As “Dancing With the Stars” heads into its 33rd season, the beloved ABC dance competition was met with fierce fan backlash Wednesday when it announced that con artist and “notorious ankle bracelet fashionista” Anna Delvey would be joining the roster of celebrity contestants.

Delvey’s participation in the show was announced Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America;” she’ll join the likes of former NBA star Dwight Howard, troubled “Beverly Hills, 90210” star Tori Spelling and Jenn Tran, “The Bachelorette” star whose season ended in heartbreaking mourning Tuesday night, the Associated Press reported. Each of the 13 celebrity contestants will be teamed up with professional ballroom dancers to compete for the famed mirrorball trophy.

But Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, made much of the headlines and social media chatter following Wednesday’s Season 33 announcement, with fans calling her participation in the show “a disgrace” due to the fact that she is a convicted fraudster who posed as a wealthy German heiress to dupe several Manhattan residents into giving her hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, goods and services. Delvey, whose exploits inspired the hit Netflix show “Inventing Anna,” is currently under house arrest after posting a $10,000 bail. She wears the aforementioned electronic ankle bracelet for GPS monitoring as she fights deportation to Germany.

But while people were wondering how low “DWTS” would go to gain publicity, they may have forgotten that Delvey isn’t the first controversial personality to join the beloved family-friendly show, usually to gain favorable publicity and a chance to rehabilitate their public image, as Us Weekly reported. The show seems to like to stir up controversy every few years, often under the guise of building a dramatic redemption story around a troubled celebrity.

“Dancing With the Stars” has also been in the news this past week, with the arrest of one of its longtime professional dancers. Artem Chigvintsev was arrested last week in Napa County on suspicion of domestic violence and will not be appearing on the show this season. He met his wife, former WWE star Nikki Garcia, while she was on the show and he was his professional partner.

As for controversial “DWTS” contestants, the trend started with Season 5 in 2007, when professional boxer Floyd Mayweather was invited to compete on the show despite his history of domestic abuse, Us Weekly reported.

Two years later, not everyone was happy when former GOP politician Tom DeLay, the House majority leader from 2003 to 2005, joined the show in 2009 for Season 9, Us Weekly also reported. Four years earlier, DeLay had been indicted on charges of conspiracy to violate the Political Fundraising Act, which led to his resignation. However, his 2011 conviction was later overturned.

Celebrity chef Paula Deen, who was caught using racial slurs and fired from her job at Food Network, tried to redeem herself during the show’s 21st season in 2015, Us Weekly reports. The following year, Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte faced public outcry following his scandal at the Rio Olympics, when he admitted to falsely claiming he had been robbed at gunpoint.

Politics once again stirred up bitter feelings among fans and ABC employees when Sean Spicer, Donald Trump’s former press secretary, joined the show in 2019 during Season 28, Us Weekly reported. An ABC employee told CNN that Spicer’s appearance on the show was “a slap in the face to those of us who had to deal with his nonsense and the fallout from the ongoing lies and disinformation campaign in the White House.”

The following season in 2020, animal activist and Big Cat CEO Carole Baskin was given a platform on the show, despite the fact that she had been accused of complicity in her husband’s disappearance in the popular 2020 Netflix true crime docuseries, “Tiger King,” Us Weekly reported.

In season 30 in 2021, YouTube star Olivia Jade Giannulli sought her own form of “DWTS” redemption after her wealthy Hollywood parents, TV actor Lori Loughlin and designer Mossimo Giannulli, were caught up in a college admissions scandal. Giannulli’s parents pleaded guilty to paying $500,000 in bribes to fraudulently admit her and her sister to the University of Southern California.

“Her presence on the dance floor is an insult to common decency,” one woman tweeted in response to one of Giannulli’s performances on the show.

Such comments now follow news that Delvey will appear on “Dancing With the Stars.” Delvey is in fact the name the con artist, born Anna Sorokin, used when she posed as an heiress with a multimillion-dollar trust fund to gain access to the upper echelons of New York high society, the Associated Press reported.

Sorokin-turned-Delvey was convicted in 2019 of forging checks and financial documents to fund a lavish lifestyle, defrauding banks, hotels and individuals out of an estimated total of $275,000, AP and other media reported. She was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison, though she served more than 500 days in jail while her case was pending and was released for good behavior in February 2021, AP reported. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials detained her a few weeks later for failing to leave the country, and she remained in custody for a year before being released to house arrest.

“DWTS” appears to be leaning into her infamous reputation by advertising herself as Anna Delvey for the show, the Associated Press reported. In the press release, the show also described her as the “notorious anklet fashionista” and published an image of her wearing a short, sparkly dress with the anklet on her leg.

The AP said ICE did not respond to requests for comment regarding changes to Delvey’s home detention conditions that would allow her to film the show in the Los Angeles area. Delvey told The Hollywood Reporter that she was persuaded to appear on the show and said she received permission from ICE to do so.

“I was kind of talked into doing it,” Delvey told The Hollywood Reporter. “I got permission from ICE and then it was kind of too late to back out.” She also said she doesn’t expect her ankle monitor to affect her performance. “It’s actually quite light,” she said.

Delvey’s spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, confirmed to the AP on Tuesday that she is allowed to travel within 70 miles (113 kilometers) of her home base and anywhere in New York City’s five boroughs, where she was previously under house arrest. She could not comment on any changes to those rules, however.