Sarma Melngailis has revealed that she has finally paid her resentful former employees the money for her new Netflix show Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Runaways.” But she has a few complaints about what she says is wrong with the documentary series.
Melngailis wrote on her website on Wednesday that “Bad Vegan’s ending is disturbingly misleading; I am not in touch with Anthony Strangis. She added, “I didn’t want to marry him and that part of the story was inaccurately compressed.”
The former restaurateur at Manhattan’s famous Pure Food and Wine outlet tells the story of his downfall in the series, which premiered on Wednesday.
She became a fugitive after stealing nearly $2 million from investors and employees and went into hiding with her employee-turned-husband Strangis. But now she paid them.
Sarma Melngailis was a restaurateur at the popular celebrity outlet Pure Food and Wine in Manhattan before she stopped paying her staff. Annie Vermiel/NY Post
“Standard practice – not to mention journalistic integrity – is that subjects are not paid to appear in documentaries, at least not reputable ones,” Melngailis, 49, wrote.
She added, “However, in my case and at my insistence, the producers made an exception so that I could pay the full amount owed to my former employees – amounts that had accumulated since my disappearance in 2015.”
“Of all the harm and the many debts that came with my fall, this part was the hardest,” added Melngailis, who has been nicknamed “the vegan Bernie Madoff.”
Melngailis (left) is referred to as the “Vegan Bernie Madoff”.
Now living with her rescue dog Leon in Harlem, Melngailis talks about the series about how she met Strangis – then calling himself Shane Fox – when he started tweeting with her close friend Alec Baldwin.
Baldwin met his wife Hilaria at Pure and Melngailis wrote on her blog in 2010 that she was in love with the actor but didn’t want a relationship.
Strangis, who was hired as a manager at Pure in 2013, was such an influence on Melngailis that she believed he could make her beloved dog Leon immortal if she passed all the tests and joined his secret society.
Anthony Strangis was hired as a manager at Pure in 2013. He and Melngailis later got married and disappeared.
The “tests” usually required her to wire him any amount of money he requested – leaving her unable to pay her bills, her investors, and even her restaurant staff.
Melngailis and Stangis disappeared after she repeatedly went unpaid in 2014 and 2015. The two were arrested in May 2016 after ordering Domino’s non-vegan pizza to a Tennessee motel room where they were hiding.
Melngailis pleaded guilty to charges of grand larceny, criminal tax fraud and an investor defrauding scheme in exchange for five years probation and four months in prison, which she served at Rikers in the summer of 2017.
Melngailis pleaded guilty to charges of grand larceny, criminal tax fraud and a scheme to defraud investors in exchange for five years’ probation and four months in prison.
Strangis pleaded guilty to four counts of grand larceny in the fourth degree and was sentenced to one year in prison and five years of probation, and ordered to pay investors $840,000 in damages. Stephen Jeremiah.
Strangis pleaded guilty to four counts of grand larceny in the fourth degree and was sentenced to one year in prison and five years of probation, as well as paying investors $840,000 in damages. It is unknown where he is now.
She claims other parts of her story were inaccurate, saying, “I didn’t ‘run’ in 2015…and I wasn’t ‘on the run’, at least to my knowledge. I didn’t leave voluntarily. I didn’t know what funds Anthony had at the time and I no longer had access to my electronic devices and email/texting accounts. I can already hear the trolls’ chorus of “Yes, that’s right!” but most of what I say is verifiable.”
Melngailis went on to say that “Bad Vegan” portrays her “very close” connection to her now former employees, adding that “deliberately hurting them is just about the last thing I would do.” The good people who were in the business back then were right to be devastated and angry. It’s like I left them, which I did.”
“Bad Vegan” tells the story of Melngailis in four episodes.
She added: “I didn’t have a real gun on my head, so they will say that, of course, I had a choice. I understand. However, the answer that I must be crazy and/or stupid is simple and simplistic. I’m not stupid or crazy. I am humiliated and ashamed of all the damage that has been done, but I am working to rebuild a solid foundation of self-confidence and self-awareness.”
Although Melngailis said she “calmed down as soon as the payment [to her employees] passed,” she continued, “but that was only a small part of what was left unfulfilled… I want to make it clear that I will continue to work to resolve all of this—one way or another—eventually.”