Anna delvey feet4/1/2024 She had a vision for a private members and arts club called The Anna Delvey Foundation. She was no longer working for Purple, she was working on her own project. So, what was this Anna actually doing in New York? It wasn’t a huge amount, by Huang’s standards, two or three thousand dollars, but it was a sign of things to come. But when they returned to New York City, Anna seemed to just forget about paying him back. They went to the Biennale, had a lot of fun, Anna paid for everything in cash, and tipped generously, as she always did. Anna asked him to book the plane tickets and hotel, which was a bit weird because she clearly had a lot of money, but he did so anyway. In 2015 she met a Chinese socialite and art collector called Michael Xufu Huang, and asked him if they could go together to the Venice Biennale, a cultural festival in Venice, in Italy. Even back in the early days, though, there were strange signs that something was off, something wasn’t quite right. The impression was that this girl was connected, and that she had money coming out of her ears. She seemed to know everyone, and would introduce people as “her dear friend X or Y”, despite only having met them a few times. Over the following year or so, she would be seen at the most exclusive parties and social events in New York City. She knew people, she had taste, and the assumption of people who met her was that there was something else she had: money, and bucketloads of it. The pay wasn’t good, in fact, she was only paid €400 a month–a pittance for Paris–but the connections she made were priceless. She had been working as an intern at a French fashion magazine called Purple. This wasn’t someone who had just read up on some Buzzfeed list of “The most expensive places to eat in New York City” she really knew. She talked about the most fashionable bars and restaurants, she knew the places to go. She seemed like she came from a wealthy background, and was very accustomed to there being large amounts of money flying around. She was clearly someone who knew and understood fashion. She wore expensive clothes, stylish but not over the top. She told people that she was a wealthy German heiress, that her father was a wealthy entrepreneur, and that she would inherit a large trust fund when she turned 25. One such person was a young lady called Anna. People from all over the world fly to the city for fancy dinners, champagne, and the opportunity to meet and network. It was New York fashion week, a time where the who’s who of the fashion world comes together. Now, to understand how she got to this point, we must go back six years, to 2013. She was led away to prison, and would spend three and a half years behind bars for her crimes. The jury deliberated for two days, but the verdict was clear. It would later be revealed that she stole up to $275,000 from a mixture of hotels, restaurants, shops, and individuals. She was accused of multiple cases of what’s called “grand larceny”, in other words, stealing large amounts of money. Not petty theft, not stealing or assault. And, like the occupant of the dock, the charges were unusual. Several times during the month-long trial, she had even come in wearing designer clothing, not the prison-issued orange jumpsuit. She had well-kept long brown hair, and large glasses. She was not the typical occupant of the courtroom. On April 25th, 2019, a young girl stood in New York’s City criminal court, ready to learn her fate. OK then, the story of Anna Delvey, the fake German heiress. It’s an amazing story that sounds too good to be true, and involves New York high society, social media of course, celebrities and lots and lots of money. And in part three, today’s episode, we are going to be talking about Anna Sorokin or Anna Delvey, the fake German heiress. But there was one secret that he was keeping close to his chest, that he wasn’t telling people. Then in part two, we looked at a man called Liver King, a man who claimed to have discovered the secret to true health and happiness by returning to an ancestral lifestyle, which involved having ice cold baths and eating raw bull testicles. In case you missed them, in part one we looked at Billy McFarland and Fyre Festival, the festival in the Bahamas that promised to be an unforgettable experience of luxury and supermodels and then…wasn’t. I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three of our three-part mini-series on The Great American Con Artist. The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English. Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
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