The notorious fraudster Anna Sorokin, who once fooled the elite of New York, has now ventured into the world of country music. Using her alias, Anna Delvey, she joined forces with TikTok sensation Brooke Butler and the band Audio Chateau to create a song while under house arrest in Manhattan. The song, aptly named “What the Hell,” will serve as the introduction and theme for Sorokin’s forthcoming podcast, “The Anna Delvey Show.”
The track, which runs for a little over two minutes, includes Sorokin’s voice, recorded during a phone call she made from Riker’s Island prison. In the recording, she can be heard introducing herself as Anna Delvey. The song was a collaborative effort between Jared Gutstadt, the CEO of AudioUP, Butler, and country songwriter Scarlett Burke. Gutstadt shared that Sorokin played a significant role in shaping the song, selecting from demos he sent her to find the one that would best encapsulate her podcast.
Gutstadt emphasized the importance of a song’s brand, noting that without a unique brand, a song could easily be drowned out by the countless new tracks released each year on platforms like Spotify. He expects that Sorokin’s track will receive radio airplay due to her infamous reputation, which was further enhanced by the hit Netflix limited series “Inventing Anna.” The series dramatized Sorokin’s fraudulent infiltration into New York’s high society, where she posed as a wealthy heiress and defrauded major financial institutions, hotels, and individuals, amassing a total of $275,000.
Sorokin, under the guise of Anna Delvey, spent years masquerading as the affluent daughter of a German diplomat, boasting a fictitious fortune of 60 million euros. She was a regular on the New York City social circuit until her scheme was uncovered. In 2019, she was convicted on charges of theft of services and larceny, but she plans to appeal. She was released in early 2021 after serving three years of her four- to 12-year sentence, but was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody shortly thereafter.
Sorokin was released from jail on a $10,000 bail bond in October and is currently under 24-hour house arrest with electronic monitoring and no access to social media.