FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2018 file photo, Anna Sorokin appears in New York State Supreme Court on grand larceny charges. NEW YORK -- Anna Sorokin travelled in celebrity circles and tossed US$100 tips -- all the more reason to believe she was the German heiress she said she was. But behind the jet-set lifestyle and pricey threads, prosecutors say, was a fraudster who bilked friends, banks and hotels for a taste of the high life.
"Her overall scheme has been to claim to be a wealthy German heiress with approximately $60 million in funds being held abroad," prosecutor Catherine McCaw said after Sorokin's October 2017 arrest. "She's born in Russia and has not a cent to her name as far as we can determine." Sorokin arrived in the world of champagne wishes and caviar dreams in 2016 with a new name and a wardrobe to match . She made a show of proving she belonged, passing crisp Benjamins to Uber drivers and hotel concierges, but she gave varying accounts for the source of her wealth, according to people who knew her.
"It was a magic trick," Rachel Williams, the friend from the Morocco trip, wrote in Vanity Fair . "I'm embarrassed to say that I was one of the props, and the audience, too. Anna's was a beautiful dream of New York, like one of those nights that never seems to end. And then the bill arrives." One bank rejected Sorokin because she "did not have sufficient cash flow to make loan payments," prosecutors said. She bailed on another firm when it pressured her for a meeting with a UBS banker who could verify her assets, prosecutors said.
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