Anna Delvey is still making money moves and gaslighting from ICE detention

As New York Magazine journalist Jessica Pressler, who is portrayed as Vivian Kent in the series, recently told Vulture, she felt a similar discomfort publishing her original 2018 piece. “It gets into my guilt and discomfort about having elevated this person. ‘Is Anna making decisions in real life because she is now very famous, and did I do that?’”

Because clearly, Sorokin is revelling in the continued interest in her illegal history. At the time of her 2019 trial, she told The New York Times that she was “not sorry” for what she did and even now she tip-toes around any kind of apology, telling the same writer, “I feel sorry for the way my case is being perceived.”

Anna Delvey: gaslighting us from ICE detention.

And you might think, hey maybe she’s not sorry for what she did (plenty of people enabled her after all), but she feels some kind of shame about how it all went down, didn’t she put one of her close friends in $64,000 worth of debt? The answer to that is also looking like a firm no.

In fact, shameless might be the best one-word description of Anna Sorokin.

She’s already agreed to allow the production team that brought us Surviving R. Kelly and Keeping Up With the Kardashians to film a docu-series about her life after prison. And then there’s her continuing pursuit of the quick (and questionable) buck.

This week on Instagram (yes, she has access to her Instagram in ICE detention), she posted a story saying she’d be willing to reveal who the real ‘Chase’ is, her former ex-boyfriend and tech founder played by Saamer Usmani in the show – but for a price. “The media outlet with the highest bid gets the exclusive. Bid starts at $10K. DM to bid,” she wrote on IG. You almost have to admire the audacity of it, her financial hustles long exposed she’s still game to make money at the expense of the people who were once her closest confidants. Almost. 

Sidenote: The Internet (and certainly this TedTalk) can probably answer this question for you for free.

And not only is Sorokin profiting from the fame of the Netflix series, but she’s also profiting from it. As in, in explicit money terms. Netflix paid Sorokin $320,000 for the rights to her story, plus an undisclosed amount for consulting on the series.

She claims that about $200,000 has gone to pay off restitution to her victims and the rest will go towards her legal fees but still, should she be allowed to profit from a crime that already saw her profit so much for so long? And why is it that it’s okay for Netflix to pay a convicted felon for her story yet HBO can proceed to retell the intimate details of Pamela Anderson’s private life without her permission? The ethics of these big streaming sites is questionable at best. 

And speaking of the ethics of the big streamers, if you have managed to finish the series (spoilers ahead), you may be wondering why Anna’s friend Rachel DeLoache Williams is portrayed as quite the villian, smirking her way through brunch with Neff and Kacy as they discuss Anna’s arrest – which Rachel had secretly played a major role in. Shouldn’t the banking bros and NYC aristocracy who enabled and accommodated Anna for so long be the real baddies, giving away theirs and other people’s wealth with very little due diligence?

You’d think so, but there may be a reason Netflix and Rhimes settled on Rachel as a ditzy and conniving mean girl. Much like with Pressler’s story, Rachel opted not to sell her story to Netflix, instead giving the rights of her book My Friend Anna to HBO and Lena Dunham for another upcoming series.

All is fair in love and streaming, right? And as Anna herself said, “Does crime pay? I can’t say no because I did get paid”.