Ep 3. Fake Heiress

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Prep for a busy week with Whole Foods Market. Start your day with fully cooked breakfast sausages from Amy Liu, 365 brand frozen waffles with no bleached flours, and of course, Whole Foods Market eggs, which are all cage-free or better. In the evening, bring home a build-your-own family meal that feeds four for just $35. Choose one entree and two sides. Shop smarter, not harder, at Whole Foods Market. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Anna Delvey lived a life of trust fund luxury in New York City. But her fortune was built on a lie. One which ended up costing friends, hotels, lawyers and bankers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Narcissistic, sociopathic, Machiavellian. Well, she's a con artist. You know, we don't know who she is. Fake it till you make it on an industrial scale. You can't avoid that. My name's Vicky Baker, and I'm a journalist for BBC World News. In this six-part podcast, Fake Heiress, I'm working with playwright and screenwriter Chloe Moss to dig deeper into this New York scandal. Together, we'll mix drama with documentary to tell the story of Anna Delvey's rise and fall. You'll hear scenes based on court reports, press coverage and interviews with those who knew her. You'll also hear from some of those people directly. Some scenes will be fictionalised because, well, what's Anna Delvey's story without a bit of make-believe? Did Anna really think she could make her lies a reality? I think she did. It doesn't sit easy with people. Anyone who's been involved with it is not going to feel very. It's a horrible feeling to realise that you've been conned. Fake Heiress Part 3 A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing So what do you think? I think it's perfect. It's known as the Church Missions House. A classic example of Renaissance revival. My brother Mikael can have someone show you around the building tomorrow if you're free. I'll make myself free. Have you got the price? Between 30 to 40 million. How does that sit with you? That's great. After her crimes were eventually exposed, Anna Sorokin told the New York Times that her transformation into Anna Delvey was motivated not by money, but power. Her fake millionaire ruse escalated until she was not content just fitting in with the rich kids. She wanted to lead them. Instead of swanning around Members' Club, she decided she wanted to do it every day, as an owner. And so creating her own art space, the Anna Delvey Foundation, became her next step and the ultimate power play. There was just the small matter of funding it. Anna had no money of her own for this pie-in-the-sky plan. Her parents, Russian immigrants in Germany, were certainly not rich. They may have paid her rent while she was an intern at a Paris fashion magazine and had her first taste of the high-end. But they couldn't possibly have stretched to fund her increasingly expensive tastes in New York. But these practicalities didn't seem to have concerned Anna. She kept telling people she wanted to create a place like Soho House, which draws its members from the media and arts and fashion industries. However, New York City already had three Soho Houses, never mind all the other Members' Clubs and prestigious galleries. If Anna wanted the attention of the city's legitimate artistic powers, she needed the support of her friends and family. But she was not the only one who needed the support of her friends and family. She also had the support of her friends and family. But she also had the support of her friends and family. Built in the late 1800s, the Church Missions House building at 281 Park Avenue South was certainly an impressive sight. Combine its grand façade with its location in lower midtown Manhattan and any company or organisation would want it as a flagship. If they could afford it. So how on earth did Anna end up touring such a building as a possible leaseholder? The answer, as always, was contacts. A key success for her came when she managed to rope in architect Gabriel Calatrava, whose company introduced her to the building. Later, when he was a witness for the prosecution against Anna, he said they had been introduced by Anna's companion Hunter Lee Soyk before he moved to Dubai. Gabriel's brother, Michael, was successful too. He had a real estate company, and it was Gabriel who reportedly suggested getting their staff on board to help Anna find a venue. One of their employees had previously worked for Abby Rosen, one of their employees had previously worked for Abby Rosen, the developer and art collector who owned Church Missions House. A representative gave her a tour of the building. It's a fantastic location. It is. This is the perfect space for one of the restaurants I have plans for. