An immortal dog? Demons? 5 shocking moments from Netflix's 'Bad Vegan' that are a lot to digest

Spoiler alert! The following contains details from the Netflix docuseries "Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives" (now streaming).  

Netflix knows that fraud is a dish best served raw. 

The latest entrée on the service's seemingly endless all-you-can-binge buffet of con stories – "Inventing Anna," "The Tinder Swindler," "The Puppet Master" – is "Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives." 

The four-part series directed by Chris Smith ("Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened") tells the story of restauranteur Sarma Melngailis and her raw and vegan eatery Pure Food and Wine. Launched in 2004, the New York City hot spot once drew an elite crowd: Former president Bill Clinton, Owen Wilson, Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen dined there, and the restaurant served as the backdrop for Alec and Hilaria Baldwin's first meeting. But by 2015, the establishment shuttered, after its bank accounts were drained and employees went unpaid.

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. To some employees, it looked like Melngailis was in on the scheme, willfully defrauding investors and stiffing employees by embezzling from the restaurant to fund lavish trips. 

Here are the most shocking moments from the wild ride that is "Bad Vegan."

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Melngailis says Strangis never directly told her his occupation. "He was involved in some sort of black ops, the stuff that’s under the radar that nobody writes about, that’s unofficial," she says in the docuseries. "He would never answer anything directly and made me almost feel like for my own protection I shouldn’t ask.”

But he's more forthcoming about his supposed stacks of cash. He once took Melngailis to Tiffany & Co. where he had her try on an $800,000 engagement ring. He also made serious inquiries about a townhouse listed at nearly $15 million. “He told me that he had money in various countries stashed away,” she says. But funds never materialized for the townhouse, and Strangis borrowed money from Melngailis. “It was like life or death," she remembers his request. "He had to have it."

The couple wed in November 2012, a union of convenience that allowed Strangis to (hypothetically) cover Melngailis' restaurant debt without having to pay taxes. Melngailis' father described the union as a “non-event,” but Melngailis had romantic feelings for Strangis. Even before they met, when they were just chatting on the phone and playing Words with Friends, she says she'd "fallen in love with him."

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Promises of immortality from a 'non-human'

Melngailis says Strangis would often refer to her as a tiny blonde human. "The implication being that he’s not a human," she says. (Strangis even describes himself as “non-human” in a text.)

Journalist Allen Salkin, who wrote a story about the saga for Vanity Fair in 2016,sums up Strangis' con in "Bad Vegan": “What eventually happens is that Anthony promises her that if she just followed along with the program he was suggesting, kept going along with what was instructed, he is going to make both Sarma and her dog immortal, just like Anthony is.” 

Melngailis says Strangis "would tell me that he had tons of money and that money didn’t matter. Money would never be any object. So he had me wire money to him to prove that I was committed to him and that I was able to handle these tasks.”

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Melngailis dug her heels into the madness, she says, because the alternative of knowing she'd been ripped off was a much harsher reality. According to the docuseries, she sent Strangis $1.7 million from 2012 to 2014. Salkin reported in Vanity Fair that "Strangis spent $1.2 million of this money at Connecticut casinos." 

'There was no Will': A made-up persona to monitor Melngailis

Following Strangis' instructions, Melngailis gave her email and bank passwords to an IT person he called Will Richards, who she describes as "some sort of computer techie expert that works in the government." Richards would provide protection by encrypting her email. Melngailis and Richards never met, but corresponded via email. She grew suspicious that Strangis had invented Richards, and she was correct. "There was no Will," she says. "It was just another email account that he made."

Knowing information that Melngailis had not shared made her think of him as omniscient,  validating his "non human" claim. "All that time I thought he had secret access to info or something," she wrote in her diary, "and turns out he just read my email." 

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'Are you crazy?': Startling claims by Strangis' ex-wife Stacy

Before Melngailis, Strangis in 2004 met a Tampa, Florida, woman named Stacy, and three months after they started dating, they got hitched in Las Vegas. Stacy cites “a ton” of his lies, including a claim he was a Navy SEAL.

The two had a baby boy, whom Stacy says Strangis hinted at killing. 

“After Riley was born he told me, 'Do you know you can kill a baby by giving them salt and it doesn’t show up in an autopsy?'" she says. "I was like, 'Are you crazy?' And I never left Riley alone with him. Ever!”

Strangis also told Stacy he was a target of demons. He told her: "They've always been after me. They've been hunting me my whole life."

Melngailis: Manipulator or manipulated? 

After investors contacted police about the missing couple, Melngailis and Strangis were arrested in 2016 in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee after being on the road for about 10 months. (Melngailis wrote in a blog post Wednesday that she wasn't "'on the lam,' at least not to my knowledge. I didn’t leave voluntarily. I didn’t know what funds Anthony had at the time, and I no longer had access to my electronic devices and email/text accounts.") 

She and Strangis were charged with grand larceny and fraud. Melngailis served about four months at Rikers Island, and Strangis was in custody for about a year. 

According to filmmakers, they owed $6.1 million to New York State, the IRS, investors, Melngailis's mother and other creditors.

Not everyone is convinced of Melngailis' innocence. Former employees believe she should be held accountable and suspect she knew more about Strangis' scams then she let on. 

“Why didn’t I run? Why didn’t I leave? Why didn’t I call the police?" she says. "That’s the big question. Nobody talks about issues related to somebody manipulating your mind. I believed these things were, in a sense, reality.”

USA TODAY has reached out to Sam Karliner, an attorney for Strangis, for comment. 

Now, Melngailis dreams of reopening her restaurant, but acknowledges she wouldn't be able to wrangle investors. According to her dog Leon's Instagram bio, the two live in Harlem. She writes on her website that she has no contact with Strangis. 

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