‘Fake heiress’ Anna Sorokin releases a single under house arrest

In perhaps the most fever-dream development of 2023, a fake heiress under house arrest has contributed her vocals from a prison call to a single released with a TikTok star, and which will serve as a podcast theme tune.

Anna Sorokin, the convicted German-Russian whose scheme to pass herself off as a German heiress inspired Netflix series, <em>Inventing Anna</em>, features on new single What the Hell? from TikTok star and country singer Brooke Butler, according to Deadline.

The single dropped on Friday and will serve as the intro and theme song to Ms Sorokin’s new podcast The <em>Anna Delvey</em> Show, from AudioUp and Reunion Audio – which she will be producing while still under house arrest in New York.

“My name is Anna Delvey,” she says on the single.

The 32-year-old was convicted of larceny and fraud in 2019 after swindling New York socialites, friends, hotels and banks out of $275,000. She served three years in prison, about half at Rikers Island. After finishing her sentence she was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and posted a $10,000 bond last year pending a deportation hearing.

She was portrayed by Ozarks star Julia Garner in the 2022 nine-part series, which followed an explosive 2018 expose in New York Magazine, also titled Inventing Anna – firmly establishing Ms Sorokin in pop culture.

Her new weekly podcast will offer her a chance to tell her side of the story as well as interview some famous – and infamous – names, she recently told The Associated Press from the East Village apartment where she’s under house arrest. The podcast will be recorded from the same location, though she’d hoped to pursue the project even while behind bars, she said.

“I wanted to start recording in jail, actually over the jail phone because, you know, there are some rappers who record whole albums while being incarcerated. I was like, ‘Why not record a podcast?’” Ms Sorokin told AP. The podcast company said this plan was too “logistically difficult to implement.”

Guests will include Emily Ratajkowski, Julia Fox, “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli and Ottessa Moshfegh on upcoming episodes, Reunion Audio told AP.

Ms Sorokin bragged that her notoriety was an asset – that she “can get pretty much anybody up here”.

More difficult would be her fellow in infamy Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the once billion-dollar tech company, Theranos, who recently began a prison sentence for wire fraud and conspiracy.

“I’d love to speak to Elizabeth,” she told AP. “I definitely think she’s an interesting person. I can relate a little bit more … we’re both females and have been trying to build something.”

She called her own prison time “transformative.”

“It’s been five years, a bit more than five years since I got arrested,” she said. “So, I just like – I changed. I learned to much.”

She said the main theme of her podcast would be “productive rule-breaking.”

“So many people become famous for bad things and were able to kind of segue it into something different,” she said.

Her segue, however, will not be a physical one at the moment.

“I’m on 24/7 house arrest,” she said, wearing an ankle monitor. “I’m only allowed to leave for my parole check-ins, my ICE check-ins and for medical emergencies.”

In the meantime, the podcast – and new song – will offer people the chance to hear Ms Sorokin’s own voice.

It was written by Audio Up CEO and producer Jared Gutstadt, who has worked with Lil Wayne, Jelly Roll, DJ Khaled and Machine Gun Kelly, alongside his longtime writing partner Scarlett Burke, Deadline reported.

“What the Hell? is authentic to the type of music I like to make,” Mr Gustadt told the outlet. “It’s a fun song and I know a lot of folks will be curious to hear this side of Anna. My hope is that the TikTok world will have some fun with this as well.”