For a refresher: Melngailis, the owner of New York City vegan hotspot Pure Food and Wine, defrauded investors and staff of the eatery, whose clientele included Baldwin, Owen Wilson, Bill Clinton, Anne Hathaway and Tom Brady(to name a few). She transferred $1.2 million from the restaurant’s accounts into Strangis’ personal accounts, accusing him of promising her and her rescue pitbull immortality in exchange for her compliance. Strangis allegedly told Melngailis he was a former Navy SEAL doing black ops for the government and that he had a mysterious, villainous brother who was so tech-savvy that Strangis needed Melngailis’ passwords to her bank, email and other accounts for safekeeping. None of it was true, and it landed the couple behind bars: Melngailis and Strangis went on the lam and were arrested in a Tennessee hotel room in May 2016. In March 2017, Strangis pleaded guilty to four counts of grand larceny in the fourth degree and was sentenced to one year behind bars and five years of probation. He was released from jail in May 2017. Melngailis pleaded guilty to criminal tax fraud, grand larceny and scheme to defraud in May 2017. She was sentenced to six months in jail and five years of probation. She was released from prison in October 2017 and used her Netflix earnings to repay her employees for the money they lost to her and Strangis’ crimes. In a new post on her blog, Melngailis alleged that Netflix “misused” a “small slice” of what she says was a “staged phone call” at the end of Bad Vegan and that it didn’t properly represent her relationship with Strangis. Melngailis says she wrote the letter on her notes app while riding the subway in 2016 as a means of venting, noting, “At the time I wrote it, so much evidence had yet to turn up, all in my favor, yet even then I’d thought… surely I’d not be sent back to jail. This wasn’t a privilege thing, it’s just that I naively thought one needed to have [the] intent to commit crimes. It seemed logical and obvious that I wouldn’t have willingly destroyed my own life and hurt so many people I cared about for no benefit. It made no sense. Yet, eventually, I did go back to jail.” “In a lot of ways, I’m glad for that experience,” she continued. “I want to somehow, one day, be a useful advocate for bail reform. Seeing the effects of it on people’s lives up close made me want to do something.” She further slammed Netflix in an Instagram post, featuring a selfie of her crying with smeared mascara alongside the images Netflix used of her for the show. “Putting these photos side-by-side for a reason (even though it’s fresh raw meat for those who say I’m ‘playing the victim’),” she captioned the photos. “There are more important things going on in the world than the misrepresentation of my story, but I’ll continue to speak out in objection to the mocking of psychological abuse by Netflix and the misportrayal [sic] of these kinds of stories in general. Me looking like a glamorized villain eating a cash salad is not me. It may help Netflix sensationalize the story, but at my expense, and at the expense of a greater understanding of the larger issues, including #coercivecontrol #narcissisticabuse #cultmindcontrol and more. I will make my story honest and useful, even if Netflix and Chris Smith did not. #igotout.” In her letter, which she says was written in 2016, she addresses “Mr. Fox,” referring to the “Shane Fox” alias Strangis used when they first met. “Everything is gone – the restaurant, the brand, my home, my work, my employees, my customers, even all my things: clothes, papers, files, photos, everything. Also, my integrity. And scariest of all for me: my independence,” she wrote. “All that was lost has been replaced by awful things that feel really bad. I’m grossly humiliated both publicly and privately. Opening the door and letting you in, that was my fault. I did that. My Mom (what you did to my mom!!) and so many other good people, and my own employees, got hurt… because of me. That’s on me. I have to live with that. Can you imagine how that feels? No, you can’t. Shame and responsibility are foreign concepts to you.” The letter graphically describes alleged sexual abuse, as well as the coercive control that her first legal defense team planned to use for Melngailis in court to try to prove her innocence. Melngailis accused Strangis of using her Gmail account to send messages allegedly from her to everyone from her family members to Alec Baldwin asking for money and jeopardizing her relationships. She also expressed her frustration with people asking why she didn’t leave, asking instead why Strangis wouldn’t just leave her alone since he didn’t love her and took all of her money. “You figured me out — what would work on me. You reeled me in, then got me trapped by borrowing money you’d promise to repay. Only a little at first, but that was the hook,” she continued. “I wanted to be repaid, so I’d let you back in. I’d let you back into my home when I’d resolved to have nothing to do with you again because you were telling me you had cash to pay me back. Then somehow you’d pull some insane mind-f**kery and would end up borrowing more. How that happened, I don’t even know. Why did I give you more? How did that happen? How did you do that?” Melngailis fumed, “For years with you in my life I woke up every single day into a nightmare of fear and dread. Except back then, you were in charge, and at least I had hope. Never mind that it was false hope. You’d look straight into my eyes so intensely — with those big brown bovine orbs — telling me it was all going to be more than okay,” she wrote. “Telling me to hang on. I was your tiny blonde human, your TBH, chosen by you, doing what you told me to do, hanging on for promised relief. That hope is gone. And turns out, it was never even there at all. Everything is gone. Now it’s a different nightmare, but at least you’re not here. At least you’re gone.” Next, find out what coercive control is and how to help someone under its influence.
