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It was a scandal that shook a city's wealthy elite. In Fake Heiress, a podcast from ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 4, journalist Vicky Baker charts the rise and fall of Anna Delvey, who conned New York high society into believing that she was a multi-millionaire heiress. Here Vicky explains the story of one of the most successful impostors of our time.

Who was she?

Anna Delvey presented herself as a wealthy German heiress who belonged to an international jetset. Her Instagram account was a window on a glamorous world, where she seemingly filled her days with art launches, VIP parties and stays in luxury hotels. She was in her mid-20s and, having spent time working in the Paris fashion industry, she moved to New York and told new friends she had grand plans for her 60 million dollar trust fund.

But who was she really?

Her real name was Anna Sorokin and she had no family fortune whatsoever. Her parents were Russian immigrants who had moved to Germany when she was a teenager. She invented the heiress persona, seemingly as a bid to fit in with elite circles, and then took it to unfathomable extremes so she could keep up appearances.

She had, indeed, spent some time with Parisian socialites, but that was because she was an intern at fashion magazine Purple. She later combined the contacts she made there – with plenty of name-dropping – to get attention in New York and she found this opened doors.

So how did she live the high life?

Anna really did stay in numerous high-end hotels, where she would live the heiress lifestyle for weeks on end, running up enormous bills through champagne lunches and daily personal training sessions. However, seeing as she could never afford to settle the tabs herself, she also developed devious techniques to con loans from friends and overdrafts from banks. This enabled her to cover her tracks and keep the ruse going for years.

Anna told people she was in New York to create the Anna Delvey Foundation. It was to be an art-focused members’ club with a cocktail bar and artist studios. She said her family were collectors and she needed somewhere to showcase their various purchases.

Delvey was charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars

She became a regular on the party circuit - at least when she first arrived in Manhattan - and she managed to get enough people to buy into her persona to make the right in-roads.

Did people believe her?

Yes and no. Some people raised sceptical eyebrows from the start, but others seemed to believe it or, at least, accept it. They introduced her to other contacts and, before long, she had gained some credibility through association. She began having meetings with some of the city’s big names in architecture and hospitality. She scouted the perfect building for her foundation, commissioned a brochure, and even tried to get a $22m (£17m) loan.

Marc Kremers, who briefly worked for Anna via his Future Corp creative agency, said he trusted her at first because he came into contact with her through people in his wider New York network. “I think that kind of environment, that kind of society, really helps Anna with her networking,” he told the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ. “It takes one person to vouch her, then another person to vouch her… It’s fascinating how remarkably easy it was for her to do this. And I don’t think she could have done it anywhere else apart from New York.”

How did she become an anti-hero?

When the story of Anna’s exploits first broke in the media in 2018, social media went wild. TV series were planned, and her former friend, Rachel Deloache Williams, won a book contract (My Friend Anna came out in 2019). Some people started to paint Anna as an anti-establishment hero for infiltrating and embarrassing wealthy institutions. However, Williams said she did not see it this way. She told the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ: “The system that Anna was seeking to undermine… she wasn’t doing it out of some altruistic nobility, she wanted to be a part of them.”

How much did she get away with?

It was years before the truth properly caught up with Anna. To find out how she did it, and what ultimately became her downfall, download Fake Heiress. The docudrama podcast - written by Chloe Moss and me, Vicky Baker - is on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sounds now.