"I thought she had family money."
May 29, 2018 8:49 AM   Subscribe

 
Her first mistake seems to be that she was seemingly genuinely interested in setting up this arts foundation, rather than parleying her natural talent for grift into an easy job with the Trump administration.
posted by mountainherder at 8:58 AM on May 29, 2018 [17 favorites]


From her interview from her cell in Rikers, as she discusses the friends she's made there:

“This one girl, she’s been stealing other people’s identities. I didn’t realize it was so easy.”

....Can we get this woman on a watch list of some sort?....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:33 AM on May 29, 2018 [19 favorites]


She’s a less diligent Frank Abagnale Jr.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:41 AM on May 29, 2018 [4 favorites]


Wow. This whole saga is unreal.
posted by Alensin at 9:44 AM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


A thrilling (and dismaying) read. Wow.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 9:46 AM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


God, do I love nonviolent true crime.

That said, I noticed 4 instances of "In this crazy place called Manhattan, people value and exchange money", but I suppose that is NY Mag's bread and butter.
posted by The Gaffer at 9:47 AM on May 29, 2018 [14 favorites]


I expected the reveal to be that Anna was an identity thief. I suppose that's going to be the post-release sequel instead.
posted by grudgebgon at 9:52 AM on May 29, 2018


Yeah, I nearly lost my brunch when I read that she’d taken a lesson from Martin Shkreli. Sociopaths of a feather.
posted by darkstar at 9:53 AM on May 29, 2018 [7 favorites]


I devoured that article. The hustler-among-the-superrich story somehow just never gets old.
posted by Morpeth at 10:06 AM on May 29, 2018 [6 favorites]


(“They called me down to the office. They said, ‘Neff, did you know about this?’ And I started dying laughing. I thought it was a boss move.”)

Stay classy, Neff
posted by thelonius at 10:09 AM on May 29, 2018 [8 favorites]


Rachel Williams's first-hand account was in Vanity Fair a month ago, with more details. (Oops, didn't see it was linked in the post)
posted by jhope71 at 10:18 AM on May 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


There is strong evidence that Anna's futurist ex-boyfriend mentioned early on in the piece is Ray Kurzweil. Or possibly Shingy.
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:19 AM on May 29, 2018 [7 favorites]


Funny part is, I believe her. If she'd wanted to grift people of 6 figures worth of money and disappear, she surely could have made that happen.
posted by explosion at 10:29 AM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


Nah, you can do so much better once you've installed yourself at the head of a pseudo-charity.

I still think the people hustled by her shouldn't feel too bad. (The institutions, on the other hand: morons.) She was quite good at getting the maximum exposure from her cash. Most of these people, you never see them hand over significant actual money for anything, much less over several months.
posted by praemunire at 10:40 AM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


There's a store in NYC named Acne? Really?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:40 AM on May 29, 2018 [10 favorites]


“If I really wanted the money, I would have better and faster ways to get some,” she groused. “Resilience is hard to come by, but not capital.”

“Money, like, there’s an unlimited amount of capital in the world, you know?” Anna said to me at one point. “But there’s limited amounts of people who are talented.”


This woman is a fucking post-capitalist criminal legend. It's too bad the money she makes from selling her life-rights for the movie are going to be sucked up by all of her debt.

(yes I recognize what she did was wrong and hurt some non-rich people in the process as well and glorifying crime is bad etc. etc.)
posted by Think_Long at 10:53 AM on May 29, 2018 [11 favorites]


she's a ballin' grifter, someone quick, make her the CEO of a multinational financial institution.
posted by nikaspark at 11:01 AM on May 29, 2018


Aside from the fact that a story like this is precisely the beat of both Vanity Fair and New York Mag, I am surprised that New York Mag went ahead and published after the VF piece was already out. Surprised but not unhappy, mind. Getting to read both was a delightful Rashomon-in-Tribeca experience.
posted by minervous at 11:12 AM on May 29, 2018 [18 favorites]


She’s a less diligent Frank Abagnale Jr. + Rashomon-in-Tribeca experience....

The screenplay is half written right here, folks!
posted by JoeZydeco at 11:17 AM on May 29, 2018 [8 favorites]


I have to assume the ex-boyfriend is this guy. Who is the first result if you search VOWS FUTURIST in Google FYI.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 11:44 AM on May 29, 2018


Perspectives:
"It was not a lot of money,” he said. “Like two or three thousand dollars.”
posted by doctornemo at 11:45 AM on May 29, 2018 [4 favorites]


[SPOILER ALERT - Babylon Berlin]







Is there any chance she may have inspired the writers of Babylon Berlin when they created Countess Sorokina? The story is clearly very diffferent, and the fictional scam is rather turn-and-twisty, but the name feels like too much of a coincidence! And the backdrop (NYC and Berlin in the Weimarer period) seems very similar.

