[imagesource: Netflix]

Anna ‘Sorokin’ Delvey from Netflix’s Inventing Anna, tweeted last year that “going to trial is the new sex tape” after spending some time in Rikers Island jail for conning New York’s elite out of millions.

There’s clearly an appetite for such stories, with the public gobbling up stories about the rise and fall of all these highly ambitious con artists and fraudsters manipulating and spending millions like the rules don’t apply to them.

Besides Anna, how can we forget The Tinder Swindler, Shimon Hayut, better known as Simon Leviev?

Also WeWork, Fyre Festival, Theranos, Tiger King. – putting them all together, we may have a comprehensive guide on how to go to trial/jail and become famous for it.

Speaking of which, Chris Smith, who brought us Tiger King and Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened, has another true-crime docuseries up his sleeve.

This one is about a celebrity restaurateur in the vegan food community and New York restaurant scene, Sarma Melngailis (up top), the owner of Pure Food and Wine.

Sarma pleaded guilty to grand larceny, tax fraud, and conspiring to defraud in 2019, reported E! News, going from “raw vegan queen” to “vegan fraudster” in a matter of years.

She was dubbed the ‘Vegan Bernie Madoff’ by some outlets and the name has since stuck.

Here’s a snippet from the official synopsis for the four-part series set to debut on Netflix on March 16, called Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.:

Shortly after meeting a man named Shane Fox on Twitter in 2011, Melngailis begins draining her restaurant’s funds and funneling the money to Fox after he cons her into believing he could make her dreams — from expanding her food empire to making her beloved pitbull immortal — a reality…but only if she continues to obey his every request without question.

A few years later the couple, now married and on the lam after stealing nearly $2 million from the restaurant and its staff, are found holed up in a Tennessee motel by law enforcement.

Their undoing? A charge made under Fox’s real name, Anthony Strangis, for a Domino’s pizza.

As Collider reports, we get to watch as the crazy story unravels via dramatic interviews with those working in the restaurant, officials involved in the case, and even Sarma herself.

The trailer alone is enough to get your blood pumping:

It is beyond me that people are still out there believing in “happily ever after”. I guess the promise of making her and her dog immortal was enough for Sarma to do the unthinkable.

Or at least something to do with the terribly mysterious “meat suit”.

Sarma confirmed on Twitter that she’s completed her four-month prison sentence, considering herself a “Rikers alum” and teasing in her bio that “It’s a long story.”

I am sure it is, Sarma.

Once again, you never know who you are meeting online, or who you are dealing with in real life for that matter.

[sources:collider&e!news]