Some people are better liars than others, and Anna Sorokin certainly boasts some skills.

Or Anna Delvey, as she was known in New York’s socialite circles, before the illusion came crashing down.

Her story has been best documented in two great, longer reads: first, there’s The Cut’s ‘How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People‘, and then there’s Vanity Fair’s ‘My bright-lights misadventure with a magician of Manhattann‘.

Both of those were written after Anna’s house of lies came tumbling down, and yesterday she went on trial for “grand larceny and theft of services charges alleging she swindled various people and businesses out of $275,000 in a 10-month odyssey that saw her jetting to the Midwest and Marrakesh before landing in a cell at Rikers Island”.

You don’t want to get stuck away at Rikers Island. Here’s TIME:

“Her overall scheme has been to claim to be a wealthy German heiress with approximately $60 million in funds being held abroad,” prosecutor Catherine McCaw said after Sorokin’s October 2017 arrest. “She’s born in Russia and has not a cent to her name as far as we can determine.”

Sorokin’s attorney said she never intended to commit a crime.

Lawyer Todd Spodek told jurors in an opening statement that Sorokin exploited a system “easily seduced by glamour and glitz” after she saw how the appearance of wealth opened doors. Spodek said she was merely buying time, so she could launch a business and repay her debts.

“Anna had to fake it until she could make it,” Spodek said.

What she did was wrong, and during her time as a socialite, innocent people were stuck with exorbitant bills on her behalf, but there’s a smug sort of enjoyment that comes with all these ‘see and be seen’ types being fleeced.

Let’s recount how she managed to pull the (expensive) wool over their eyes for so long:

Sorokin arrived in the world of champagne wishes and caviar dreams in 2016 with a new name (Anna Delvey) and a wardrobe to match (Celine sunglasses, Gucci sandals and high-end buys from Net-a-Porter and Elyse Walker). She made a show of proving she belonged, passing crisp Benjamins to Uber drivers and hotel concierges, but she gave varying accounts for the source of her wealth, according to people who knew her…

At first, people around Sorokin didn’t see a red flag when she asked them to put cabs and plane fares on their credit cards — she sometimes said she had trouble moving her assets from Europe, they said — and they laughed it off as forgetfulness when they had to hound her to pay them back…

Sorokin kept up the heiress ruse as she went looking for a $22 million loan for the club in November 2016, prosecutors said. She claimed the loan would be secured by a letter of credit from UBS in Switzerland and showed statements purporting to substantiate her assets, according to an outline of the charges.

The money never came, she was eventually found out, and now faces the real prospect of jail time.

Again, if you want the full story, here’s where to start.

[source:time]