Because that would be awesome.
posted by ipsative at 11:47 AM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


I apologize; Vows Futurist does not live in the Emirates. How careless of me.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 11:51 AM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


There's a store in NYC named Acne? Really?

I love it when new people discover this. I remember when I first discovered this. I urge you, please google their website. The name is probably explicable by a language-other-than-English but their hideous, insanely expensive clothes are not.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:07 PM on May 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


Is there any chance she may have inspired the writers of Babylon Berlin when they created Countess Sorokina?

Well, it's adapted from a novel, or series of novels, and the character Sokorina appears in the first, published in 2008. I think that's a historical family of Russian exiles.
posted by thelonius at 12:10 PM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


I am surprised that New York Mag went ahead and published after the VF piece was already out. Surprised but not unhappy, mind.

I preferred this telling, in large part because it drew upon the perspective of Neff the concierge. I rather suspect that if Anna had come along a few years later in Neff's career, Neff might have spotted her sooner, since people as rich as Anna purported to be aren't usually nearly that smart about tipping. They tip, yes. And tip well. But Anna knew how to befriend via tip, and someone of her age and wealth usually isn't quite that smart about it.

Their similarity in age, and maybe a little lack of experience on Neff's part, let her pass off the manipulation as stemming from loneliness and a desire for friends, but dang, Anna knew how to work, to the extent a more experienced concierge -- one with anything invested in the hotel, anyway -- would have started getting cagey and maybe talking it over with the GM. The case of 1975 Dom was a desperation move, and Neff and the staff rightly saw it as such, but there's a pattern obvious from the start -- in retrospect, or with sufficient service experience.
posted by halation at 12:14 PM on May 29, 2018 [10 favorites]


There's a store in NYC named Acne? Really?

i laugh every time i walk past their 35k/mo storefront
posted by poffin boffin at 12:26 PM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


You know who else did this scam? "Clark Rockefeller." But also, you know, the murders.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 1:21 PM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


There's a store in NYC named Acne? Really?

Not just any store. A high-fashion foofy clothing store.

I think it's weird too.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:23 PM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


I feel like the real Boss in this story is the personal trainer, who has kept her name out of the press while putting Delvey's shit on the street AND got paid in cash.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 1:35 PM on May 29, 2018 [37 favorites]


Please spend some time with this extremely under-rated part of the article:
“As far as I knew, her family was the Delvey family that is big in antiques in Germany,” said another acquaintance, a millionaire tech CEO. (It is unclear what family he was referring to.)
"It is unclear what family he was referring to." Ha!
posted by mhum at 1:39 PM on May 29, 2018 [14 favorites]


Besides the character, it's a really fascinating look into how much the world of high finance is run on handshakes, reputation, and trying to save face. Like, there's no way my bank would let me withdraw more than a couple hundred from a check I just deposited. But a $100k line of credit based on a phone call from a fancy lawyer, and a scan of a forged receipt -what's the worst that could happen?? Obviously that's the real thesis of this piece, not just the story.
posted by Think_Long at 1:59 PM on May 29, 2018 [23 favorites]


Besides the character, it's a really fascinating look into how much the world of high finance is run on handshakes, reputation, and trying to save face. Like, there's no way my bank would let me withdraw more than a couple hundred from a check I just deposited. But a $100k line of credit based on a phone call from a fancy lawyer, and a scan of a forged receipt -what's the worst that could happen?? Obviously that's the real thesis of this piece, not just the story.

Rules and laws are not intended to bind rich people.
posted by The Gaffer at 2:08 PM on May 29, 2018 [11 favorites]


Makes me think of Solomon Dwek, whom I believe was caught only after depositing a second bounced $25 million check at PNC Bank.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 3:20 PM on May 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


There is strong evidence that Anna's futurist ex-boyfriend mentioned early on in the piece is Ray Kurzweil. Or possibly Shingy
Ray is old, married and has lived in San Francisco for a decade or so. Didn’t move to UAE, which the Twitter “strong evidence” conflates with Kuwait.
posted by Lame_username at 3:21 PM on May 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


"I would subscribe to a $10/month premium news service that did nothing but two extremely detailed Anna Delvey stories each month."

Me too. Actually, I saw people tweeting about this story this morning, so googled up the Vanity Fair article, and then came to Metafilter and saw this, and now I am in deep. This story is so weird and yet so banal, and so telling about Our Current Times and I really want someone to do a podcast (one episode has to be about the futurist, please) about it or write like 8 more articles. I will read them all.
posted by lunasol at 3:28 PM on May 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


That Vanity Fair article is making me nauseated with anxiety. $70K on an Amex!
posted by apricot at 3:52 PM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


it's a really fascinating look into how much the world of high finance is run on handshakes, reputation, and trying to save face. Like, there's no way my bank would let me withdraw more than a couple hundred from a check I just deposited. But a $100k line of credit based on a phone call from a fancy lawyer, and a scan of a forged receipt -what's the worst that could happen??

