I took another screenshot. Perfect, said McCaffrey.
God, it made me sad, lying like this. I could feel myself splinter—words on one side, actions on the other. How on earth had Anna done this for so long and with such apparent ease?
To help the Los Angeles Police Department identify her, Officer McCaffrey asked me to send him a few recent photos of Anna. Scrolling through my phone, a travelogue flashed before my eyes. Anna smiling in her sunglasses on the grounds of La Mamounia; walking through the souk, looking back at me with a grin; pouting in the self-portrait from her Instagram account; beaming, self-satisfied, at a table in Le Coucou. I guessed her height at five foot seven. And she normally wears all black, I added.
See ya tomorrow lady! I said to Anna, as I arrived at the hotel restaurant for a quick dinner.
Yes! she replied. Will you be able to pick up the bottles for me before? I’m being driven by rehab people. Can’t wait to see you. Been forever.
It felt like forever, but in reality it had been almost two months to the day since I last saw Anna, when she had turned around to wave goodbye on the walk home from the Frying Pan. Had she forgotten that evening? It had been a condensed drama unlike anything I had ever experienced. The futility of hurled accusations bouncing off lies and shattering on the ground—it left me broken, injured in a way that may never fully heal. And what about her? It would take a mental-health professional to say for sure, but by this point it was my firm opinion that Anna was a sociopath. As far as I could tell, she ticked every diagnostic checkbox.
Had Anna experienced confrontations like the one at the Frying Pan before? How deep and how lasting were her bruises? She must have built up a tolerance. Conflict is inevitable if your every action is founded on self-obsession.
But then, I’m not sure that Anna could control her self-aggrandizing impulses—they seemed intrinsic to her nature. In Morocco, when I became collateral damage, she had made zero effort to protect me. Quite the opposite, she used me as her shield. Her selfishness was hard-wired, and because of it she made that choice. Was she sorry? Yes, but sorry like a child who had broken her favorite toy. She used me up and was sorry when I was gone—not sorry for my anguish but sorry for her loss. Now Anna was staying in a facility that cost more than she owed me, and not only was she unapologetic, she was asking me for favors. It was as if Marrakech had never happened.
Once upon a time, not long ago, I had been living my life and doing just fine. Anna’s presence in my world had occurred suddenly and quickly expanded. Her influence spread undetected. While she bought me dinners and invited me on vacation, I deluded myself into thinking that, as reciprocity, my understanding, time, and attention would be enough. Meanwhile, under the guise of friendship, she tethered herself to my core. With every hour we spent together, her power grew. Where I felt connection, she felt control. Before I knew it, I was coming to rely on her. After Morocco, all that remained was a void—my life, hollow; her promises, empty; our friendship, without meaning.
I felt the loss of Anna, not as she was but as I had once perceived her to be. When I lost that, I lost a part of myself. When I became disillusioned with my friend, I became disillusioned with my faith in the innate goodness of all people.
Our final text exchange took place on October 3, 2017, starting at 8:39 a.m.
Anna: Can you talk now?
Me: Sorry. Not right this second. Call you ASAP.
Anna: I’m leaving here now, not sure i’ll have reception until our date, see you there.
Anna: prob be there bit early.
Anna: If you get a chance to get like 3 vodka bottles and big water bottle 1 or 2 to fill that in.
Me: Ok see you soon!! Sorry it’s crunch time here.
Anna: And maybe 1 bottle of white wine with screw top and ice tea to pour that into.
Anna: Thank you.
Anna: See you at noon.
* * *
The goal of the shoot was to achieve one group portrait containing more than sixty subjects, not all of whom were available to be photographed at the same time. Adding to the riddle, time with every subject was limited—a few minutes before or after speaking engagements—while town cars sat waiting and handlers stood by. For maximum efficiency, each subject’s position was predetermined. The stairs outside of the Annenberg Center were dotted with little neon strips of tape: a left foot here, a right foot there. On Tuesday morning, a group of us divvied up small squares of paper, each one containing a headshot of a subject along with his or her name. We scurried up and down the steps neatly taping our squares to the ground. It was my job to know where each person would go.
