The Truth About Netflix's "Bad Vegan" and a Crime Week Con, with Sarma Melngailis

Sarma Melngailis asserts that the Netflix documentary 'Bad Vegan' significantly distorted her story. She claims filmmakers omitted crucial psychological explanations of her manipulation, misused a phone call, and edited her words to create a misleading narrative. For example, the documentary implied she married for money after an accountant's joke, but Sarma states she was badgered into marriage much later by Strangis for other reasons.

Host: 'I'm sorry that you had an unfortunate experience with Netflix, but you are not alone.' (02:07) Sarma: 'what the show on Netflix left out... is any explanation of how this happens.' (04:10) Sarma: 'this wasn't even one of the most egregious examples of where they changed the narrative. But this was it was just one that in a way it made me look a bit suspect to the audience cuz it made it seem like I just married him for the money that I thought he had when in reality it was later on and he really badgered me to marry him for uh for other reasons.' (20:08)

Sarma explains that her manipulation was not primarily through 'love bombing' but 'validation bombing.' Strangis identified her deep commitment to her business and her desire to make a positive impact, then positioned himself as the only one who could help her achieve these ambitions, while removing frustrations and predatory investors. He weaponized her goals and vulnerabilities.

Sarma: 'In my case, it wasn't so much love bombing as it was more like validation bombing. Because what this man did, it wasn't that I was so in love with him or it was about some sort of romantic delusion. It was more that he knew he had clocked me as somebody where what meant the most to me in the world was this business and what I wanted it to do for the world.' (16:08)

After the Netflix show aired, Sarma received an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis (formerly Asperger's). She believes this shed light on her 'particular wiring' that made her susceptible to manipulation, explaining a paradox of being intelligent yet struggling to 'clock people's intentions' or having a default trust in others' good faith.

Sarma: 'people bombarded me asking me if I'd ever had an autism diagnosis. And I thought like that had never occurred to me. And so I went and got an evaluation and ended up getting a diagnosis... that's another thing that shed a lot of light on whatever it is about my particular wiring that makes me um you know that sort of allows for that paradox of being objectively reasonably intelligent yet also unable to see certain things that other people might have seen.' (28:11)

Sarma alleges that Anthony Strangis subjected her to sexual abuse, which she discussed in her interviews for the Netflix series but was omitted from the final cut. She believes this omission was intentional to maintain a 'twisty ending' and cast doubt on her complicity, rather than portraying her as a victim.

Sarma: 'There's a whole sexual abuse component of this story that they asked me about and I spoke about in my very long interviews for the for the series, but they left it out, which felt really strange to me... I think had they left it in, then the audience would have sympathized me with to the extent that they wouldn't have able to create sort of a twisty ending and cast doubt on whether or not I was complicit.' (43:13) Megyn Kelly: 'These are Sarm's allegations.' (47:55)

Sarma believes Strangis's primary motivation was not financial gain, but the 'takedown' and destruction of his victims. He gambled away the money he took from her and made sure she was 'utterly humiliated and broken' with burned bridges, making recovery as difficult as possible.

Sarma: 'I again I think the point was the takedown. And in some ways it almost feels like the point was to destroy me, to absolutely obliterate me and to, you know, beyond just the financial side of it. But he, it's almost as if he wanted me to be so utterly humiliated and broken and to have burned all of my bridges so that any chance for me to recover and come back and rebuild would be, you know, as small as possible.' (35:43)