Neither of those things were in connection with the City National loan, though. She picked a lower-tier bank (not exactly high finance) hoping to dazzle them with some presumably fake Swiss bank documents. When she tried to leverage that to get more money from grown-ups, Fortress plainly clocked her, or was just about to. Delvey was really good at spotting marginal people and institutions to exploit--people who were on the edges of the action, so could be beguiled by the right references, but lacking real sophistication. But that's not where the big money is.
posted by praemunire at 4:16 PM on May 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


“She screwed basically everyone,” said the acquaintance in Berlin, who passed on the names of several individuals who were said to have had amounts large and small borrowed or stolen but were too embarrassed to come forward.

This makes sense! And makes the story more better: the Vanity Fair piece was rough because the writer was in a tight spot. It's a lot more fun to think about all the rich people she duped out of money.
posted by grandiloquiet at 5:52 PM on May 29, 2018


Lame_username: Ray is old, married and has lived in San Francisco for a decade or so. Didn’t move to UAE, which the Twitter “strong evidence” conflates with Kuwait.

Yeah, that sounded off to me as well (although "old" is no disqualifier for this kind of shenanigan, and "married" is only often but not always such a disqualifier). People are guessing Kurzweil because he's one of the futurists that people can name off the top of their head. So, I went into the New Yorker archives (by which I mean Google search with "site:newyorker.com") to see what other futurists have been profiled. Unfortunately, it seems the New Yorker has written (and referenced) a lot about Futurism, the Italian avant-garde art movement from the early 1900s, which makes a little time-consuming to dig through the search results. The only solid profiles I could find of non-Kurzweil futurists were: 1) Nathan Myrhvold, 2) Nick Bostrom, and 3) Newt Gingrich (!). I think all three of these also fail the "moving to UAE" test which seems to be a key element of the story. Also, it seems my initial Google search didn't catch the New Yorker's 2014 profile of Shingy because they don't use the term "futurist" or "futurism" in the article at all. (And it's not Shingy because he lives in NYC).

Somehow, unless the reporter got one or more details wrong, it should be easier to figure this out. I mean, if we're looking for a) a futurist, b) who was prominent enough to have been profiled in The New Yorker, and c) moved to the UAE in 2016, that's gotta be a pretty small and googlable search space.
posted by mhum at 6:03 PM on May 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


What an absolutely fascinating story, I had read the Vanity Fair piece when it came out and didn't put two-and-two together that they were about the same woman until halfway through this article. I can't even imagine how one breezes their way into staying in a hotel for a month without even giving them a functioning credit card. I used a hotel lobby bathroom this past weekend and thought for sure I'd get kicked out for not being a guest.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 6:40 PM on May 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


Google search with "site:newyorker.com"....Unfortunately, it seems the New Yorker has written (and referenced) a lot about Futurism, the Italian avant-garde art movement from the early 1900s,

maybe try "singularity"
posted by thelonius at 7:22 PM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


Delvey was really good at spotting marginal people and institutions to exploit--people who were on the edges of the action, so could be beguiled by the right references, but lacking real sophistication.

What I would give to watch Martin Shkreli read this description and slowly realize it's about him.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 9:27 PM on May 29, 2018 [16 favorites]


> soren_lorensen:
"There's a store in NYC named Acne? Really?

I love it when new people discover this. I remember when I first discovered this. I urge you, please google their website. The name is probably explicable by a language-other-than-English but their hideous, insanely expensive clothes are not."


InnagaddadaVITA! Their site is not only painfully slow, but I couldn't even get past the first loading of new men's arrivals. I am not a skinny little pretty boy, and I can NOT see hundreds of dollars for sweat...erm...track pants. This strikes me as the dark side of "quirky".
posted by Samizdata at 9:52 PM on May 29, 2018


Acne is a Swedish company that specializes in a much more sophisticated kind of grift - they sell 'cool' clothes that are poorly made and look... uh... 'cool.'

Anna would have done well to mimic this strategy more closely - you can sell garbage if you display it right. Once met a guy in Paris who was selling real estate 'Investment' properties. The r.o.i. was so bad I wasn't sure if he was kidding, then I realized there was a reason he looked like a stock-broker from the 90's and his 'wife' talked mostly about their summers in Maine. They knew their marks, they were only looking for that kind of client, and that kind of client would forgive them a 'sudden market downturn,' or 'unfortunately a new law restricting the ownership of real estate by non-French nationals. But I might know someone who can help with this..." and etc.
posted by From Bklyn at 2:44 AM on May 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


I just read this article yesterday and I'm so happy to see it posted here. I was completely fascinated, horrified, impressed, and cynical. I couldn't decide if she was genuine and borderline delusional or just had a lot of chutzpah. I'm sure it's some sort of combination.

