Bad Vegan: Who is Sarma Melngailis and where is she now?

Here's everything you need to know about the unbelievable story behind Melngailis' downfall, how she was arrested and where she is now.

Who is Sarma Melngailis?

Sarma Melngailis is a former restauranteur who was convicted of fraud in 2017 after pleading guilty to stealing over $200,000 from an investor and scheming to defraud.

She first was noticed in the American cooking world after launching a cookbook with her then-boyfriend, chef Matthew Kenney, titled Raw Food, Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow in 2005.

A year prior, she had opened New York City restaurant Pure Food and Wine with Kenney and restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow, which was visited by the likes of Rooney Mara, Anne Hathaway, Alec Baldwin, Stevie Wonder and other celebrities. The restaurant also featured in New York Magazine's Top 100 Restaurants piece and made it into Forbes' list of All Star New York Eateries five years in a row.

Melngailis went on to open a chain of juice bars called One Lucky Duck, as well as an online store under the same name.

However, in 2011, Melngailis met Anthony Strangis – who is said to have called himself Mr Fox online – over Twitter. According to an article by Vanity Fair, the pair met face-to-face in November 2011 and they became romantically involved, with Strangis promising he would help Melngailis become financially independent enough to no longer rely on investors and to pay off a number of her debts (although Strangis's lawyer denied these promises were made).

The couple married in December 2012, after which Strangis reportedly began spending Melngailis's money, with the Pure Food and Wine owner transferring $1.6m from business accounts to her personal bank account, according to an indictment produced in May 2016.

"Strangis spent nearly $1m of these funds at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, over $200,000 at the Mohegan Sun Resort Casino in Connecticut, 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. He also withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash," the document reads.

Melngailis told Vanity Fair that Strangis had promised her that she would "have access to unlimited resources", "make the documentary I always wanted to make" and that her dog Leon would "be immortal and safe to be by my side for eternity" (Strangis's lawyer also denied those claims to Vanity Fair).

In 2014, Melngailis was allegedly unable to pay her employees at Pure Food and Wine in April, May, July, August and November, while Strangis held a staff meeting under the name of 'Shane Fox' and said he was in the process of buying the company, according to a press release written by the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office in 2016.

Melngailis' employees refused to work after paychecks bounced in January 2015 and a month later, Melngailis asked former patrons to invest in her company to restart the business, falsely stating that "she had to withdraw money in 2014 to help her mother", according to the DA's office, and four people invested $844,000, allowing the restaurant to reopen in April 2015.

She then began to tell investors that she was negotiating a sale of the business with a wealthy man called Michael Caledonia, who also told investors he was planning on buying them out – however, when an investor met with Caledonia in May 2015, they discovered he was actually Strangis, according to the indictment.

In June of 2015, Melngailis took $400,000 from the restaurant's business accounts, according to the DA's office, and "withdrew over $100,000, transferred over $300,000 to Foxwoods on behalf of her husband and charged nearly $25,000 in the Connecticut casinos".

"The defendants allegedly defrauded 84 workers of up to $3,500 each for a total of over $40,000," according to the DA's office, with Melngailis and Strangis believed to have left New York that summer.

The pair were arrested in Sevierville, Tennessee in May 2016, with police tracking them down after Strangis ordered a Domino's Pizza. According to Vanity Fair, the couple had stayed in the hotel for 40 days and 40 nights until they were caught.

Both Melngailis and Strangis took plea deals after facing charges of second-degree grand larceny, second-degree criminal tax fraud, first-degree scheme to defraud and violation of labor law and up to 14 years in prison.

In May 2017, Melngailis pleaded guilty to stealing over $200,000 from an investor and scheming to defraud and criminal tax fraud charges, and was sentenced to spend just under four months in jail. She was incarcerated at Rikers Island prison in New York.

For his part, Strangis pleaded guilty to four counts of grand larceny in the fourth degree and was was sentenced to one year in jail and five years' probation, as well as having to pay $840,000 in restitution to investors.

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Where is Sarma Melngailis now?

Since leaving prison, Melngailis has moved to Harlem, where she lives with her dog Leon.

In May 2018, she filed for divorce for Strangis, according to New York Daily News.

She told the New York Post that same month that she was planning on leaving New York City to work on her memoir but hoped to reopen Pure Food and Wine in the future.

"If there was some magical opportunity to open the same restaurant in the same place, I would do it in a heartbeat," she said. "I think New York would take me back."

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