Who is Sarma Melngailis from Bad Vegan on Netflix and where is she now?

She says she is ‘in mourning’ over her businesses

2 years ago

Netflix has just released true crime documentary Bad Vegan, which tells the almost unbelievable story of celebrity restauranteur Sarma Melngailis. Sarma was once hailed as the queen of vegan cuisine, but her successful food empire came crashing down when she met a man on Twitter and began funnelling the business money to him.

The story has so many twists and turns, including Sarma being told all her wildest dreams could come true and that she and her dog could become immortal, that you might think it’s too far-fetched to be true. She and the man she met were arrested on fraud charges, and their multimillion dollar fraud fell apart because of a pizza delivery. Yes, this is all one case. So, what the hell went on here? Here’s everything you need to know about Sarma Melngailis and her case, including the latest on where she is now.

via Netflix

Who is Sarma Melngailis from Bad Vegan?

Sarma Melngailis was born in Massachusetts in 1972. Her interest in food began when she was growing up, as her mother worked as a chef. After studying for a degree in Economics at university, Sarma moved to New York. In 2004, Sarma opened Pure Food and Wine in the city. It soon became the top raw vegan food restaurant at the time and promised a “high end, fine dining vegan experience”. The restaurant also became known as being a celebrity hotspot, with diners including Owen Wilson, Bill Clinton, Alec Baldwin and Woody Harrelson.

She became a huge name in the cooking world with her restaurant, and her cooking empire expanded in 2005 when she published a cookbook with her then-boyfriend, chef Matthew Kenney, called Raw Food, Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow. She later expanded further and opened a chain of juice bars called One Lucky Duck, as well as an online store under the same name.

Everything was running smoothly until Sarma Melngailis met Shane Fox in 2011, after he reached out on Twitter. After this, Melngailis began draining her restaurant’s funds and funnelling the money to Fox, when he conned her into believing he could make her dreams come true. He was really called Anthony Strangis and said he could only make her business wishes a reality if she continued to obey all his requests without question. When Strangis and Melngailis started talking, he had told her she had to perform tests, and he could make her and her dog Leon immortal. The pair worked together on her lucrative food business.

The couple married in December 2012 and come 2015 were on the run from police. They had stolen nearly $2million from the restaurant and its staff. The money from the business had started going directly into Strangis’ pocket, who threatened that if Melngailis stopped, she’d lose everything. According to Vanity Fair, Melngailis “transferred more than $1.6million from her business accounts to her personal bank account, and Strangis spent $1.2million of this money at Connecticut casinos.”

via Netflix

Where is Sarma Melngailis now?

In 2016, Sarma Melngailis and Anthony Strangis were found by police and arrested. They were reportedly found in separate rooms in a motel in Tennessee and their whereabouts was located when an order was made using Strangis’ real name for a Domino’s pizza.

They found themselves charged with accounts of second-degree grand larceny, second-degree criminal tax fraud, first-degree scheme to defraud, violation of labor and other crimes, and faced up to 15 years in prison. Sarma was convicted of fraud in 2017 after pleading guilty to stealing over $200k from an investor and scheming to defraud. Melngailis accepted a plea deal and and was sentenced to serve four months in jail plus five years’ probation. She served her four months in jail at Rikers Island prison in New York.

Posting on her website since, Sarma Melngailis said: “In early October of 2017 I completed a four-month sentence at Rikers. Over the following weeks, I’d tried to write something to post, but I never got beyond a few sentences (plus I didn’t really have any place of my own on which to post). It turns out that writing, in addition to everything else that would fall into the category of functioning, felt a bit harder than usual.

“I will say here upfront that if you’ve stumbled upon this and are wondering what landed me in jail, it’s too long a story to cover here. There is way too much to say and a lot I’m still sorting out. But I’d like to say (and write) as much as I can one day soon, in a way that I hope will help people, mostly women.”

via Instagram @sarmamelngailis

She’s now a free woman aged 49, and appears in the Netflix documentary Bad Vegan to tell her story. She’s active on Instagram and has an account for her dog Leon, too. She is thought to be living in an apartment in the Harlem area of New York. According to reports, she filed for divorce for Strangis in May 2018.

Sarma’s most recent Instagram post is a picture of her and Leon, captioned: “If you need me for the foreseeable future… will be hiding under covers spooning Leon watching videos of woodchucks. Sorry if I don’t reply to emails/texts for a while, or ever. Will post something soon on my website as an update and to clear up a few things. I want my story to be useful.” Her bio reads that she is “in mourning” over her businesses.

via Instagram @sarmamelngailis

Pure Food and Wine is no longer operating, but Sarma Melngailis told New York Post in an interview that she has plans to bring back the restaurant if she can. She told the publication she thinks “New York would take me back” and would bring back her empire “in a heartbeat”.

According to LinkedIn, Sarma is currently writing a memoir of her story and working as a writer. She has also hinted on Instagram about recording a podcast.

Bad Vegan is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.