lou and Barry searched through Anna’s instagram to develop a timeline of her actions and find other people that Vivian to interview that knew or were close to Anna.
In November 2017, the Manahattan District Attorney’s Office announced the New York Supreme Court indictment of Anna Sorokin, alias Delvey, with two counts of attempted grand larceny in the first degree (one guilty verdict), three counts of grand larceny in the second degree (two guilty verdicts), one count of grand larceny third degree (guilty), and theft of services (guilty).
Anna Sorokin was a clever 26 year old white collar criminal who conned Manhattan’s “glitterati” leaving egg on faces of some the the biggest players from the art world, real-estate, fashion and Wall Street. It’s unclear as to the total number of vicitms she left in her wake as many were too embarrassed to come forward and press charges, like Nora Radcliff, who Anna had solen over $400,000 in fraudulant credit card purchases to fund Anna’s luxury wardrobe and lifestyle.
Runtime: 9 – 1hr episodes