The text from Officer McCaffrey arrived at 9:18 a.m. Call me, it read.
I ducked around the corner, cell phone to my ear, bracing myself.
“They got her,” he said.
Anna was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department as she left Passages that morning. She was in custody, on her way to wherever it is that criminals who are arrested in Malibu are taken for booking. At noon, the very minute I was scheduled to arrive at Joan’s on Third, I was of course still on location for the photo shoot. I sent a series of messages to Anna:
Me: Hey, I’m running like 10mins late—almost there
Me: Are you close?
Me: I don’t see you.
Me: Anna?
Me: I’m sorry I had to leave. Maybe you’re at the wrong location???
Me: Text me later when you get back on WiFi and we can find another time to meet.
* * *
I never went to Joan’s on Third for lunch, so why bother pretending that I had? Was I afraid that she would discover my involvement in her arrest? Most definitely. But that wasn’t the only reason. As Anna had done with me, I wanted her to believe my lie.
* * *
On Wednesday, Larry David wore photochromic glasses that darkened in the sunlight. As Annie was taking his picture outside the Annenberg Center, his glasses kept dimming into a shade that obstructed too much of his face. Eager to please, he would take them off and stash them temporarily inside his blazer until they regained their clear transparency. Then he would pull them out in a flash, like a cowboy drawing a pistol, place them on his face, and pose while Annie fired her shots. When the glasses darkened again, the process would repeat.
No one on set could keep from laughing, but I was distracted by my phone. Every few minutes, I received an incoming call from Houston, Texas. No matter how many times I ignored it, my phone would ring again. Eventually, I answered and I heard a robot make an announcement: “This is Global Tel. You have a collect call from—” I hung up.
And yet, in the same way that Anna kept reaching out to me, I found myself compelled to continue reaching out to her. Even though I knew she had been apprehended, I would send her text messages for days to come. Nothing profound, just pebbles dropped into an abyss. Each of us reached out wondering if the other one might be there.
A week later, I sent my last text to Anna: Find it strange I haven’t heard anything from you, I wrote. And as sad as it was, I meant what I said.
Chapter 19
Rebalance
* * *
After her arrest outside Passages in Malibu on October 3, 2017, Anna spent twenty-two days in Los Angeles County’s Century Regional Detention Facility. Officer McCaffrey picked her up from there on October 25. He would later tell me the story. It was the first time he’d seen her in person. He introduced himself and explained that he had come to take her back to New York County.
“Why am I going back to New York?” she asked.
“Because there’s a warrant for your arrest,” he said, unable to discuss the specific allegations without her counsel present—which was just as well, since she didn’t even ask what the charges were.
On the five-hour flight, Anna sat calmly with Officer McCaffrey in economy class, read a magazine, and ate a vegetarian meal.
From JFK, he brought her directly to Manhattan Central Booking, where she would spend the ni
ght. As he was preparing to leave, Anna spoke up.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” she said.
Finally, he thought, she was going to ask him about the charges.
“Can you get me some contact solvent?”
Meanwhile, that same evening, I was texting back and forth with Kathryn. The New York Post had just published an article with the headline: WANNABE SOCIALITE BUSTED FOR RIPPING OFF LUXURY HOTEL, JET COMPANY. It described Anna as “a grifter socialite armed with an alias and a taste for the high life” who had been “busted for ripping off a string of upscale businesses—including a luxury Moroccan hotel and a private jet company.”
I wasn’t mentioned, thankfully, though neither was La Mamounia. Instead, the article reported that Anna had “allegedly stiffed Sir Richard Branson’s five-star resort Kasbah Tamadot out of a $20,000 bill after a months-long Moroccan jaunt.”
