Convicted art scammer Anna Sorokin—whose time masquerading as a millionaire heiress and defrauding New York socialites inspired the Netflix hit Inventing Anna—made a new kind of television appearance this week with her debut on Dancing with the Stars, complete with a bedazzled ankle monitor worn as a condition of her house arrest.
Using her faux name, Anna Delvey, and billed as a “fashionista and entrepreneur”, Sorokin and her dance partner Ezra Sosa did a cha-cha routine to Sabrina Carpenter’s hit song Espresso. They earned a score of 18 out of 30 points from the judge, landing the pair in the lower-middle of the contestants. Next week, Sorokin and the other competitors will be at the mercy of the viewers—judges’ scores will be combined with live viewer votes from the first two weeks of competition to determine who could be eliminated.
Sorokin is out of custody on bail and is currently fighting deportation. In 2019, she was convicted of swindling socialite friends and defrauding major banks in hopes of opening her own art foundation in a historic Park Avenue building (her location of choice, Church Missions House, later became the temporary home of Fotografiska’s New York branch). For years, Sorokin lived in New York and claimed to be a German heiress with an eight-figure inheritance. In reality, she was born into a working-class family in the Soviet Union that later relocated to Germany. After serving two years in prison, she was sent to the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the following year was released on $10,000 bond.
“I just want to have some fun and maybe get in a little workout,” she said of her decision to join this season of Dancing with the Stars.