I would definitely watch this movie, sort of in the vein of Catch Me If You Can but updated with designer clothes and silicon valley tech/NYC property douchebags.
posted by like_neon at 3:28 AM on May 30, 2018


Acne is a Swedish company that specializes in a much more sophisticated kind of grift - they sell 'cool' clothes that are poorly made and look... uh... 'cool.'

Err, disagree. At least with their leather accessories I've been extraordinarily happy with my boots (they've been so good I've bought two pairs) and wallet and the quality of my mohair sweater is undeniable.

Funny story about their website. This new site is about 2 years old. Their old one was very simple and classic and pretty much copied by every wannabe cool designer. My colleagues and I theorize that this updated insane website design is an attempt to thwart copycats who had enough gall to copy them before but not enough to follow them down this path.

posted by like_neon at 3:32 AM on May 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


Ok, so I figured out who the futurist is but it turns out he's not anyone famous or even really a public figure so I'm not sure how okay it is to just name him outright (for the sake of his googlability). I mean, if he was Shingy or Kurzweil or even a lesser-known but still pretty active on the media circuits guy like Gerd Leonhard, Parag Khanna, or Juan Enriquez, it'd be another thing but I totally understand why the journalist left this guy unnamed in her article. However, I can give you a sequence of investigative steps that will lead you to the same info.

First, instead of checking the New Yorker archives to look for a mention of a futurist (who, as it turns out, was never referred to as such in the New Yorker itself), I should have thought to myself "What would Ashley Feinberg do?" The answer is: find Anna Delvey's social media accounts. Specifically, in order to support the high-flying trust fundie image, she obviously would have had to have a correspondingly glamorous IG presence. Now, googling for "Anna Delvey instagram" leads one to observe that she used to have an account under the name @annadelvey but seems to have changed it at some point. So, instead of looking for her username directly, we can look for Neff the concierge's IG which is @filmcolors. Right up top, she has a pic with Delvey tagged in it and IG has helpfully updated her account name to her current one, @annadlvv. (To be honest, I short-cutted all of these steps when I just saw someone on Twitter post a link to a photo on Delvey's current account but I tried to backtrack how I should have been able to find it on my own.)

Now that we have Delvey's IG, it's just a matter of scrolling through the carefully curated jet-set travel photos and art shots looking for who's she's tagged and or referenced in the captions. Mostly, she's tagging in artists, venues she's visiting, and occasionally fashion brands. But, by the time we get to October 2014, we find a picture of a Maine lobster, a caption containing the hashtag #PopTech (which totally sounds like a thing a futurist would be at), and a tag for a person who does not seem to be an artist.

Googling that person's name brings up his Linkedin which confirms a move to Dubai in May 2016 to work for something called the "Dubai Future Foundation" and where he current works as the "Head of Innovation and Futures Unit" of the Dubai Airport Freezone Authority. More googling brings up his Ted talk appearances and an October 2013 New Yorker profile about Shadow, his alarm clock app that would help you better remember dreams by waking you up gradually. This leads to a kickstarter for Shadow where it was further revealed that part of the goal with this app was to develop the world's largest dream database (?!). Anyways, it doesn't look like the app ever panned out and that's basically it for this guy's public-facing stuff as far as I can tell.
posted by mhum at 9:46 AM on May 30, 2018 [11 favorites]


Thanks for the detective work, mhum. I agree with you that, if you're right, and the futurist is not a public figure in the way that Kurzweil or Shingy is, further digging is unwarranted. And it's not even the most interesting aspect of the story. (That'd be the window we get into the world of the super-rich.)
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:28 AM on May 30, 2018


What she did and how she did it is fascinating but I'd really pay to read about how she learned to do what she did.
posted by srboisvert at 10:34 AM on May 31, 2018 [8 favorites]


I was wondering that too. Like, she’s basically kiting checks, but it looks to me like extremely advanced kiting checks. It would never occur to me to pay for something with a wire transfer, let alone to forge a wire receipt. And then she’s using phony overseas bank accounts as collateral for loans? It’s really something.

There’s probably a subreddit for this.
posted by chrchr at 2:15 PM on May 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


The Fiends and Folk Heroes of Grifter Season connects Delvey to Elizabeth Holmes and Jill Stein as the characters in a supposed wave of grift.
posted by chrchr at 8:36 AM on June 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


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