NEW YORK: A German woman who posed as a wealthy heiress to scam New York hotels, fashionable friends and banks with a blizzard of forged documents was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison on Thursday after a jury convicted her of fraud last month.
Anna Sorokin, who a New York jury convicted last month of swindling more than $200,000 from banks and people, sits during her sentencing at Manhattan State Supreme Court New York, U.S., May 9, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton. "The only time she showed emotions was when she was crying because she was upset about the clothing she had received from the Department of Corrections," Catherine McCaw, a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney's office, told the court.
Moments later, the judge waved a letter of support from three of Sorokin's relatives, saying she did not know for sure if that document, too, was a forgery.Prosecutors say Sorokin used forged bank statements to seek a loan of US$22 million from a bank to fund a private arts club she wanted to open in Manhattan. She managed to get a US$100,000 loan, which prosecutors said she never repaid.
Sorokin's daily looks became the subject of a dedicated Instagram account with thousands of followers, which the judge nodded to in her sentencing remarks.