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that view. Ground floor will be a bakery and juice bar. Second floor, a gallery and exhibition space. Third and fourth, restaurants and a bar. Fifth, I like to use specifically for an artist studio space. And then a private lounge on the sixth. Wow! Oh, you have it all worked out. Just my initial ideas. I want the best of everything. I've seen lots of buildings, but this is really taking all the boxes. My advice to you would be to move very quickly on this if it's right for you. It goes public tomorrow, and I can guarantee we'll be inundated. I'll get my people on it straight away. Knowing the Calatrava brothers and their circle started opening more doors for Anna, leading to extraordinary meetings with big-name hoteliers and restauranteurs. One of them was Richie Notar, one of the founders of Nobu, the chain of high-end Japanese restaurants that were renowned celebrity hangouts. He reportedly did a walkthrough of Church Mission's house with Anna as she regaled some of the plans we've just heard. However, she never asked him if he wanted to be an official advisor on the project. When he found out that she'd been using his name in this way, he said that came as a surprise. These sort of meetings, all blue-sky thinking before actual contracts are struck, must have been a high point for Anna. Later in court, her lawyer said: If all of these bold-faced names would come to the site and work with the team, would it be unreasonable for her to think it was a reality? Would it be unreasonable for her to think they would do business with her? Was it unreasonable? I'm sure you have your own thoughts on that by now. In March 2016, Anna went back to Mark Kremers, In March 2016, Anna went back to Mark Kremers, director of the creative agency she had approached previously to help her put together a digital presentation. She told him about the architectural plans and said she wanted to move things forward. You know, while we were working on the actual project, we chatted a lot. She was very hands-on. We did some work on the visual identity and the presentation. She'd always be sounding like she was talking within a spa or something. You know, you'd hear the sound of water trickling in the background. It all sounded like she was living the life. But she was very above board at that point. That's true, that she supplied very, very quickly an NDA and a contract. And that's the kind of thing that a digital agency like us has because we can show that they're familiar with doing things above board. Mark said he liked working on the project at first. It sounded great. And Anna was very involved, appearing determined to make it happen. She was asking me, "Do you think Anna's Elevator Foundation is too narcissistic? Maybe I should call it 212 or something like that." And I was like, "Yeah, you know, it's got a nice ring to it, might as well." It was quite a rapid process because she wanted something on the deck and she wanted to shop that around quickly. So, you know, usually that process would maybe take two or three months. We just sort of did that in a couple of weeks. I was working with Mark on a lot of projects and I think the fact that I kind of had all these kind of, I guess, quite glamorous clients was very appealing to her. And she would say that to anyone who was looking at the presentation that we made, she'd be like, "Oh, yeah." And she would also tell me that, "Oh, I told so-and-so who's running so-and-so a hedge fund that the presentation was done by you and he's going to call you." Because he just loves it, you know. That's what people want to hear. She's very good at that. But what of all these other big names that appear to have backed the Anna Delvey Foundation? The names she was throwing around in her meetings and in the digital brochure. I contacted a representative for Christo, the highly-acclaimed octogenarian artist who is known for an elaborate artistic feat where he drapes landmark buildings with fabric as if they are gift-wrapped. He has wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pontnerf Bridge in Paris. Was he considering the Anna Delvey Foundation next? This was the email I received. Christo has never been in any way involved with this lady. He never met her. She never contacted him. How about Eric Scheiner, the director of the Warhol Gallery, now with the White Cube Gallery? He was listed as an advisory partner. He emailed me this response. I only met her once, very briefly, when I worked at Sotheby's. It was just as much a surprise to me when I saw the article listing me as a board member, which I was never asked to do. Did Anna think she could talk them all around eventually? Once she'd created her fantasy advisory board, she wasn't going to stop there. If her dream was going to become reality, she needed to nail the financial backing. By the middle of 2016, she