A New York official is trying to make it so a fake heiress will not receive a payday for an upcoming series based on her scandal.
Shonda Rhimes’ Netflix project revolving around Anna Sorokin, the woman who pretended to be a German heiress named Anna Delvey, could be subject to New York’s “Son of Sam” law, which doesn’t allow criminals to profit from their crimes. The New York State Attorney General’s office is, therefore, trying to convince a judge that the profits Netflix earns from the show will go to Sorokin’s victims. A New York Post report which features Assistant Attorney General Adele Durand writing in court papers that “[t]he monies sought to be preserved herein, constitute ‘profits from a crime.'”
Sorokin actually has received money from the project already. Since Netflix acquired the rights to Jessica Pressler’s New York Magazine article profiling Sorokin before she went to trial, Sorokin received $30,000. However, that money went straight to her lawyer for her fees. She was reportedly supposed to receive $70,000 on June 8 from the Netflix deal, and she is contractually supposed to receive $7,5000 in royalty as well as a $15,000 consulting fee for every episode. If she was able to receive these steady paychecks, it’d make it seem like crime does, in fact, pay. Thus, the legal issue and why the Attorney General’s office wants all money to go towards those she conned.
As profiled in Pressler’s New York Magazine article, “How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People,” Sorokin used her heiress persona to get bank loans, freebies and lied her way into having socialite status among New York City’s elite. The project marks Rhimes’ first with Netflix under the terms of her own enormous Netflix deal, and will be the first series Shonda herself has written after Scandal.
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