After the series debuted, Melngailis asserted that she is absolutely not in touch with Strangis. “The ending of Bad Vegan is disturbingly misleading; I am not in touch with Anthony Strangis and I made those recordings at a much earlier time, deliberately, for a specific reason,” she wrote in a March 16 blog post.
I won't spoil the plot, but Sarma ends up handing over $1.7 million to Anthony Strangis and leaving the government, her employees, and investors out in the cold to the tune of $6.14 million.
In a recent post to her blog Sarma Raw, the ex-restauranteur criticised the new Netflix documentary and specifically, how it ended. She addressed the circulating rumours about being paid for the docuseries (she wasn't), but clarifies that she insisted any payments be sent to her ex-employees.
Though his past seems to have not served him well, his lawyer, Sam Karliner, asserts that Strangis has successfully moved on. "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," Karliner told E! News.
Sarma Melngailis Used Money from 'Bad Vegan' to Repay Former Employees: 'I Did Not Get Paid Otherwise' Sarma Melngailis' earnings from Netflix's Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud.
She Paid Her Employees With Netflix Money
However once the docuseries was finalized, Netflix execs decided to pay the balance of Sarma's substantial debt.
Putting her life back together. Melngailis ran a profitable restaurant for 11 years, wrote cookbooks (Raw Food Real World and Living Raw Food) and rubbed shoulders with celebrities. But now, she spends most of her time reading, hanging out with her dog, working on a memoir and recording podcasts.
In March 2017, Strangis pleaded guilty to four counts of fourth-degree grand larceny and was sentenced to one year in jail and five years of probation.
According to his first wife, Stacy Strangis, whom he met there, when Anthony would brag that he had a huge inheritance coming and had been a Navy SEAL—which his sister says he was not—his father would back him up.
After her breakup and without Baldwin to move on with, Melngailis eventually found herself talking to Anthony Strangis, who she knew as Shane Fox at the time. To Melngailis, it appeared that "Mr. Fox" and Baldwin knew each other because they would have short, quippy conversations on Twitter.
Nazim Seliakhov
He currently resides in New York City and has leaned into his entrepreneurial side, being the founder of a pharmaceutical-grade Industrial Hemp Processing Laboratory. Seliakhov remains private online, with his only public social media profile being his LinkedIn.
After her arrest, Sarma's prosperous business was shut down, leaving her in debt. Sarma's net worth was close to $1.5 million when she went to prison. According to the show, she now owes over $6 million to her investors, employees, and others.
Video footage, pictures and audio recordings from Fox's phone are used throughout “Bad Vegan.” How did you obtain those materials? Ryann Fraser: Those all came from his cell phone, which was seized when [Fox and Melngailis] were arrested. It was one of the things that Sarma provided to us over time.
In the Bad Vegan documentary, we find out that Sarma didn't pay the Pure Food and Wine employees for five months, leaving them with $40,000 of back pay. But luckily, the former restaurant workers have now gotten paid.
Bag Vegan's Sarma Melngailis and Anthony Strangis have put their past behind them and are trying to live a new life. Sarma Melngailis currently lives in New York and runs a blog, while Anthony Strangis is working a legit job though his location is unknown.
Anthony Strangis (@anthony_strangis) • Instagram photos and videos.
Not only does the series have former Navy SEALs like Mark Semos and Kenny Sheard in the writers' room, but over 70% of its crew are veterans, and almost the entire stunt team are former special operators. Tyler Gray who plays Trent is a former Delta Force operator.
The Brooklyn District Attorney alleged that Strangis spent nearly $1.2 million of those funds at two Connecticut casinos, over $80,000 at specialty watch retailers including Rolex and Beyer, over $70,000 at hotels in Europe and New York, and over $10,000 on Uber car rides.
In 2011, Melngailis met and quickly married Anthony Strangis, who introduced himself as Shane Fox. Strangis convinced Melngailis that she and her beloved pit bull Leon could live forever if she passed a series of tests, which mostly involved giving him large sums of money, with no questions asked.
Casey Anthony's parents, George and Cindy Anthony, are still together and living in Florida. A source told PEOPLE of Cindy, "She is still angry a lot of the time. This was a loving grandmother who had to withstand family trauma that no one should ever have to deal with.
Melngailis lives in the Harlem neighborhood of New York and is active on social media — a recent Instagram post from Dec. 24, 2022, features a photo with her dog, Leon. “Having Leon around me is extremely grounding,” she told the Netflix website Tudum earlier this year.
Even though he's being played by an actor in the series, Will Richards wasn't actually a real person. Instead, he was a persona Anthony created to convince Sarma that he was part of an underground military operation.
In April 2015, Pure Food and Wine, One Lucky Duck, and OneLuckyDuck.com reopened. A majority of staff did not return to the restaurant after its reopening. In July of that year, the staff of both restaurants walked out due to unpaid wages. Both establishments have been permanently shut down.
This time, the focus is on restaurant owner Sarma Melngailis, often called the “vegan Bernie Madoff,” who went from celebrity restaurateur to fugitive after becoming involved with a man calling himself “Shane Fox.” The story of Melngailis's restaurant, Pure Food and Wine, was baffling at the time, and it remains ...
He now lives in the Park Avenue area of South New York – and apparently, he's even spent time with the mafia in NY. Nowadays, calls himself the 'batman of Gramercy Park' and even has a Cash App account where people can donate to him.