In 2017, Anna Sorokin invited her friend Rachel Williams and a few others to join her for a fabulous getaway to the palatial Moroccan resort, La Mamounia, at Sorokin’s expense. What wasn’t so fabulous? Sorokin couldn’t pay for any of it. After all of Sorokin’s credit cards were declined, Williams offered to put down two of hers, per her article in Vanity Fair. “I was told that my card would not be charged,” she wrote. 

After Williams got stuck with $62,000 in credit charges, she helped to set up a police sting that led to Sorokin’s arrest in Los Angeles, per Insider. In 2019, Williams wrote a book about Sorokin, “My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress.” Another series based on the book, which was optioned by Lena Dunham for production at HBO, is no longer in development, according to Vanity Fair.

Williams is now calling out Netflix for lauding Sorokin’s behavior. “Netflix isn’t just putting out a fictional story. It’s effectively running a con woman’s P.R. — and putting money in her pocket,” she wrote for Air Mail. Williams noted the whole ordeal gave her a clearer picture of the real Anna Sorokin. “Anna told me once that her plans were either going to work out, or all go horribly wrong,” read her Vanity Fair piece. “Now I see what she meant. It was a magic trick — I’m embarrassed to say that I was one of the props, and the audience, too.”