(Mild spoilers for Netflix’s Bad Vegan will be found below.)
Netflix’s upcoming Bad Vegan limited series aims to tell the story of of Sarma Melngailis, the so-called “Vegan Bernie Madoff” celebrity restauranteur who became (in the aughts) the toast of New York City’s raw vegan scene. She founded and nurtured both One Lucky Duck and Pure Food and Wine for several years, and then things took a turn. She hooked up with a man named Anthony Strangis (who used the pseudonym of “Shane Fox”), and money started disappearing, and more than once, Sarma’s employees went without pay for a full month. Subsequently, the two ended up going on the lam after defrauding investors, and they became fugitives of the law before their arrest in very unexpected circumstances.
The narrative of the limited series (from executive producer Chris Smith of Tiger King and Fyre: The Greatest Party) is backed by media reports, law enforcement accounts, and interviews with Sarma and those who worked with her or considered her a friend. In the end, Sarma ended up serving four months on Riker’s Island after cutting a plea deal with prosecutors, but this true story had about as many twists as the Julia Garner-starring in Inventing Anna, also recently on Netflix.
With Bad Vegan, it’s hard to initially grasp why the successful Sarma fell so far from grace, to the point where she believed that Strangis would make her beloved pit bull immortal, and more. Yet Sarma’s pre-plea defense strategy goes a long way in explaining things. She appears to have fallen into a cult-like mentality with Strangis, who repeatedly convinced her to hand over thousands of dollars (which added up to millions in defrauded sums) in tribute to him. He was gambling this money away, and at some point, Sarma didn’t even resist, perhaps due to some sunk-cost fallacy? Actually, Vanity Fair summed up her legal team’s tactics in 2017:
Melngailis’s legal team had said they were planning on employing a “coercive control” defense, arguing that the only way to understand the bizarre case was to see that, like someone sucked into a cult and brainwashed, Melngailis had been abused mentally, physically, and sexually by Strangis, a con man who convinced her to bankrupt her successful restaurant by sending him money. Prosecutors say Strangis used the money to support his gambling habit. Strangis’s lawyer has denied this version of events and maintained his client is innocent of all charges.
In the end, again, Sarma chose to take the plea deal rather than attempt this as a legal defense for the fraud and larceny charges. She served four months in prison, and Strangis also took a plea that landed him five years on probation. Hopefully, Sarma will stay far away from her ex-husband while attempting to rebuild her future.
Bad Vegan will stream on March 16.
