‘He’s gone on to live his life’: Who is Anthony Strangis from Bad Vegan and where is he now?

Bad Vegan has just landed on Netflix, and it tells the story of how celebrity vegan restauranteur Sarma Melngailis’ business empire came crashing down when she met convicted conman, Anthony Strangis.

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 Anthony, who also went by the name of Shane Fox, were arrested on fraud charges, and their multimillion dollar fraud fell apart because of a pizza delivery.

Here’s everything we know about Anthony Strangis and where he is now. 

Who is Anthony Strangis from Bad Vegan on Netflix?

Anthony Strangis was born on September 10th 1972 and is a convicted conman. The crimes he committed with Sarma Melngailis weren’t the first time he’s lied to a woman this way – Anthony managed to have a similar relationship back in 2004. He met his previous wife, Stacy Strangis in Tampa, Florida. Similarly to Sarma, Stacy was told by Anthony that he was former Navy and had been shot, so was staying in the area to help with his rehabilitation.

Stacy was a single mother and was taken in by Anthony and his family lifestyle, Anthony told her they were “reincarnated lovers who kept finding each other through time” and Stacy never questioned him. They got married within three months, and had a child together.

However, one day Anthony claimed his aunt had died and left him $5million. But, as expected, the cheque from this never came through and Anthony had been using this claim as an excuse to not get a job or help bay bills. He began telling Stacy there were “demons after him” and the only way to protect themselves was to start funnelling money into a mysterious group – exactly what he would later tell Sarma, too. Later in their relationship, Anthony disappeared.

When Anthony Strangis met Sarma Melngailis he was going by the name of Shane Fox. They first began talking over Twitter in 2011 and married in December 2012. 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, including restaurant Pure Food and Wine.

In Bad Vegan, Sarma says Strangis told her he was from a military background, saying: “He was involved in some sort of black ops, like the stuff that’s under the radar that nobody writes about that’s kind of unofficial and he would never answer anything directly. He made me feel, almost like for my own protection, I shouldn’t ask.” She says he had promised they would be transported into “some fantastical, magical future where my dog is going to live forever and this reality didn’t really matter because it would all be reset to some sort of utopia”. She says he convinced her he would be able to make her dog Leon immortal if she passed his series of “tests” – many of which involved her wiring him large sums of money.

She also claims Anthony told her had a brother, who could see everything they were doing and was constantly watching them unless they were in a state which he called “the box”. He said if they didn’t pass his “tests” the forces controlling them would “gut” them. Sarma claims Anthony told her he would get her enough money to take away her worries to do with the business, and she would no longer need meddling investors and could pay off her debts. At the time she owed restauranteur Jeffrey Chodorow, the investor and backer of Pure Food and Wine, $1million.

After their marriage, Melngailis began draining her restaurant’s funds and funnelling the money to Anthony, when he conned her into believing he could make her dreams come true. An indictment states he spent almost $1million at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, over $200k at Mohegan Sun Resort Casino, over $80k at specialty watch retailers, over $70k at hotels and over $10k on Uber car rides. The document also claims he withdraw thousands in cash.

Where is Anthony Strangis 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.

In 2017, Anthony pleaded guilty to charges of grand larceny, criminal tax fraud and a scheme to defraud. He was sentenced to five years’ probation for stealing nearly $1million from investors and employees of Sarma Melngailis’ restaurant, Pure Food and Wine. In total, he served over a year in Rikers Prison in New York, on remand after he was initially arrested. His bail had been set at $350k, but nobody came forward to pay it. After this he was released on probation, with a judge saying he had “spent enough time behind bars”.

In 2018, Melngailis filed for divorce. If Strangis doesn’t commit any crimes after his release from Rikers, his probation should come to an end in May 2022.

His whereabouts currently remains unknown, but at the beginning of the Netflix documentary Sarma Melngailis is seen making a phone call to Anthony Strangis, so the pair must still be in some sort of communication. However, in an exclusive statement to E! News, Strangis’ attorney, Sam Karliner, talked about the Netflix docu-series and said he and his ex-wife are “not in touch.” They said:  “He’s gone on to live his life. He’s got a job, uses his name, this is behind him and she’s behind him.”

Strangis refused to comment or take part in the Netflix documentary and his lawyer added he “didn’t want to get involved” in the case any further. “He pled guilty to it, he owned up to it and he did it long before Sarma did,” Karliner continued. “His case was resolved probably close to a year before Sarma’s was.”

“Anthony is remorseful for the people at the restaurant that lost money and he took full responsibility for his part in that. Was it Anthony’s intention to hurt somebody, the employees and them losing their money? No, he didn’t go out to hurt them.”

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. 

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