was scouting for billionaire members and investors. One well-connected New York publicist, who didn't want to be named, told me that Anna managed to get a meeting with her via a contact they had in common. She crashed into her Soho office with a ton of shopping bags. Anna, please come in. Hi, good to meet you. Hello. Can I get a sparkling mineral water? The heat is crazy today. I'm so dehydrated. No problem. Anything else? Can you get me a green tea? Sure. Hello, Anna. Thanks for coming over. Thanks for seeing me. I'm sorry about those diary clashes. It's been non-stop these past few weeks. Sure, that's fine. So, I had a chance to look through the plans you've sent over. Oh, it's moved on again since I sent you those. Last week, we had confirmation that Christo is on board. He's going to wrap the building. We'll have it as an installation for about a month before opening, then unveil it the day before. I've been obsessed with him since he did the Reichstag. My grandfather took me to see it when I was, like, four years old. Four years old? It's my first memory of traveling with him. A sparkling water and a green tea. It just set them down. I mean, I see so many people born into incredible wealth, and they do nothing. Literally nothing. Apart from move around the party circuit and post on Instagram. Their whole lives. It's so meaningless. I have a huge trust fund and access to the world's best artists. It would be insane not to put that to good use. I want to do something important. Something good. And what exactly do you want from me? Forgive me for jumping the gun. No, that's good. I like when people are direct. With my background, it's not something I'm used to. Transparency. Of course. I'm not interested in anything else. Then I'd like to make you an owner in return for full access to your client database. Excuse me? I know you look after some big names. I can make you a great offer. What do you think? I haven't even seen the building. I can drive you past it right now, if you like. My driver's waiting downstairs. Thank you, but I'm not sure this is right for us. Obviously, it's not the sort of decision you make on the spot. Think it over. Frankly, I'd rather not waste your time. That's okay. I'll email some more documents. We can follow up in a couple of weeks. While I'm here, though, can I talk you through the rest of the plans? Unfortunately for Anna, the meeting went nowhere. Her request was politely declined. The publicist said Anna was apparently, and I quote, behaving as if she was in The Devil Wears Prada. That's the 2006 film about an intern at a glossy fashion magazine. Except crucially, the insinuation here is that Anna was no longer identifying with the intern. She was behaving more like the high-powered editor, played by Meryl Streep. I need 10 or 15 skirts from Calvin Klein. Okay, what kind of skirts do you use? Please bore someone else with your questions. So where did this leave the Anna Delvey Foundation? If no one was coming on board as an investor, perhaps she needed to try a different route. Maybe she could go straight to the financial gatekeepers, the banks. She reportedly later told people that this option was preferable to her, as it would offer her more control. Now, have you ever tried to get a bank loan? How about one for $22 million? $22 million. $22 million. $22 million. She knew she could not turn up out of the blue and ask for such an outrageously enormous sum. So instead, she made a bid for personal introductions to make her seem more credible. Hey! Hey, Anna, your timing is perfect. I just got a round of cognac shots and this flake refuses to join in. It's so crass. That cognac is for savouring, not throwing down your neck. Kill joy. Everybody's still talking about your birthday party. It was the best. I had to take a week off work afterwards. How's life? When do I get my opening night invitation to your fancy art foundation? If you give me some advice, you can be my guest of honour. Shoot. I need help with financing. Do you have any recommendations? Easy. Gibson Dunn. They're the best. Did you see Wolf of Wall Street? Of course. I'm obsessed with Leonardo DiCaprio. Who isn't? Okay, so Joe Cohen. At Gibson Dunn was the guy who brought the actual wolf down. They do it all. Litigation, real estate, international trade. I can hook you up if you want. Do you want? I want. The Wolf of Wall Street was the nickname for Jordan Belfort, the infamous New York stockbroker who built a crooked firm to scam investors out of. Hundreds of millions of dollars. You've probably seen the film. I have, but that was a while ago. So to refresh myself of Jordan Belfort's operations, I ended up dipping into his memoir. I couldn't help but think of Anna when I came across this piece of advice he had given to a young member of his staff. I want you to deal with all of your problems