Nazim Seliakhov was one of Strangis' earliest victims, having invested nearly $100,000 directly in him and was his supposed business partner. Given the chaotic working environment at Pure Food & Wine, it is understandable that he joins Melngailis in exposing Strangis' behavior.
Strangis was released from Rikers Island in May 2017. His probation, a sentence of five years, was transferred to Massachusetts, where he went to live with his mother.
"Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives." is a four-part docu-series following the criminal case of Sarma Melngailis, co-founder of celebrity-favorite Pure Food and Wine as well as the "it" girl of New York's early-aughts food scene.
Melngailis said that just as Strangis was leaving prison, she was entering Riker's again to do the three and a half months she was sentenced with. But ultimately, "Bad Vegan" revealed that Strangis is a free man who has continued on with his life.
Sarma Melngailis Used Money from 'Bad Vegan' to Repay Former Employees: 'I Did Not Get Paid Otherwise' Sarma Melngailis' earnings from Netflix's Bad Vegan: Fame.
She Paid Her Employees With Netflix Money
However once the docuseries was finalized, Netflix execs decided to pay the balance of Sarma's substantial debt.
Melngailis ran a profitable restaurant for 11 years, wrote cookbooks (Raw Food Real World and Living Raw Food) and rubbed shoulders with celebrities. But now, she spends most of her time reading, hanging out with her dog, working on a memoir and recording podcasts.
Nazim Seliakhov
He currently resides in New York City and has leaned into his entrepreneurial side, being the founder of a pharmaceutical-grade Industrial Hemp Processing Laboratory. Seliakhov remains private online, with his only public social media profile being his LinkedIn.
Are Sarma Melngailis and Anthony Strangis still together? Melngailis filed for divorce from Strangis in May 2018 and hasn't looked back since. She made it clear that she and Strangis are absolutely not together, and alleged that the Netflix documentary botched the truth about their romance almost entirely.
Melngailis lives in the Harlem neighborhood of New York and is active on social media — a recent Instagram post from Dec. 24, 2022, features a photo with her dog, Leon.
Sheila O'Leary, 38, whose family followed a strict vegan diet, was convicted in June on six charges — first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter, child abuse and two counts of child neglect — in the death of Ezra O'Leary.
She has three children with her first husband. She re-married on December 4, 2021, following a courtship of nine and a half years.
Charged with accounts of grand larceny and fraud, the infamous blonde bluff didn't do it alone. In fact, it was her involvement with Anthony Strangis (her now estranged husband) that stirred up a recipe for disaster. Keep scrolling for the true story behind Netflix's Bad Vegan.
According to The Tab, Strangis spent close to $1 million at Foxwoods Resort Casino, over $200,000 at Mohegan Sun Resort Casino, over $80,000 on watches, $70,000 on hotels and $10,000 on car rides, among other expenses.
Sarma and Anthony began stealing from her investors and employees. Sarma transferred more than $1.6 million from her business accounts to her personal bank account, and Anthony spent $1.2 million of that money at Connecticut casinos, Vanity Fair says.
According to a May 2016 indictment, Strangis spent nearly all the cash at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut and the rest at other casinos. What happened to Anthony from Pure Food and Wine? Strangis is now a free man living his life outside prison.
I won't spoil the plot, but Sarma ends up handing over $1.7 million to Anthony Strangis and leaving the government, her employees, and investors out in the cold to the tune of $6.14 million.
Leon was taken in and looked after by Sarma's father John during her four months in prison, with Sarma and Leon reunited following her release. Bad Vegan is streaming now on Netflix.
Even though he's being played by an actor in the series, Will Richards wasn't actually a real person. Instead, he was a persona Anthony created to convince Sarma that he was part of an underground military operation.
In 2017, Melngailis took a plea deal and plead guilty to larceny, tax fraud, and conspiring to defraud. As part of the deal, she served four months in prison later that year. As for Strangis, the scammer pled guilty to four counts of grand larceny and was sentenced to one year in jail and five years probation.
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.
Sarma Melngailis is a 49-year-old vegan restaurateur turned fraudster and fugitive, convicted of stealing over $1 million from investors and employees. Melngailis' popular Manhattan restaurant Pure Food & Wine was once regularly frequented by Hollywood royalty including Alec Baldwin, Anne Hathaway and Rooney Mara.
After her arrest, Sarma's prosperous business was shut down, leaving her in debt. Sarma's net worth was close to $1.5 million when she went to prison. According to the show, she now owes over $6 million to her investors, employees, and others.
According to outlets, she has a net worth of US$1.5 million dollars when she went to prison. It is known that she owed investors, employees and others to the tune of US$6 million dollars.
John Melngail is received the B.S., M.S., and Ph. D. degrees in physics from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. He has been a Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, since 1993.