The facts seemed a bit muddled (Anna had stayed in Morocco for less than a month) but the piece included the first public mention of the trip, which made me nervous that the paper would soon find out about and start reporting on my disastrous friendship with Anna. I was aware of my position as a Vanity Fair employee, as well as the daughter of a man running for Congress, and I really didn’t want that to happen. I could see the headlines coming, dragging me, my employer, and loved ones through the mud.
I sent the article to Kathryn. No mention of my situation thank god, I texted.
If it comes out, it comes out, she replied. It will not reflect poorly on you. Only on her.
It suddenly occurred to me: regardless of whether my name was mentioned in the press, it would likely be revealed during the judicial process. I’d been so focused on the investigation, Anna’s arrest, and, after that, my ongoing debt and emotional recovery that it just hadn’t dawned on me that I could become part of the story. I sent a text to Officer McCaffrey. Yes, he told me, if press attended the arraignment, they might learn my name.
I relayed the news to Kathryn. I’m going to deactivate my Facebook. Insta is private. Deleted my full name and workplace, although it can easily be googled. I’m dreading this. Just called my parents to give them a heads up, I went on. Turning off my website with contact info, too.
It will be fine, she wrote back. Might be a storm of interest but will pass . . . just ride it out like a good wave in Montauk.
The arraignment is at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, I told her. I was not going to be there. I had no desire to be in the same room as Anna. At the same time, the fallout of my relationship with her had consumed my life for so long now that I couldn’t help but be curious to know what would happen.
Kathryn picked up on that. I assume it is open to the public, she replied. I’ll be there.
The next morning, in a nearly empty courtroom at 100 Centre Street, within the criminal division of the New York State Supreme Court, Anna appeared wearing a disposable black jumpsuit. I saw photographs later that afternoon, after the press posted them online. Her hair was down and looked either oily or wet at the roots. A criminal-defense lawyer named Todd Spodek accompanied her. I wondered if he was the same lawyer Beth had spoken with. I wasn’t sure. During the arraignment, Anna was formally charged with six felonies and one misdemeanor. Kathryn called me immediately afterward with three key updates: Yes, there was press. No, Anna was not offered bail. And yes, she entered a plea of not guilty.
The scale of the deception set out in the indictment came as a shock. I’d had no real understanding of the scope of her alleged crimes. She was being accused of stealing approximately $275,000 through a variety of scams, and of attempting to steal millions more. One of her most successful tactics was “check kiting,” a fraudulent practice that takes advantage of the several days banks need for deposited checks to officially clear. First, Anna opened checking accounts with Citibank and Signature Bank. Then, she wrote checks from one account to the other. She didn’t actually have the funds to cover the checks, but the money would show up in her account, and she would immediately withdraw it before the banks figured this out.
According to the indictment, between April 7 and April 11—around the same time she’d confirmed our reservation at La Mamounia—Anna deposited $160,000 in bad checks into her Citibank account and then transferred $70,000 out of that account before the checks bounced. In August, post-Marrakech, she opened an account with Signature Bank and deposited $15,000 in bad checks. She was able to withdraw approximately $8,200 in cash before those checks bounced. When Citibank and Signature detected the fraudulent activity, they shut down her accounts and contacted the New York Police Department.
Anna was also accused of falsifying documents from international banks—UBS in Switzerland and Deutsche Bank in Germany—showing overseas accounts with a total balance of approximately €60 million. The indictment detailed how she had taken these documents in late 2016 to City National Bank in an attempt to secure a $22 million loan for the creation of her art foundation and private club. When City National Bank denied the loan, she showed the same documents to Fortress Investment Group in Midtown. Fortress agreed to consider a $25 million loan if Anna provided $100,000 to cover legal and due-diligence expenses.
