Anna “Delvey” Sorokin may have lied about being an heiress, but there’s one thing she says she has never faked: her accent.
The socialite scammer, 31, whose larger-than-life crimes inspired the Shondaland Netflix series “Inventing Anna,” says she doesn’t understand why some people are saying she is putting on a fake German-Russian accent.
“I mean, people just say so many things about me, I don’t care,” she told Alex Cooper on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, speaking in a video call from prison on March 7. “It’s just the way I speak, I don’t know. I never put on any accent, it’s just the way I talk. Did anybody ever hear me speak any different? Then they should come up with the evidence, whoever accused me of that. I want to see the proof, so, let’s talk.”
Sorokin, who began using the last name “Delvey” when she moved to the U.S., also shared her thoughts about Garner’s take on her distinctive way of speaking.
“When I heard Julia talking like me the first time, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, do I sound this insufferable?’” she said. “It’s just so weird, like, hearing yourself, it’s like the same when you just hear your voice being recorded. It’s totally different from the way you hear yourself when you speak.”
Sorokin, a German citizen who was born in Russia, posed as a German heiress to swindle hundreds of thousands of dollars from members of New York City’s wealthy elite. In 2019, she was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison.
She was released on parole in February 2021, but was detained a month later by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for overstaying her visa. She is reportedly still in the custody of immigration authorities, her attorney told NBC News Tuesday, and she is fighting not to be deported back to Germany.
When Cooper asked Sorokin if she considers herself a con artist, Sorokin said, “Absolutely not.”
Cooper pressed further, asking what Sorokin saw as the difference between herself and a con artist.
“Well, I never intended permanently to harm anybody, you know?” Sorokin said. “I literally cannot come with a single example where I’m like, ‘Yeah, let me f--- this person over and they’ll never see their money ever again.’”
“So you think in the grand scheme of things, it was all with good intention what you were doing?” Cooper asked.
“Yes,” Sorokin said. “I just didn’t choose the best means to go about it.”