The real-life ‘Inventing Anna’ is facing deportation

By Marianne Garvey and Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN

Anna Sorokin, the fake German heiress Netflix’s “Inventing Anna” is based on, remains in Immigration and Enforcement custody, a spokesman for the agency said Tuesday.

Her attorney had reportedly feared her deportation when he couldn’t reach her on Monday.

Sorokin, 31, has been in ICE custody at the Orange County Correctional Facility in upstate New York since June 7 of last year, according to a class-action lawsuit she filed with several other immigration detainees earlier this month.

“She remains in ICE custody pending removal,” ICE spokesman Emilio Dabul said in an email to CNN Tuesday. The agency did not specify where Sorokin is currently being held and said it could not discuss any future deportation plans.

Attorney Manny Arora told NBC News on Monday that he hadn’t been able to reach Sorokin and was “working under the presumption that she is being deported.” Arora could not be immediately reached for comment.

He told NBC that attorneys were given a month to appeal when a deportation order was signed on February 17.

“Legally, they should not be able to deport her until the 19th. … But we are dealing with bureaucracy, and there are numerous filings in her case, so you just never know if there was a paperwork error,” Arora said, according to NBC.

Sorokin duped victims out of money by pretending to be a German heiress called Anna Delvey with a $60 million trust fund.

She was found guilty of stealing more than $200,000 from banks and friends while scamming her way into New York society, the Manhattan District Attorney said after her 2019 conviction.

Sorokin was released from jail in February 2021 after serving nearly four years on theft and larceny charges. But it wasn’t long before she ended up back behind bars.

ICE took custody of Sorokin on March 25, 2021. In November, the Board of Immigration Appeals granted an emergency stay in her case, according to ICE. She’s been fighting her deportation — and also recently joined a group of plaintiffs suing the agency, alleging they’d requested and been denied Covid booster shots while in custody.

Sorokin’s case drew widespread attention after a 2018 New York magazine article.

That article became the basis of Shonda Rhimes’ “Inventing Anna,” a dramatization which started streaming on Netflix last month. Actress Julia Garner, best known for her Emmy-winning role as Ruth on “Ozark,” plays Sorokin.

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CNN’s Artemis Moshtaghian contributed to this report.