She has the necessary cheek, but does she also have the necessary moves?
We’ll soon find out when con artist Anna Delvey – who spent nearly four years in prison for posing as a German heiress to defraud hotels, celebrities and banks of $250,000 – makes her attempt to win the Mirrorball Trophy.
On Wednesday, it was announced that she will be joining the new season of “Dancing with the Stars” alongside former NFL receiver Danny Amendola, Olympians Ilona Maher and Stephen Nedoroscik, and several reality stars who want to stay in the spotlight.
A press release from Disney-owned ABC shamelessly whitewashed Delvey’s resume, calling her “an artist, fashion icon and notorious New York socialite who gained international attention after Netflix acquired the rights to her story and developed it into the 2022 miniseries ‘Inventing Anna.'”
However, the description on the show’s Wikipedia page was more apt: “convicted fraudster.”
The official announcement featured Delvey, born Anna Sorokin, in a glittering gold dress that revealed her thighs and showed off her most important accessory: her anklet.
That’s her thing, after all. The wink, the nod. She’s still a bad girl – locked up by immigration – under house arrest, only now a judge has expanded her “home zone” by nearly 3,000 miles.
Delvey is what you would call an ambitious convict, one who proves that crime pays. She has parlayed her criminal notoriety into a career as an inner-city It Girl with connections in the fashion industry and a subservient press.
Russian-born Delvey has been under house arrest since 2022 and is apparently still at risk of deportation. She has hosted celebrity dinner parties in her East Village apartment, sold her artwork and started a podcast. She is scheduled to walk the SHAO runway during New York Fashion Week next week.
She is the in-house “deception analyst” for the US show “The Anonymous” – a reality competition show in which people lie to each other.
God bless America.
In 2022, Netflix released the miniseries “Inventing Anna,” created by Shonda Rhimes and based on a sensational article in New York Magazine. Delvey was portrayed by Emmy-winning actress Julia Garner as enigmatic yet brilliant, a sort of Robin Hood. Her victims, meanwhile, were portrayed as greedy, superficial upstarts who get their just punishment. (The money she earned from the show was used for reparations.)
“I try not to glorify my crimes and not to make anyone believe that this is how you become famous,” she told Jake Tapper in 2022.
And yet she makes her illegal activities her entire identity and wears her ankle bracelet as if it were a rare piece from Cartier.
In 2019, Delvey was incarcerated for her white collar crimes and released for good behavior in early 2021. She was then arrested by ICE for overstaying her visa in the U.S. and released on bail to house arrest.. She could still be deported, but why should she let something as small as immigration regulations ruin her chance at the American dream?
I even know people who cannot visit the USA because their visa has expired, and they have not scammed anyone.
But Delvey was given a social security number and was allowed to post on social media, where she presented portraits of her slimmed-down self to her one million followers.
Part of me admires this shameless behavior. A small part of me.
But after breaking the law, why is Delvey still here on American soil, taking jobs away from other cowardly influencers desperate for the fame that comes from dancing the tango on network television?
“I feel like I deserve a second chance. It was my mistake that I made and I served my sentence and I feel like I deserve a second chance,” she said.
In the meantime, it can continue to disrupt our legal system unhindered.
