My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress
Rachel Williams was a young, ambitious assistant at Vanity Fair when, on a girls’ night out, she met Anna Delvey. Delvey was nice, friendly, and happened to be rich: she was in New York to set up a small art foundation and to buy a building to house its gallery and performance space. Rachel and Anna hit it off; they started working out together, meeting for drinks, meeting for dinner. Anna was generous about picking up the tab, and gracious in letting Rachel occasionally pay for things and handle arrangements. Then Anna took Rachel to Marrakesh along with her personal trainer and her videographer. It was lots of fun.
Something was wrong with Anna’s credit card, and soon something is very wrong with everything and Rachel owes almost $70,000 in hotel charges on her corporate Amex. It turns out that Anna wasn’t an heiress at all. Solving this becomes quite a puzzle.
One thing that’s fascinating here is that it's not quite clear whether Anna was actually running a long con. If so, she doesn't seem to have had a crew, or to have known a lot about the business. Yet she was very good at fooling a lot of people for a long time, and it makes for an enthrallingly good yarn.