by becoming rich. I want you to attack your problems head on. I want you to go out and start spending money right now. I want you to leverage yourself. I want you to back yourself into a corner. Give yourself no choice but to succeed. Let the consequences of failure become so dire, so unthinkable that you'll have no choice but to do whatever it takes to succeed. Act as if. Act as if you're a wealthy man, rich already, and then you'll surely become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence, and then people will surely have confidence, in you. Whether she realized it or not, this was exactly the path that Anna had chosen to take. She was backing herself further and further into that corner. And somewhat ironically, she was now contacting a former federal prosecutor who helped send Jordan Belfort to jail. Joel Cohen had moved on to work for Gibson Dunn, a legal practice known for its work in the property industry. His personal communications with Anna were reportedly minimal, but he did put her in touch with a partner from his firm, who became her regular contact. Hello? Hi, it's Anna Delvey. Did I wake you? Uh, Anna, hi. Yeah, I mean, it's no problem at all. What's up? I'm sorry, I've been working late and lost track. I just wanted an update on those feelers you put out. I'm getting slightly anxious about time. Sure. Well, um, I've been in contact with City National Bank and Fortress Investment Group. Mm-hmm. I forwarded. I forwarded all your documentation and they're keen to meet with you to talk about the possibility of a loan. I was gonna call you first thing. It's not set in stone. That's great. When can we schedule that in? Could we do early next week? I'll email them now if you like. Thanks, that would be great. Anytime. These calls were not just friendly chats. The firm billed Anna $1,000 an hour, according to court documents referenced by the US media. Ultimately, Anna racked up approximately $250,000 in legal fees between this firm and two others. Those bills were never paid. Some of this contact with legal firms must have been happening remotely because in mid-2016, Anna had to leave the US to reset her visa. It was a tourist visa, known as an ESTA, which only gave her 90 days at a time. Thus, Anna ended up back in Germany. Can you imagine that comedown the self-created New York big shot back to where? To her parents' house in the suburbs? Possibly. Or maybe she stayed with friends. We can't be sure. But either way, from what we know about Anna, she would have enjoyed regaling stories of the high life. The VIP parties at the top of the Standard Hotel. The drinks at New York Fashion Week. The friends who picked up the bills in the city's best restaurants. Perhaps she'd leave out that she was founding the multi-million dollar Anna Delvey Foundation. You might have thought that being at home would have brought Anna back to reality. But instead, the stay seems to have made her more resolute about her plans. Maybe there was a sense of, make this happen, Anna, or you'll be stuck in small-town Germany. Anna started communicating with Manhattan's Fortress Investment Group around this time. Her lawyer had contacted them and City National Bank in Los Angeles to explain Anna's situation and how she was looking for financing. She had lied to her lawyer, too, insisting she had assets outside of the U.S. and that she could provide documentation from her Swiss banker. Court records later showed that around this time, she started falsifying financial documents. It was hardly a sophisticated operation. She used Microsoft Word. Her Google search history also showed that she'd queried things like how to create fake, untraceable emails. I like to imagine Anna doing this upstairs in her parents' house, door shut, like a sulky teenager, watching instructional YouTube videos. Today, I want to talk you through exactly what an anonymous email is and how it works. Usually, we never get. What? There's strudel on the table. I'll have it later. I'm busier. How? So you can start sending your own anonymous emails today. It was around this time that this story got a new character, one who'd be able to tackle the steady stream of emails from Mark Kremers, who she now owed several thousand dollars for the work on the Anna Delvey Foundation brochure. And then I've been chasing it kind of softly, softly. And then over, I mean, I think, honestly, there must be hundreds and hundreds of emails. It's like me kind of just basically trying to understand why payments aren't being made. And then sort of convoluted process of her trying to access her money and then checks being made and all this kind of stuff. I'd actually like to speak to somebody else because I've only been speaking to you the whole time. And then she came, I think she brought through this guy called Peter Henniker. Dear Mr. Kremers, I'm contacting you on behalf of my client, Anna Delvey, regarding your recent invoice. Apologies for the delay in payment. I have been assured that the issue will be resolved within the next week and outstanding funds will be wired to you. