Anna Delvey’s Lawyer Duncan Levin Is Optimistic She Could Be Released in ‘the Next Coming Weeks’ [Exclusive]

Anna Delvey’s lawyer Duncan Levin hopes his client will be released from prison before the end of the summer. Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, recently went viral when her story was told in the Shonda Rhimes Netflix series Inventing Anna.

The series followed Delvey’s pie-in-the-sky dream to build private arts and social club, The Anna Delvey Foundation. Posing as a German heiress, Delvey bilked big banks and socialites for her club. At the same time, she lived in five-star hotels, unable to pay her bills. Inventing Anna showed Delvey’s house of cards quickly tumble. She was arrested in 2017 and charged with stealing more than $200,000.

Delvey went to trial and was found guilty on eight charges, including grand larceny. She was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay restitution. After two years, Delvey was released from prison, only to get arrested for overstaying her visa.

Anna Delvey’s lawyer hopes she can walk free before end of summer

Delvey is originally from Germany but spent the majority of her adult life living in the United States. “I’m hoping that she’s released in the next coming weeks,” Levin told Showbiz Cheat Sheet about Delvey. “We’re making some progress on that. I’m not her immigration attorney, but I am told that they’re making some progress on that.”

“And so I’m really hoping that we’ll be able to get her out sooner rather than later so that we can really focus on getting her name cleared and get her exonerated fully. In the meantime, she’s very creative and she’s been focusing on doing art. She’s created some NFTs. And, she’s working on art shows. And I think that it’s something that while she has time on her hands to do it, she’s finally allowing herself the freedom to try to engage in artistic endeavors like that.”

Why is Delvey still in prison?

So what happened after Delvey’s release from prison? “What a lot of people don’t know about her case is that she served her time at this point,” Anna Delvey’s lawyer explained. “She was convicted in New York state. She served her time. But for an immigration issue, she would be walking around freely as a free person. And frankly, that may be what happens very soon.”

“Following her conviction, the United States government put her into ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) deportation proceedings,” he continued. “And so she’s now sitting in a facility in upstate New York, in Orange County, in an ICE detainer being held pending deportation proceedings. The deportation proceedings stem from her conviction in the case and also a very minor offense of overstaying a visa. We may know lots of stories of people who overstay their visa. It doesn’t wind up being a long term detention.”

Fame may be why Anna Delvey was sent back to jail

Anna Delvey’s lawyer believes her fame may have worked against her. “There are a couple of things at play here. Number one is that this has a lot more to do with her notoriety,” Levin admitted. “This has to do with her high profile. This has to do with her criminal conviction. And the other thing is that having done her time, if she wanted to agree to the deportation, they would send her probably to Germany, where she would be walking around as a free person today.”

“She is actually making a pretty brave choice to stay in this ICE deportation facility pending these charges by the federal government while she undertakes a criminal appeal of her criminal conviction,” he said. “And so she thinks she’s better off doing it from the United States while she has access to her attorneys, while she’s close to everybody she knows and the life she knows, than getting deported to a foreign country. But if she agreed to this deportation pretty much overnight, she could get deported and be walking around free.”

“So the point is, she’s sitting in a jail cell now, not for any crime she’s done, but because the United States wants to ship her out of the United States,” he added. “And she’s making a pretty brave choice of staying here in the United States to fight the criminal charges, to fight her criminal conviction, and to try to really clear her name and get exonerated.”

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