Anna Sorokin — the fake German heiress who swindled thousands of dollars from friends, hotels, banks and other businesses — joined a class-action lawsuit accusing jailers of wrongfully denying COVID-19 vaccines to inmates.
Anna Sorokin, also known as Anna Delvey and now the subject of popular Netflix series “Inventing Anna,” said she caught COVID-19 as a result of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) refusing her multiple requests for a booster shot, according to the ACLU lawsuit.
Sorokin, 31, is among four named plaintiffs in the civil action filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., against ICE, Acting Director Tae Johnson, ICE’s parent agency the Department of Homeland Security and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The convicted scam artist said she received the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine in April last year.
“Ms. Sorokin has made multiple requests for a booster shot,” according to the lawsuit. “She never received a response.”
She tested positive for COVID-19 in mid-January, leading to “a fever, persistent cough, nausea, migraines, and body aches,” her lawyers said.
Even after leaving quarantine on Jan. 29, “she continued to experience lingering effects including fatigue, coughing, brain fog and shortness of breath,” according to the civil action.
ACLU attorneys said Sorokin, who is at the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, New York, “has several medical conditions that make her vulnerable to serious illness or death,” including “chronic kidney infection as well as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.”
An ICE representative declined comment on the the lawsuit Thursday, but said the agency follows CDC guidance on COVID-19.
The CDC recommends boosters to any inmates who are eligible.
Sorokin’s co-plaintiffs include Ramon Dominguez Gonzalez, 32, at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico, California; Miguel Angel Escalante, 36, now at the Florence Correctional Center in Florence, Arizona; and Kenet Jefet Hernandez Herrera, 24, who is at the Eloy Detention Center in Eloy, Arizona.
The plaintiffs “are more likely than others to suffer serious illness or death from COVID-19” because they’re living in cramped confinement without boosters, their attorneys wrote.
In April 2019, a New York jury found Sorokin guilty of four counts of theft of services, three counts of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny.
She was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison before she was released in February last year — and then taken into federal custody for possible deportation.
This story first appeared on NBCNews.com.