2 days ago
Trolls said I was a sociopath after conman lover stole $2m from my celeb-loved restaurant, but he hijacked my brain
She was the vegan queen of New York who ended up behind bars after looting her own restaurant of millions of dollars and going on the run with her husband.
In this exclusive interview, Sarma Melngailis reveals the truth behind her spectacular downfall.
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Opening her hotel room door to investigate the noise coming from the hallway, Sarma Melngailis immediately realised it was full of police officers and detectives.
'It's her!' one shouted, before a detective marched into her room, clutching a mobile phone with a photo of Sarma on the screen and the word 'Wanted' across it.
It was May 10, 2016, and after almost a year on the run with her husband Anthony Strangis, now 45, the authorities had finally caught up with Sarma in the rural tourist town of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, over 700 miles from New York, where she'd been celebrated as a groundbreaking vegan chef and restaurateur.
The chef, now 52, was wanted for grand larceny and fraud, after siphoning money out of her business account and defrauding money from employees and investors in the restaurant.
According to the indictment that led to her arrest, from January 2014 to January 2015 Sarma transferred more than $1.6million from her restaurant's accounts to her personal account, leaving employees unpaid and the restaurant forced to close.
She then convinced four people to invest a further $844,000 to re-open the restaurant, before going on to transfer $400,000 to her personal account.
Following her arrest, she pleaded guilty to the charges and spent four months in jail.
Sarma's story was documented in hit Netflix show Bad Vegan, released in 2022 and watched for nearly 30 million hours in its first five days.
She has now published her memoir The Girl With The Duck Tattoo, which she hopes will help people to understand exactly what happened from the moment Anthony Strangis walked into her life in 2011.
It is, according to Sarma, a twisted tale of brainwashing, gaslighting, coercive control and exploitation, orchestrated by Strangis, a gambler and conman, who had used Sarma as his personal cash machine.
'By the time we were arrested, I had handed around $2million to him,' says Sarma. 'I've been called a grifter, a sociopath, stupid, and told repeatedly that I should have gotten more time in jail.'
'Him owing me money was a reason for me not to cut loose from him'
Sarma and Strangis met on Twitter in late 2011. At that time, Sarma – a trained chef originally from Newton, Massachusetts – was preparing to take her wildly successful Manhattan restaurant, Pure Food And Wine, serving up raw vegan food, global.
An Ivy League graduate, Sarma had a successful career as an investment banker, before deciding to give it all up and follow her dream to become a chef.
Her head for figures and passion for cooking is what attracted one investor to lend her $2.1million to buy the restaurant outright.
It was a success from the moment it opened its doors in the summer of 2004, with A-listers including Gisele Bündchen, Bill Clinton, Woody Harrelson and Emma Stone, flocking to enjoy her dishes.
When Sarma first started exchanging messages with Strangis, he said his name was Shane Fox.
'He called himself Mr Fox. He probably recognised I was an ideal target. I had a thriving business, bringing in a lot of money, and I'd just been through a break-up, so was personally vulnerable,' she says.
Online, Strangis had given Sarma the impression that he was well-travelled and successful, but never revealed what he did for a living. However, she says their first date was a let-down.
'Once I met him in person, I felt like something wasn't right, and when he left, I figured that was it – I wouldn't be seeing him again.'
But Strangis wasn't going to let her go that easily, and told Sarma that he could help her financially, implying that he had huge sums stashed away in other countries.
Strangis' money was tied into his employment, which he implied was working for a shadowy governmental organisation.
He told Sarma he couldn't tell her what he did for a living, but kept emailing her links to US special forces operations around the world.
'There was a lot of hinting and partial information, which allowed me to make assumptions,' explains Sarma. 'If I did call him out on something, he denied it so confidently that I'd question myself. So gaslighting was definitely part of his mindf**kery.'
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It was early 2012, two months after their first date, when Strangis first asked to borrow $5,000 from Sarma.
'He was never clear why he needed it, but in the beginning, he would say it was urgent, as if a matter of life and death, and that if I turned him down, something bad would happen to him.
'And so it began. He just kept borrowing. Sometimes he paid me back, but never in full – just enough to give me some degree of confidence that I'd get the rest.
"But from that first time onwards, he always owed me money. I know now that his owing me money was a reason for me not to cut loose from him – he already had his hooks in me, which was exactly what he wanted.'
Every time Sarma lent him money, she would transfer it from her restaurant's business account to her personal account.
She says: 'He always implied that he had huge sums stashed away, but that it would take time to get to, which is why he needed to borrow from me.
"At the beginning, I often asked how he acquired it. He would just tell me: 'It's better you don't know,' but assured me it was legitimate.'
The pair married in late 2012. 'It was something he told me we needed to do, and he badgered me about it until I finally agreed,' Sarma remembers.
I was making my way on Wall Street before I decided to go to culinary school. I'm an intelligent woman, but at this point, he had 'hijacked' my brain
Sarma Melngailis
By then, she had noticed a change in Strangis. He seemed to exude confidence and no longer seemed uncomfortable in New York, like he had on their first date. And he had also put on a lot of weight.
