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February 21, 2023 | 2:46 p.m
A Manhattan judge on Tuesday granted fake German heiress Anna Sorokin’s request to have her former attorney scorned for allegedly withholding court records.
Judge Arthur Engoron gave Audrey Thomas a week to turn the documents over to Sorokin – aka Anna Delvey – who says she needs the records to pursue her criminal conviction and deportation case. If Thomas doesn’t meet the March 1 deadline, Engoron said he would order them to pay Sorokin’s legal fees in the case.
During a video-delivered hearing on Tuesday, Sorokin’s attorney, Duncan Levin, told the judge his client is currently under house arrest and “she has no way of addressing her immigration issues and her substantive appeal.”
The 32-year-old “Soho Grifter” filed a lawsuit against Thomas in September 2022 for allegedly violating a July 27 court order requiring her to have court filings by August 5.
Thomas — who was later disfellowshipped for stealing $630,000 from a client in 2013 — has not filed any court documents in the lawsuit, nor has an attorney appeared in the case on her behalf. She was not present at Tuesday’s hearing.
A judge granted Anna Sorokin’s motion to civil disregard for her former attorney, Audrey Thomas.Twitter/Audrey Thomas
After Tuesday’s hearing, Levin told the Post, “It’s reprehensible that we have to go to such tremendous lengths to get something very simple — which is Anna’s court record.”
“We need it to be able to complete her appeal and fight to keep her in the United States,” Levin said. “This is absolutely unnecessary and it is incomprehensible that Ms. Thomas refused to hand over these documents to my client.”
In an email, Thomas said, “I am not aware of any contempt order.”
“I have not been proposed and am fed up with these reckless claims by Anna Sorokin,” she told The Post on Tuesday.
Sorokin says Thomas (above) has court records she needs to appeal her criminal conviction and fight deportation. Twitter/Audrey Thomas
While Thomas sent two batches of documents to Sorokin’s legal team on Aug. 8 and 9, she allegedly still has not returned digital audio recordings of Sorokin’s immigration court hearings, according to the lawsuit.
Also missing are a letter Sorokin sent Thomas from her incarceration, immigration and customs officials and probation documents, files from Sorokin’s original criminal defense attorney and personal items, including headphones and sunglasses, Levin told The Post.
Levin said he struggled for months to get these items from Thomas and asked Engoron to also ask Thomas to pay Sorokin’s attorney’s fees as he “spent dozens of hours trying to get these boxes” for which “my client not have to pay. ”
Sorokin has been fighting over the court papers for the last year, her current attorney said. Emmy Park for the NY Post
Levin told Engoron he has repeatedly tried to serve Thomas with the lawsuit, but “I believe it evades the jurisdiction of the court by making itself unavailable for our service.”
Engoron believed Thomas to be the lawsuit, noting that Levin had emailed and attempted to minister to her in her office and that she had knowledge from the coverage of the case.
Sorokin served four years in prison after being convicted of defrauding businesses and banks out of $200,000
Sorokin – who went by the alias Anna Delvey and was the subject of the Netflix show Inventing Anna – was serving four years in prison after being convicted of defrauding $200,000 from banks and corporations.
Sorokin – who claimed to have a net worth of €60 million – was released in February 2021 and then turned herself in to ICE in March 2021 for allegedly overstaying her visa and having a felony conviction on her record.
While Sorokin was in an Orange County detention center pending her immigration case, Levin said she is now fighting her cases while under house arrest.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/21/anna-sorokins-ex-lawyer-held-in-contempt-for-withholding-docs/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
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