The rise of the celebrity scammers
What’s the fastest route from a jail cell to celebrity? For Anna Sorokin, it’s the quick-step. Upon her release in 2021, after serving just two years of an originally four-to-12-year sentence for posing as an heiress to extort $275,000 from her victims, how did Sorokin (better known by her con artist alias ‘Anna Delvey’) celebrate? In Anna’s mind there was really only one way: by booking a five-star hotel room in downtown New York, indulging in some wine and caviar with friends and going on a shopping spree. Most importantly though, she had hired a German film crew to record it all.
Now dubbed the ‘notorious ankle bracelet fashionista’, Sorokin recently appeared on Dancing With The Stars, in the latest example of our society’s growing obsession with turning scammers into celebrities.
As she brazenly put it just five days after her release: “going to trial is the new sex tape”. In the true crime-addicted, social media-driven age we now live in, the line between fame and infamy has never been thinner; the cult of personality reigns supreme and every fraudster is just a camera away from turning their ill-gotten notoriety into a lucrative media career.
Jordan Belfort, the infamous ‘Wolf of Wall Street’, best embodies this phenomenon. Having been portrayed by Hollywood icon Leonardo Dicaprio, the fact Belfort is the villain of Martin Scorsese’s film, having stolen $200m and spent 22 months in prison, appears lost on many (not least the man himself). Currently endorsed by 3.5m on Tiktok, 2m on Instagram and 600,000 on Twitter, Belfort has used his story of criminality as a springboard for motivational speaking gigs costing upwards of $200,000, ‘crypto workshops’ priced at $40,000 a head, and recurring appearances on the talk show and podcast circuit.
Similar to Sorokin, Belfort was well paid for the cinematic rights to his story, while the compensation to those left destitute by his pump-and-dump schemes remains minimal (in 2011, he received nearly $1m for the sale of his story’s film rights, yet paid just $20,000 towards the restitution of those he defrauded).
Our society’s willingness not just to pardon, but to actively elevate and worship figures like Belfort could have seriously damaging consequences, actively encouraging financial criminals to use publicity to further monetise their scams.
The media and entertainment industries play a key role in this, yet show little sign of remorse. Hollywood films, true-crime podcasts, Netflix documentaries, and now Dancing With The Stars all exploit our natural (and more explicitly put: voyeuristic) fascination with the darker side of human nature. After all, who can resist a charismatic salesman?
People like Belfort tap into our own desire for financial success and allow us to experience it vicariously, albeit through abhorrent, shortcut-taking, legally ambivalent means.
‘Infotainment’
The treatment of white-collar crime as ‘infotainment’ by mass media is hardly a new phenomenon. Yet it is the globally adopted distribution channels of the 21st century – social media, podcasts, streaming platforms – that have enabled criminals to cast a far wider net for victims. The Online Fraud Charter has rightly highlighted social media as a golden goose for scammers: three-quarters of those who reported losing money to online fraud said it started on social media.
Ultimately this results in a self-perpetuating cycle. First the media emphasises the most dramatic components of a scammer’s narrative, the scammer is aggrandised and made known to millions, giving them an even bigger platform to manipulate people.
If we want to see change it will require a collective societal effort. We need to look past the superficial glamour and material allure of fraudsters, and focus instead on the victims. A staggering $485bn was lost to financial crimes worldwide in 2023. Between two and five per cent of global GDP is laundered every year. Instead of idolising the likes of Belfort and Sorokin, audiences and the media alike should condemn them. And social media companies should be doing much more to stop their sites being used for crime.
Sorokin’s competitive dancing stint ultimately proved short-lived, as she was voted off Dancing With The Stars in the first round. The public’s appetite for ex-convicts therefore seemingly has its limits.
Yet the trend of glamourising crime shows little sign of abating. Rather than denouncing fraudsters we simply get bored of one and await the arrival of a newer, flashier iteration. As long as these grifters can use cameras to gain entry into the mainstream, the con is on us.
Marit Rodevand is CEO of Strise