'Now, I realise that's because when he wasn't with me, he was spending most of his time sitting at casino tables or in a hotel room eating pizza and playing Call Of Duty,' says Sarma.
Strangis also revealed that she was being 'tested', and if she passed the tests – which included tolerating his weight gain and giving him more money – they would be rewarded with unlimited money and immortality.
Sarma realises people are amazed that she could believe such wild stories. 'I was making my way on Wall Street before I decided to go to culinary school. I'm an intelligent woman, but at this point, he had 'hijacked' my brain,' she says.
Throughout 2014, Strangis continued to test Sarma by asking her to wire him more and more money. 'I transferred it from the restaurant account or even high-interest cash-advance companies to my personal account, then on to him,' she says.
Between January 2014 and January 2015, Sarma transferred over $1.6million from the business accounts, but she had no idea that Strangis spent nearly $1million of it at casinos in Connecticut.
He also spent $80,000 at luxury watch retailers, including Rolex and Beyer, over $70,000 at hotels in Europe and New York and over $10,000 on Uber, plus withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash.
'It was claimed that we fled on some romantic escapade with loads of money'
Meanwhile, back at the restaurant, in January 2015, cheques bounced, leaving 98 workers without pay.
With the staff refusing to work for free, the business closed for the first time.
The following month, Sarma persuaded four new investors to plough $844,000 into the business.
She used some of the money to pay back employees and settle other outstanding business costs, and the restaurant reopened in early April.
According to the indictment, by that June, Sarma had transferred another $400,000 to her personal account – $100,000 she had withdrawn, while the remaining $300,000 was sent on to Foxwoods Resort Casino in Strangis' name.
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In July, payroll was missed again, leaving 84 workers owed up to $3,500 each.
The restaurant closed for a second time, and the staff picketed the location to draw attention to what was going on.
With no more money from the business to plunder and now owing an additional $409,987 in sales tax, Sarma says Strangis made her leave New York. 'When he first took me away, I can recall just screaming in the car,' she reveals.
'I realise now that I was in a dissociated state. I wasn't fully there. I don't remember where we first drove to or what happened next.'
Strangis drove them towards Las Vegas, via extended stays in Texas, Arizona and Missouri, where they stayed for six months, before moving on to Louisiana and ending up in Tennessee.
'The tabloids claimed that I fled on some romantic escapade and that we ran off with loads of money, but that just wasn't true.
"By then, he must have blown through almost all the money,' says Sarma. 'He had bled me dry.'
With very little left, the couple were relying on cash and credit cards, which is what led the police to them in Tennessee, after Strangis ordered a Domino's pizza and paid with his credit card.
After their arrest, they were convicted as co-conspirators, with Strangis sentenced to a year for grand larceny, criminal tax fraud and scheming to defraud.
The prosecution recommended one to three years for Sarma. However, the judge passed a sentence of nearly four months, commentating that there was plenty of evidence that she had 'tried to run her business in good faith'.
It was a cult of one. The dynamics of what happened and the steps he took to lure me in and take control are essentially the same as those of an abusive cult
Sarma Melngailis on Anthony Strangis
In October 2017, Sarma walked free from Rikers Island prison, still jointly liable with Strangis for most of the financial damages, including just over $65,000 in unpaid wages.
Sarma filed for divorce from her estranged husband in May 2018 and set about rebuilding her life.
She says the opportunity to pay back wages was partly what motivated her to agree to the Netflix documentary, and when Bad Vegan was released, Sarma ensured her $75,000 fee went directly to help her out-of-pocket staff.
'My dream is to reopen Pure Food And Wine, and I'm lucky that many of my former employees want to help bring it back,' she says.
Strangis has recently been the subject of Investigation Discovery show Toxic, which tracked him to Arizona.
'He conned and manipulated other people, and married a woman with the last name Knight,' says Sarma.
'I'm glad that show was made, his new name revealed and his face shown again, so people may recognise him.'
'Lure me in'
Sarma still struggles to make sense of it all, but found writing her memoir cathartic to finally rid herself of 'Mr Fox'. 'I had to think about him a lot writing the book, which felt extremely uncomfortable,' she says.
'It was a cult of one. The dynamics of what happened and the steps he took to lure me in and take control are essentially the same as those of an abusive cult.'
However, she is fully aware of the role she played. 'There are things about me that made it possible.
"I allowed him to hurt people, but the characteristics that make us vulnerable to the Mr Foxes of this world can be positive ones.
"I tend to think the best of people, and I'm trusting. I'm an introvert, so it's easier to isolate me.'
Something else that has helped Sarma make sense of what happened is a journal she wrote during 2014 and 2015 that was recovered from Strangis' possessions when he was arrested.
'It helped me have more compassion for myself. I remind myself that people believe in crazy things, from alien abductions to the Loch Ness monster.
"And for some reason, for me, believing in Mr Fox was a better alternative than believing a human could be capable of such cruelty. But I paid a very high price for doing so.'
The Girl With The Duck Tattoo by Sarma Melngailis (Lioncrest Publishing) is out now
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