Anna Sorokin, better known as the con artist Anna Delvey, is set to participate in the upcoming season of Dancing With The Stars. Her life, which inspired the Netflix series Inventing Anna, has garnered significant media attention following her fraudulent activities in New York City, where she posed as a wealthy socialite.
Alongside Delvey, this season’s cast includes Oscar-nominated actor Eric Roberts, Real Housewives of Atlanta star Phaedra Parks, Team USA Olympians Ilona Maher and Stephen Nedoroscik, and actress Tori Spelling from Beverly Hills, 90210.
Delvey will be dancing with professional partner Ezra Sosa while wearing an ankle monitor, a requirement since she began her house arrest in 2022 as she contests her deportation order. Though under house arrest rules previously allowed her to travel within a 70-mile radius of her home and throughout New York City, it remains unclear if there have been any updates on these travel restrictions.
At the show’s launch, Sorokin mentioned she had to obtain permission to film out of state and humorously added that she would be “bejewelling” her ankle monitor. In response to potential nerves about the competition, she quipped, “What’s the worst that can happen? They can’t arrest me for dancing badly.”
In 2019, Delvey was convicted of grand larceny and theft of services after scamming over $200,000 from financial institutions and luxury hotels. She falsely claimed to have a $60 million trust fund and a grand vision for an arts foundation, while her background revealed a more modest upbringing as a Russian immigrant in Germany.
Her story gained significant attention in 2018 following a feature in New York Magazine. It was subsequently adapted into a series produced by Shonda Rhimes, in which Delvey was portrayed by Julia Garner. Despite receiving $320,000 from Netflix for the rights to her story, Delvey could not retain all the funds due to a New York law prohibiting criminals from profiting from their crimes.
“I never asked for Netflix to buy my story, it just happened,” Sorokin stated in a 2021 interview with the BBC after her release. “And everything else, it just spun out of my control.”