El documental que toda emprendedora debiera ver" Bad Vegan" en Netflix

The subject of the true-crime documentary, now on Netflix, said she'll be paying back the employees she swindled. 

The new Netflix documentary Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives is the latest fascinating true-crime story to take over the streaming service. And Sarma Melngailis, the subject of the shocking tale, has since shared an update on her personal blog. 

But first, a quick recap on this “ripped from the headlines” scandal: Award-winning director and producer Chris Smith, who is known for his work on documentaries Fyre and Tiger King, dives deep into this story with interviews from former employees and friends of Melngailis, along with the “raw vegan queen” herself. The restaurateur and her then husband Anthony Strangis were accused of stealing $2 million from Melngailis’s celebrity-loved vegan restaurant Pure Food and Wine and its staff. As Smith's team digs further into the story, a history of abuse and manipulations by Strangis come to light.

The tipping point came when employees issued a strike against the restaurant, and the couple's theft became public in 2015. Melngailis ultimately pleaded guilty to criminal tax fraud, grand larceny, and premeditated fraud, and she served four months at Rikers Island in the summer of 2017. Strangis, who also uses the alias Shane Fox, served a year in prison, which ended in 2017, and is expected to complete his five-year parole in May 2022.

But Melngailis recently took to her blog to “clear up” a few behind-the-scene details concerning her life and the Netflix documentary. The biggest revelation is that she was paid for her part in the doc—and that she plans to give her earnings to the employees she swindled. She wrote, “It’s standard practice—to say nothing of journalistic integrity—that subjects do not get paid for participation in documentaries, at least not the reputable ones. In my case, however, and at my insistence, the producers made an exception so that I could pay the total amount my former employees were owed—amounts that accrued after my disappearance in 2015.” 

While it is rare in the industry to pay a documentary subject for an interview, Netflix notably also compensated socialite scammer Anna Delvey for the use of her story in the fictionalized limited series Inventing Anna. That money was also used to pay back the debt Delvey had incurred.

In a Instagram post from this week, Melngailis, a Wharton Business School graduate, shared that more is to come in regard to her thoughts on the documentary. “Clarified some things. Commented on the disturbingly misleading ending. More to come,” she wrote in her caption, directing followers to read more in her blog post.

There she shared that the payment covered her attorney fees along with employment backpay. “While the funds bypassed me entirely, I did declare them for income tax purposes, just to be clear,” she said. “The point is…beyond getting former employees repaid, I did not otherwise profit from Bad Vegan.” (It’s important to note that the privilege to even be paid in this aspect is a great advantage that not many are afforded. The relief of not being in debt is a luxury for many; even though none of the money went to Melngailis directly, she still was paid and offered some peace of mind.)

Melngailis also addressed one thing she says Netflix got wrong: She is not in contact with her ex-husband, Strangis. “I am not in touch with Anthony Strangis,” she said. “While early tabloids got the first word and a lot of that narrative has stuck, I didn’t ‘flee’ in 2015 as those accounts stated, nor was I ‘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.”

But paying off the debt to her employees is her priority, she said: “Of all the harm and the many debts resulting from my downfall, this portion weighed heaviest.”

The chef ended her post by promising another update soon. Fingers crossed it’s about that whole Strangis-and-meat-suit thing.