On January 12, 2017, Anna secured a line of credit on her account with City National Bank for $100,000 by assuring banking executive Ryan Salem that she would wire money from a European account to repay the loan within days. (“We always believed that she had money,” Salem would later testify. “She seemed to speak the language. She understood the financial jargon that you need to know to interact and transact in this environment. . . . I went to bat for somebody who at the end of the day was not somebody to go to bat for.”)
Anna gave the $100,000 to Fortress to cover the expenses associated with her loan application. The wire with City National Bank’s reimbursement never materialized.
One month later, in February, Anna re-entered New York City—and my life. Fortress had already spent approximately $45,000 of Anna’s City National Bank money on their due diligence. According to the New York Times, Spencer Garfield, a managing director at Fortress, later testified that Anna soon “ran into problems providing details about the origin of her wealth. For starters, she claimed to be born in Germany, but her passport showed she was from a Russian town.” (I took this to mean that Anna had more than one passport, since the one she’d sent me a picture of to book her flight to Marrakech listed Düren, Germany, as her birthplace.) “When Mr. Garfield volunteered to go to Switzerland to meet her banker there [in order to verify her assets], [Anna] abruptly withdrew from the deal, telling him her father would just give her the money.”
I remembered Anna telling me that her father had gotten wind of the deal and didn’t like the terms. After Anna backed out, Fortress returned the remaining $55,000. According to the District Attorney’s Office, Anna used this money to fund her lifestyle: personal training with Kacy Duke, her stay at the 11 Howard hotel, and shopping at Forward by Elyse Walker, Apple, and Net-a-Porter. Anna squandered tens of thousands of dollars within the span of one month. By March, her bank balance was negative $9,000, according to ADA McCaw. She never paid the private jet company Blade for the $35,000 plane she had chartered to Omaha in early May, on the weekend before our Morocco trip.
In the DA’s press release announcing the indictment, my story also came out. “SOROKIN invited a friend on an all-expenses paid trip to Morocco,” it read. “During the trip, SOROKIN offered her debit card for payment knowing it would be declined due to insufficient funds. . . . SOROKIN never reimbursed her [friend], and made excuses when asked about the status of the re-payment.” Court documents included my first and last name, but miraculously the press didn’t discover my job or associations. As Kathryn put it via text: There must be a lot of Rachel Williamses in NYC.
Nevertheless, I was on high alert. When I received a LinkedIn “connect” request from a features photo editor at the New York Post, I deleted my profile picture and set my account to private. I would continue to stay off the radar for m
onths to come.
At the same time, I still owed American Express tens of thousands of dollars on both my corporate and personal credit cards. (I asked the colleague responsible for reviewing my corporate expense reports to ignore the charges from La Mamounia, which he did without question because there was a credit for that amount while Amex was reviewing my claim.) I finally accepted the loan offer from Janine to cover part of the balance on my personal account. This included the charges for the Morocco flights, the Villa Oasis trip, all of our lunches and dinners outside of the hotel, and the dresses Anna had picked out in the medina. Janine sent funds directly to American Express on my behalf. She and I drafted and signed a loan agreement, and I began making monthly payments toward her reimbursement.
This did not cover the La Mamounia bill, however, which I was still disputing separately. These charges were split across my personal and corporate cards, and the claims I’d filed with American Express were still pending. While waiting for the credit card company to reach a decision, I was not responsible for paying any of the charges in question.
Until they suddenly began reappearing on my monthly statements. American Express had investigated my case, contacted La Mamounia, and turned down my claims. I received the news while I was at work and immediately searched for a space where I could make a phone call in private. I found an empty cement stairwell that smelled of building materials and dust, sat down on the steps, and stared at the blue industrial pipe across from me.
“Representative,” I said, the sound echoing off the walls. I heard the phrase “This call may be recorded for quality-assurance purposes.” Good, I thought, I hope everyone is listening. I was tired of repeatedly describing what had happened. I was transferred from person to person until they found the right department. I told my story, my voice tripping midway over the lump in my throat. Then I overflowed with broken emotion.
My Friend Anna Page 25