Netflix’s documentary Bad Vegan arrives on the streamer today, with the four-parter looking into the story of Sarma Melngailis – a New York restaurateur and vegan celebrity who became a fugitive after stealing over $200,000 from investors.
The true crime doc, which features interviews with Melngailis herself, spends a significant amount of time focusing on Anthony Strangis (also known as Shane Fox), who eventually married Melngailis. She claimed he convinced her that he would be able to make her dog immortal if she passed his series of “tests” – many of which involved her wiring him large sums of money.
With Bad Vegan diving into this incredibly strange yet fascinating story, here’s everything you need to know about Strangis – who declined to take part in the documentary.
Who is Anthony Strangis?
Anthony Strangis is the former husband of Pure Food and Wine founder Sarma Melngailis and a convicted conman, having pled guilty to charges of grand larceny, a scheme to defraud and criminal tax fraud in 2017.
Strangis – who was also known as Shane Fox – was sentenced to five years’ probation after stealing nearly $1 million from investors and Pure Food and Wine employees, and spent over a year in prison whilst on remand.
Strangis, who went by the name Mr Fox on Twitter, met Melngailis – a successful restaurateur and vegan celebrity at the time – on the internet in 2011 and the two entered into a relationship.
Melngailis says in Bad Vegan that Strangis had told her he was from a military background, adding: “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.”
According to Vanity Fair, Strangis promised Melngailis that he would “give her enough money to become independent of meddling investors, help anyone she wanted, and pay off her debts”, including a $500,000 mortgage and $1 million she owed Jeffrey Chodorow, the original backer of Pure Food and Wine.
Melngailis and Strangis married in 2012 and over the course of several years, Strangis spent a large amount of Melngailis’s money, some of which she transferred from her business accounts, with an indictment reading that he spent almost $1m at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, over $200,000 at Mohegan Sun Resort Casino, over $80,000 at specialty watch retailers, over $70,000 at hotels and over $10,000 on Uber car rides. “He also withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash,” the document reads.
The pair went on the lam in 2016 but were eventually arrested in Tennessee in May, with police tracking them down after Strangis ordered a pizza from Domino’s.
What did he do? What was the ‘meat suit’?
!["Anthony]("https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2022/03/Screenshot-2022-03-15-at-11.46.44-641690b.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413" "\"Anthony-Strangis\"")
The Netflix documentary explores Melngailis and Strangis’ relationship and how Melngailis claimed Strangis led her to believe that he would be able to make both her and her dog Leon immortal if she passed his “tests”, which involved sending huge amounts of money to him.
Melngailis says in the documentary that Strangis 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”.
Melngailis adds that while Strangis gave some of her money back, he didn’t return all of it. Meanwhile, according to Vanity Fair, Strangis let Melngailis know that he and his brother – who he claimed was an expert in surveillance – were constantly watching her and that if she didn’t pass the tests, forces controlled by his brother would “gut” him and come for her. Strangis’ lawyer denied this account to Vanity Fair.
In a phone call featuring in Bad Vegan, we hear Strangis tell Melngailis: “You know what the f**king deal is here. If I say to do something, do it…It’s supposed to be difficult on you, it’s supposed to make you doubt. It’s supposed to make you question everything. It’s faith based, it’s a trial by fire.” Between 2012 and 2014, Melngailis sent Strangis $1.7m as part of these ‘tests’.
Strangis would also speak about ‘the meat suit’ when referring to the weight he had gained, telling Melngailis that it was part of the test. “He always said that his gaining a lot of weight was intentional and I was supposed to be disgusted by him and it was all sort of some kind of test,” she says in the documentary. “As if he was doing that as something he had to do as part of this whole bizarre process that I was being put through.”
Where is Anthony Strangis now?
Strangis spent a year in Rikers Prison whilst on remand before being put on probation after his sentencing. In 2018, Melngailis filed for divorce.
While we don’t know where Strangis is now, at the end of the documentary we hear a phone conversation between him and Melngailis which took place in 2019.
She says: “You realise you do have to step out of the meat suit and appear on a unicorn,” with him responding: “I know that, and it’s already in the works in my mind. There will be something.”
Bad Vegan arrives on Netflix on Wednesday 16th March. If you’re looking for more to watch, check out our TV Guide. Check out our Documentaries hub for all the latest news.
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