After The Tinder Scammer, a shocking new documentary is coming to Netflix: Bad Vegan, which looks back on the fraud scandal surrounding popular restaurateur Sarma Melngailis and her former companion Anthony Strangis.
It all starts with an argument and threats made on the phone between a woman and a man. Her name is Sarma Melngailis, his name is Shane Fox. And the former couple are the subject of a mind-blowing documentary series on Netflix called Bad Vegan: Scam on the menu, which traces the incredible true story of this restaurateur specializing in vegan cuisine and the influence exercised by her former companion. on her.
After The Scammer of Tinder, which hit the headlines and met with great success, the platform today released a shocking new documentary on a love story and scam directed and produced by Chris Smith, to whom we already had Jim and Andy, Tiger King: Into the Wild and FYRE: The Greatest Festival That Never Happened.
Who is Sarma Melngailis?
Originally from Massachusetts, Sarma Melngailis was destined for a career in finance in the 1990s before changing paths for her culinary passion that came to her from her mother, a professional chef. She graduated from the French Culinary Institute in 1999. Sarma rose through the ranks and met chef, author and speaker Matthew Kenney, with whom she would maintain a relationship, and restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow.
netflix Sarma Melngailis
Together, they opened the restaurant “Pure Food and Wine” in 2004, specializing in vegan food. The upscale establishment is becoming very popular in New York, so much so that many celebrities are jostling for a table there. Twice listed in “New York Magazine’s Top 100 Restaurants”, the restaurant becomes a real business that expands with “One Lucky Duck”, a take-out retail store from the restaurant.
Thanks to this avant-garde company, Sarma has become the queen of vegan cuisine. But her relationship with Matthew Kelley does not go the distance, the fault of the harmful behavior of the chef, who has weakened the business woman. Fortunately for her, the restaurant is in full swing and Sarma has a great relationship with its employees who claim to have worked in a great environment, until everything changes when Sarma meets Shane Fox.
The grip of Shane Fox aka Anthony Strangis
“Friend” of Alec Baldwin, who often frequented Sarma’s restaurant, where he also met his future wife, Shane Fox quickly won the heart of the young woman on Twitter then in real life but also that of his dog Leon, to whom she cares like the apple of her eye. This seemingly idyllic romantic relationship raised many questions from those close to Sarma, who were worried about the young woman.
And they were right. Because Shane Fox is actually called Anthony Strangis and he has shaped a pretty crazy life, mixing a past in the army, a secret agent job linked to the CIA and mysterious enemies who would like to attack to him. (It reminds us of a certain Simon Leviev aka The Tinder Scammer).
netflix
Shane Fox aka Anthony Strangis and Leon, Sarma Melngailis’ dog
Worse, Shane/Anthony had built a whole rhetoric about the afterlife, about demons chasing him, about mystical and spiritual beliefs, and about the possibility of immortality he could have provided for Sarma and his pitbull Leon. . Little by little, Shane / Anthony increases his hold on Sarma and often goes on missions during which he asks a lot of money from Sarma, yet already in debt because of the restaurant, which she tries to manage alone, but with financial help. of Jeffrey Chodorow, remained a sizeable support.
Between 2012 and 2014, Sarma sent $1.7 million to Shane/Anthony, while the latter gambled at the casino, led a dream life in star hotels and was on parole after the theft of a luxury car . In the meantime, Sarma and Shane/Anthony had gotten married and the scammer had control over Sarma’s personal belongings, accounts and passwords.
Despite all this, Sarma and Shane / Anthony continued to travel to different countries with the money earned in the casinos. Lost but utterly white in history, Sarma increasingly forsook the restaurant and things got worse until employees closed the establishment in her absence for unpaid wages in 2015. The restaurant reopened briefly in April 2015 but closed definitively in July 2015 after the fed up of the employees, who even demonstrated in front of the establishment.
Arrest Pizza
Having embezzled funds from Pure Food and Wine and failed to pay the employees, Sarma and his companion flee and become actively wanted for robbery, fraud and violation of labor laws and are considered fugitives. It was in May 2016 that the couple were finally arrested in Tennessee after ordering pizza from Domino’s Pizza, while staying in separate hotel rooms.
netflix
Sarma and his attorneys planned a defense based on Shane/Anthony’s coercive control, and the young woman pleaded guilty the following year to theft of more than $200,000 from an investor and tax evasion. She got a full four months in prison and filed for divorce in 2018. Shane/Anthony was sentenced to five years in prison. Note that he did not wish to participate in the documentary.
Over the course of four episodes of Bad Vegan: Scam on the Menu, complete with archival footage, on-camera testimonials from Sarma, his sister, his father, employees, investors, partners, ex-wife of Anthony, journalist Allen Salkin of Vanity Fair, reconstructions and recordings of telephone conversations, the documentary series therefore returns without detour and without Manichaeism on this hallucinating and incredible affair of a couple of crooks and a financial and social scandal that hit the headlines in the United States.