How do you pretend to be an heiress with a $60 million trust fund without having a nervous breakdown? Anna Sorokin says her mind was on other things.

• The real-life Anna Sorokin of "Inventing Anna" says the stress of her scam wasn't a problem.
• The Netflix show conflates the different ways she misled people and banks, she told Insider.

As "Inventing Anna" topped Netflix charts this month, many viewers had the same question.

How did Anna Sorokin, a 20-something middle-class German national, go to New York and pretend to be an heiress with a $60 million trust fund, stiff expensive hotels, and create fake identities to lie to banks — and not freak out over the stress?

In a series of interviews with Insider this week, Sorokin had a few different explanations.

Any stress she felt, she said, was a good thing.

"I do not mind. For me, it's kind of like a driving factor," she said. "It motivates me a bit. The worst is having nothingness."

As chronicled in the 2018 New York magazine story that became "Inventing Anna," Sorokin scammed Manhattan's social scene using the name Anna Delvey for years before her arrest in 2017. She ran in wealthy circles and took part in trips, parties, and hotel stays — often while leaving other people with the bill.

At trial in 2019, Manhattan District Attorney prosecutors spent weeks painstakingly going through complicated financial documents with the jury. Sorokin, in addition to putting on the airs of a wealthier person to friends and acquaintances, told financial institutions she was an heiress with a $60 million trust fund back in Germany.

But while court documents show that Sorokin told banks she had a massive trust fund, Sorokin told Insider she didn't tell everyone the same story.

People Jessica Pressler interviewed for the New York magazine story, including Sorokin's close friend Neff Davis, said they had only vague ideas about her wealth. Rachel Williams, who accused Sorokin of scamming her, said she had little understanding of where her money came from. Another acquaintance said she heard third-hand that Sorokin was an heiress.

Sorokin paid for things with hundred-dollar bills, hung out with the rich, and let their imaginations fill the rest. People saw what they wanted to see, she said.

"Nobody ever asked me how much money I had, and I never asked anybody how much money they had," she said. "I also did not know about all these people's parents, and neither did I care."

Does she feel bad for Williams, who testified against her at her trial?

The jury acquitted Sorokin of the charge that she stole from Williams by leaving her with a $62,000 bill for a trip to Morocco, but Williams has continued to criticize Sorokin and blasted "Inventing Anna" for glorifying her. For months, Sorokin promised to pay her back but gave her just $5,000 before her arrest. At her trial, Sorokin's lawyer Todd Spodek said she believed she'd be able to pay back Williams in full once the Anna Delvey Foundation took off.

"I wish it wouldn't have happened," Sorokin said. "The whole trip — I just kind of fell into that, and I just was not giving too much thought. I was dealing with the things I thought were more important. And it was just not on my radar."

Williams didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Sorokin did pay for some things. The jury found her guilty of failing to pay the bill at three Manhattan hotels, and she had to pay restitution. But another hotel she stayed at for weeks, the 11 Howard, she paid off after her stay and before her criminal charges. Sorokin said she always had a plan to pay everyone.

"It was not like I made my way to the hotel and I was like, 'I'm going see how long I will be able to get away with it,'" Sorokin said. "I was constantly working on things. I didn't just sit there."

It was only "with the benefit of hindsight," she said, that all these representations of herself were knitted together in the narrative in New York magazine and "Inventing Anna." But from her perspective, the anxiety could be kept at bay.

"I always had things in the works," Sorokin said. "For me to be anxious would be to admit I was just sitting there, waiting to crash into a brick wall."

The brick wall

Getting a loan from a bank requires more than sleight-of-hand.

Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney's office laid bare Sorokin's deceptions at her trial.

She falsely claimed in documents that she had a $60 million trust waiting for her, which she could use to repay loans. And she created two fake identities, "Peter Hennecke" and "Bettina Wagner," who would vouch for her finances. Sorokin created email addresses and used a voice disguising app to try to persuade bank officials that Hennecke and Wagner were real.

The evidence prosecutors marshaled against Sorokin were circulated in the media while Sorokin was in custody. She was arrested in 2017 and remained in jail on Rikers Island until her 2019 trial. At her sentencing, New York State Supreme Court Judge Diane Kiesel chided her for caring too much about her outfits and worrying about who would play her in the Netflix show.

It was only after being released from prison, in February 2021, that Sorokin said she understood how the public saw her. Her media consumption had been drastically limited while behind bars.

While Sorokin participated in the viral New York Magazine story and sold the rights to her life story to Shonda Rhimes' production company, she told Insider she had only a hazy understanding that some members of the public lionized her as a scammer folk hero.

"It's just really abstract," she said. "When you don't have your phone, and you don't have social media, and you're not really exposed to the media, you are not really that aware of what's going on."

Sorokin told Insider she regretted coming across as unapologetic in an interview with The New York Times after her conviction, as well as in other media interviews. She said it took time for her mentality to shift, which she was only able to do after leaving prison.

Remorse, she said, "isn't linear."

"Can anybody really expect a person to go through almost two months of a trial cleaning one thing, and then just change their mind completely in a minute?" she asked. "It's kind of a tough thing to do unless it's something as black-and-white as a murder."

"What made me evaluate my position as having been out, and having seen what's going on on the outside," she continued. "How people perceive it on social media and in the media, and how people translated my case to what it means to them. Looking at it from that perspective, I would not want to be somebody who would encourage people to commit crimes."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement re-arrested Sorokin in March 2021, six weeks after her prison release, for overstaying her visa. The agency argued before an immigration judge that her interviews demonstrated she was un-remorseful and should remain in custody. Sorokin is currently jailed in upstate New York, fighting her deportation.

Prison, she maintains, has little use. She said it makes no sense to lock people up without addressing why they committed the crimes they were convicted of.

"There should be a case worker who would meet with you once a month or so and explore why you did what you did, what led to this, and how this can be avoided in the future," she said. "Personalized 'therapy' is the least that the system owes you when they take away everything."

Sorokin worries that, once her immigration issues are dealt with and she's free again, it will be impossible to change her reputation.

"That's something I constantly think about," she said. "It's going to be a jab, people saying, 'Oh she's a criminal and she's only doing that because whatever.' It's the same thing with Kim Kardashian and her sex tape. You can take anything she's doing now and bring it back to that."

She referenced the book she's writing about her life, saying it's easier to write with the pressure of prison. On the outside, there are too many distractions.

"I've been worried about I'll just never be able to write when I'm not in this cell. It's just impossible for me," she said. "Thinking back on my six weeks out, like I could not even write one page."