A 25-year-old conwoman convinced a partner at Gibson Dunn to take her on as a client and recommend her to banks, from which she then conned tens of thousands of dollars.

Anna Delvey claimed she needed $50m to lease a 45,000 square foot building on the corner of Park Avenue in New York and turn it into the 'Anna Delvey Foundation club'. She said it would contain a “dynamic visual-arts center”, installations by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, three restaurants, a juice bar and a German bakery.

According to The Cut, Delvey got in touch with Gibson Dunn partner Joel Cohen, known for prosecuting the Wolf of Wall Street, to help find investors. He passed her on to real estate partner Andy Lance, whom she found "different" from other lawyers. “He knows how to talk to women”, Delvey said. “And he would explain to me the right amount, without being patronising”. Delvey told the magazine that she and Lance spoke every day. “He was there all the time. He would answer in the middle of the night, or when he was in Turks and Caicos for Christmas”.

Lance also completed a new client form vouching that Delvey had the resources to pay her invoices and would not embarrass the firm. Then he wrote to financial institutions including the LA City National Bank and Fortress Investment Group, telling them, “Our client Anna Delvey is undertaking a very exciting redevelopment” and needed massive loans because “her personal assets, which are quite substantial, are located outside the US, some of them in trust with UBS”. He added that any loans they made would be “fully secured” by a letter of credit from UBS.

Anna high on the hog, and in court.

Sadly, Delvey's kind testimonials probably won't be hung on Lance's wall. Anna Sorokin, her real name, subsequently submitted forged documents claiming she was worth €60 million to City National Bank and Fortress in an attempt to obtain loans of over $20m from each of them. She managed to extract a credit line of $55,000 from CNB, which she used, according to the New York District Attorney’s office, for “shopping at Forward by Elyse Walker, Apple, and Net-a-Porter”. She also stayed for over a month in a $400 per night room at the boutique 11 Howard hotel in New York, tipped Uber drivers $100 cash for every trip and bought a $4,500 package of sessions from Dakota Johnson's personal trainer. And globe-trotted to fashionable destinations including Paris Fashion Week, Coachella, the Chiltern Firehouse, Art Basel and Frieze. On one occasion she convinced a company to charter her a $35,000 jet to visit Warren Buffet in Omaha by sending them a forged receipt for a wire transfer from Deutsche Bank.

She also invented a fake personal office manager called Peter Hannecke, who 'died' when creditors started to chase up their bills. Sorokin, who has been remanded without bail since October 2017 on Rikers Island prison, is awaiting prosecution for six counts of grand larceny and attempted grand larceny, and charges of services theft. Lance did not respond to a request for comment.