bad vegan Sarma Melngailis

16 People Truly Baffled By Sarma Melngailis In Netflix’s ‘Bad Vegan’

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Scammer season has sprung which means that streaming platforms are currently being overrun with tales of con-artists, fraudsters, embezzlers, and romance scams.

Kicking off with Inventing Anna and The Tinder Swindler, before The Dropout and WeCrashed soon followed, another story of a person being scammed out of thousands of dollars has arrived with Netflix’s Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives dropping last week.

The four-part documentary falls closest to The Tinder Swindler, as it recounts the story of a woman who was convinced by a man she was dating to lend over one million dollars. Sarma Melngailis was a celebrated vegan restaurant owner and New York socialite who became romantically entwined with a mysterious man named Anthony Strangis, after befriending him on Twitter. Sarma ended up marrying Anthony, but not before he convinced her that he was working for the US army’s black ops while also being a part of some higher power, and umm.. promised her and her dog Leon immortality. In exchange for eternal life, Sarma simply had to transfer Anthony money whenever he requested it. Simple!

Yep, this story is bonkers.

Sarma’s story gets more complicated as the money she was wiring to Anthony was from her restaurant, Pure Food & Wine, which meant that the venue’s staff were often left without pay as her funds were drained by Anthony. Unlike some of the women victimised by Simon Leviev in The Tinder Swindler, viewers have found it difficult to find much sympathy for Sarma — as like Anthony, she was also deceptive. Sarma featured in interviews throughout the docuseries but showed little remorse for how she deceived restaurant staff, stealing their salaries to ensure her (and her dog’s) hypothetical immortality.

Another suspect element to Sarma’s story was the lack of romance and genuine love between herself and Anthony. Simon invested time in building genuine relationships with his victims, sending constant messages, and making plans for marriage and children — convincing the women they were in love with him. However, Sarma didn’t seem to even be attracted to or have any genuine romantic interest in Anthony, with her father even suggesting she only married him for his money in an effort to save her restaurant falling further in debt.

It should be said that while Sarma isn’t exactly the perfect victim, this doesn’t mean she wasn’t victimised by Anthony. In some of the series’ most disturbing scenes, Sarma found herself being controlled by her husband, as she received constant demanding messages and threatening phone calls.

After going on the run, Sarma and Anthony were eventually arrested in 2016 and charged with grand larceny, criminal tax fraud, scheming to defraud investors, violation of labor law, and other financial crimes. Anthony served one year in prison while Sarma’s sentence was just four months.

Sarma’s portrayal in the series wasn’t helped by the final scene, which ended with a phone call between herself and Anthony laughing along like old friends. Big yikes! Viewers were baffled by the vegan restauranteur and their tweets are extremely accurate.

16 people truly baffled by Sarma Melngailis in Netflix’s Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.


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Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives can be streamed on Netflix.