Anna Delvey speaks exclusively to GLAMOUR from prison: “It wasn’t scamming, it was getting a loan in unconventional ways”

Anna’s experiences in jail taught her a lot about caring for others. “I learned a lot about empathy and just being considerate of other people, (definitely more than, when I was younger anyway), from being in jail and just being around so many women who are in a way worse position than me.” 

The scrutiny that Anna got by putting her desire for fame and fortune above others, led many to believe it could have only stemmed from pure narcissism. To that, she says: “I think a lot of entrepreneurs are just selfish by nature. It’s like, you have to be selfish to a certain degree, and I won’t deny that. You have to keep your eye on the prize. Just being able to do anything, whatever gets the job done. It’s certainly not the prettiest aspect of it, but it’s just the reality.”

Anna’s ultimate goal was never to be a celebrity, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t enjoyed her newfound fame. She shares with me how her celebrity status impacts her time in prison, saying, “Everybody here knows who I am. Definitely. Somebody sent me an Inventing Anna calendar to sign, which is a selection of photos from the show, and I was signing books for people’s mothers, for their kids… It’s pretty cute. I mean, nobody’s hating on me. Not to my face at least.” She laughs, and her laugh is contagious. 

She reassures me that the intention behind her journey was never to acquire fame and she could never have predicted her story to get so much traction. However, the hype would simply be a gentle bonus. 

“Power, money, fame, in that order,” she tells me without hesitation as I ask her to rank those three words in order of importance.

Although Anna appears to not care too much about people’s opinions of her, it’s clear that – deep down, perhaps – she does: “It’s really hard to distinguish between my own perception of myself and what the public thinks of me, but I’m the one who has to live with myself. And I know what my intentions were, and none of them was to defraud anybody. So I did make some mistakes, but in the end, I’m trying to fix them. So I knew it was not completely and deliberately bad. I was not really trying to harm anybody.” 

Anna strongly believes that scammers are only labeled scammers if they fail, but she was willing to succeed by any means necessary. Her egotism is apparent, and her desperation to be someone seeps through our poorly connected video call, but she’s likable and her palpable gumption can not be undermined. After all, she picked her victims well. 

Determined to defend herself, she reminded me how her crimes were committed against institutions and not real people. To which I ask, “Are institutions not made up of real people?” Her response? “Well, it’s totally different. Who suffered from my crimes really?” she then adds: “I mean, institutions are made of people, but it’s not equal to defrauding a person.”  

“Secondly, I was never trying to scam them. I always had a plan and my goal was never to permanently deprive anybody of their funds; I was going to return it. I just chose an unorthodox way to go about it.”

Anna explains that she was heavily influenced by the whole tech industry. In fact, her story is not unique, and many people around her were busy doing the same. Think Billy McFarland, the founder of the notorious Fyre Festival saga, whom she was well-acquainted with (pre-conviction). Or WeWork’s Adam and Rebekah Neumann, or even Elizabeth Holmes’ Theranos scandal in Silicon Valley — whose story led Amanda Seyfried to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress this year for her portrayal of Elizabeth in the limited series The Dropout streaming on Disney Plus. The business industry was rotten bottom-up with “bullshitters” who faked their way to the top without getting caught. 

“All these famous venture capitalists and the CEOs, they all committed some kind of ‘little fraud’. If they were to get accused of any crimes down the line, that would be the same thing that would be used against them; used as proof of bad character. But if they succeed in the end, it doesn’t seem like something negative. It’s actually being lauded and admired.”