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you require any further assistance. Best regards, Peter Henniker. Yeah, just rest. Just assured, Mark, that, you know, this will be all resolved and the money's being wired, you know, tomorrow or next week. So he was straight to the point. Yeah, yeah, he had a much more sort of business-like. I mean, I'm quite impressed by it. Mark decided to Google Peter Henniker to see if he could find out any more about Anna's family lawyer. I looked up Peter, I think it's Peter W. Henniker or something like that and I searched for a while and actually I found a Peter W. Henniker or something like that. He was attached. He was an ex-advisor in not so far from Cologne. It just seemed like, I kind of thought, like, this must be the guy. And then again, the tone of voice was very interesting. Dear sir, please find attached asset statements for my client, Ms. Anna Delvey. Please use these for your projections for now. I'll send the physical statements on Monday. Please don't hesitate to contact me should you require any further assistance. Best regards. Peter Henniker. So Anna was Peter Henniker. She had Googled someone and simply used their name. And then Peter had some kind of thing that, the reason why he couldn't get on the phone with me was because his daughter had a serious accident, you know. And then after a while, he died. She killed him off. But that was her the whole time. She employed anonymous email addresses and occasionally burner phones to keep this charade going for a long time. This was typical Anna. She never did a disappearing act. She was in constant contact when she owed money. What puzzles me is how much of this was a tactic to keep people off her back and away from contacting the authorities. Or did she really think that, given enough time, she could clear all these debts and move forward on the church missions house plan? She just needed to get that $22 million loan. And it was in its pursuit that she committed one of her biggest transgressions. In the end, it was not enough to save her life. But it was enough to get her back on her feet. While in Europe, she forged bank documents to show overseas accounts with a total balance of approximately 60 million euros. On the 21st of November 2016, she sent them to City National Bank in Midtown. A few weeks later, they denied the loan. However, a representative from Fortress Investment Group was more responsive. Hey. Hey, Anna. Have some great news. We're nearly there with the loan application. We received your asset statement from Peter Henniga, so it should be good to go very soon. Really? Absolutely. Just one caveat. It's not so big in the scheme of things. Go ahead. They're asking for 100 grand deposits so they can secure everything for you. How does that sound? $100,000. Yeah. As soon as it's in, they'll move ahead really quickly for you. Is that okay? $100,000. That's no problem. I'll have it for you within the week. In the next episode of Fake Heiress. I have a trust fund of $67 million on the way. I intend to double that amount in the next three years. I'm the client you want. Are you really going to jeopardize that over 100 grand for a couple of weeks? Yes. It's on her biggest spending spree yet. The outstanding balance is now rather significant. How much do I owe? $31,460. And a sudden windfall enables her to pull the wool over the eyes of a new friend. She had taken a private jet to Omaha, Nebraska. She said it was to attend the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting. How's the trip? Crazy. I wound up at a dinner with Bill Gates. And she continues to pursue the foundation plan while looking for new investors. Even as the truth starts to catch on. We're going to have to catch up with her. What do you need? We need to send a Fortress representative to meet with your banker in Switzerland. Then we can finalize the loan. You have been listening to Fake Heiress. The program was reported by me, Vicki Baker, and the drama was written by Chloe Moss. The producer was Sasha Yeftyshenko. Henry Akeley disappeared from his home on the edge of Rendlesham Forest somewhere around the end of June 2019. They come every night down. The police don't believe me. Now, please, I just need you to get in touch. What we uncovered is a mystery that has sent us deep into England's past. To an area steeped in witchcraft, the occult, secret government operations. Now we have multiple sites of five lights with a similar shape. Robert. And something that might indeed be altogether otherworldly. This is The Whisperer in Darkness. Available now on BBC Sounds.