The real Anna Delvey from 'Inventing Anna' is back in jail

• "Inventing Anna" on Netflix tells the story of scammer Anna Sorokin, also known as Anna Delvey.
• The fake heiress was convicted in 2019 of stealing and trying to steal from banks and other institutions.

On Friday, Netflix released "Inventing Anna," a nine-episode limited series about Anna Sorokin — also known as Anna Delvey — who scammed New York by pretending to be a German heiress with a $60 million trust fund.

The show, starring Julia Garner as Sorokin, goes through how the German national, born in Russia, reinvented herself in New York in a bid to create the Anna Delvey Foundation, a Soho House-like space in Manhattan. Along the way, she fooled socialites and members of the art and finance worlds, living an extravagant jet-setting and high-fashion lifestyle as she took money from banks and left hotel bills unpaid.

Where is the real Anna Sorokin now? She's back in jail. Not for the crimes she was convicted of, but for overstaying her visa.

In an essay for Insider earlier this month, Sorokin said she felt like an "afterthought" in the release of "Inventing Anna."

"Nearly four years in the making and hours of phone conversations and visits later, the show is based on my story and told from a journalist's perspective," she wrote. "And while I'm curious to see how they interpreted all the research and materials provided, I can't help but feel like an afterthought, the somber irony of being confined to a cell at yet another horrid correctional facility lost between the lines, the history repeating itself."

She wrote that she was dismayed by everyone else's interest in "all the clothes and boats and cash tips" of her scam.

"So no — it doesn't look like I'll be watching 'Inventing Anna' anytime soon," Sorokin wrote. "Even if I were to pull some strings and make it happen, nothing about seeing a fictionalized version of myself in this criminal-insane-asylum setting sounds appealing to me."

Sorokin was found guilty at trial in 2019 and released from prison in 2021

Eventually, as "Inventing Anna" depicts, Sorokin's scam caught up with her. She was arrested in the fall of 2017. The Manhattan District Attorney's office accused her of using her false identity to steal from banks, hotels, a friend, and a private-jet service — and trying to steal millions of dollars more.

While she was incarcerated at Rikers Island, she participated in a story about herself for journalist Jessica Pressler, whose May 2018 article about Sorokin in New York magazine went viral and became the basis for "Inventing Anna." Sorokin also sold the rights to her life story to Netflix, as Insider previously reported, and "Grey's Anatomy" creator Shonda Rhimes signed on to produce the series as part of her overall deal with the streaming company.

A jury found Sorokin guilty of most of the charges against her — larceny, attempted larceny, and theft of services — in April 2019, though she is appealing her conviction. Her defense lawyer at the trial, Todd Spodek, who's also portrayed in "Inventing Anna," argued that she was trying to "fake it 'til she made it," and that her false image as a wealthy woman was necessary in order for financial institutions to take her business plan seriously.

Judge Diane Kiesel, who oversaw Sorokin's trial, gave a blistering verdict and sentenced her to four-to-twelve years in prison. "Inventing Anna" ends with Garner playing Sorokin on a bus on the way to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, where she was initially sent to serve her sentence.

After giving an unapologetic interview with the New York Times following her conviction, Sorokin changed her tune with the New York State Board of Parole a year later. She received around $320,000 from Netflix once it exercised its option to make "Inventing Anna" and used the money to pay her lawyers and companies the court required her to pay back.

She was released from New York's Albion Correctional Facility on February 11, 2021. Her overall time behind bars, including on Rikers Island, was around three-and-a-half years.

In an interview with Insider after her release, Sorokin said she found prison "a huge waste of time," that America's criminal justice system was "pointless," and that she was trying to "move on" after the mistakes of her youth.

"It's about who you know. It's kind of like the scene in New York, but amplified," she said of life in prison. "Because if you know the right officers, they're going to get you the right job."

Sorokin also quickly got to work. Over the next few weeks, she became active on Clubhouse, a viral app that let people have audio-only conversations, began work on a fashion line, floated the idea of selling NFTs, and started a project called "Anna Delvey TV."

But it was all on borrowed time.

Immigration enforcement took Sorokin into custody 6 weeks after her release from jail

Immigration and Customs Enforcement had already declared, before Sorokin's trial even began, that she would be deported back to Germany. If she was found innocent, a spokesperson told Insider, she'd be put on a plane. If she was found guilty, the spokesperson said, she'd be put in prison and then put on a plane.

On March 25, 2021, ICE did what it promised. While Sorokin checked in with her parole officer, agents arrested her and took her to a detention facility in New Jersey. She was later moved to Orange County Jail in New York, where she remains.

Audrey A. Thomas, the attorney handling Sorokin's criminal appeal, is also handling her immigration issues. And though a New York parole board found Sorokin fit for release, an immigration court judge decided otherwise. At an immigration court hearing, Department of Homeland Security officials argued that her social-media posts and media articles about her demonstrated she wasn't sincerely remorseful about the crimes she'd been convicted of committing.

Sorokin remains in immigration limbo, and Thomas has filed several emergency court applications as authorities have sought to deport her.

In her essay for Insider, Sorokin wrote about the Kafkaesque nature of the immigration law system that's keeping her behind bars, and getting COVID-19 while detained.

"The jail's response to a positive test is to just lock you up," she wrote. "It's convenient for them. It all shall pass, no?"