An attorney for fake German heiress Anna “Delvey” Sorokin said Tuesday that she is still in the custody of U.S. immigration authorities, one day after he said she was unreachable and that he was “working under the presumption that she is being deported.”
“She is still at [the] Orange County facility” in Southern California, attorney Manny Arora said in a text message Tuesday.
Her legal team filed a motion to stop her deportation Monday, he added.
A spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that Sorokin, a German citizen, was still in custody and declined further comment.
Asked Tuesday about Arora’s comments, another lawyer for Sorokin, Audrey Thomas, said: “Presumptions are wrong.”
“We’re doing our best,” she said. “That’s as far as we can go.”
The confusion comes after Sorokin, 31, who falsely claimed to be a German heiress worth $60 million, served roughly four years in prison for swindling hundreds of thousands of dollars from friends, banks and hotels. She was the subject of a Netflix documentary, “Inventing Anna.”
Last March, six weeks after Sorokin’s release from prison, immigration authorities took her into custody for overstaying her visa. In November, the Board of Immigration Appeals granted her request for an emergency stay on deportation proceedings.
A deportation order for Sorokin was signed on Feb. 17, giving her lawyers 30 days to file an appeal, Arora said Monday.
“But we are dealing with bureaucracy, and there are numerous filings in her case so you just never know if there was a paperwork error,” he said, explaining why he believed she had likely been deported.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
