Doc Doc World: Bad Vegan (Netflix 2022)

Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
Hello, listeners, Welcome back toDark Dark World. Today it's doc Doc
World and we're going to be coveringthe Netflix docuseries Bad Vegan twenty twenty two
release. Pretty current stuff and I'mvery excited to bring onto the podcast is

(00:24):
a very special guest for the veryfirst time, surprisingly, my father,
Professor Jack Crittenden. Jack, howare you? I'm well, Jordan.
Thank you for inviting me. It'smy pleasure. I think this will be
a fun one to break down withyou. Why am I going to call
you throughout this? You're a manof many names, the professor Cactus,

(00:49):
Cactus Jack, William William Jackson wJackson. Maybe I'll refer to you as
all of the above, Dad,dah any preference, I have no preference.
You refer to me anyway you chooseanyway? Please? Anyway do you
think is appropriate? All right,sir, and I'll call you Jordan.

(01:17):
So this one, Dad, isa wacky one, Bad Vegan. There's
a lot to get into, ofcourse, But first of all, the
title Bad Vegan. When I cameinto this, even before I really knew
what it was, people had writtenin saying, oh are you going to
do a doc doc World. I'mbad vegan because I'm vegan, and so

(01:38):
people know this about me, andthey thought, oh, bad vegan.
Because I think the perception was,here's gonna be it's built as true crime
and it's called bad Vegan. It'sgonna be about vegan swindling or some sort
of criminal vegan, which technically itis. But boy, is that sort
of misleading? Well yes, Ithink it's completely misleading. In fact,

(02:02):
she's a good vegan. I don'tknow why it's called bad vegan. I
don't know. Is there a largevegan community and this would lure them into
watching. In other words, therewould be an audience for true crime and
swindling that would lure regular viewers,But somehow this title would capture more of

(02:28):
an audience. Is that The thoughtI think it must be because it's sort
of for me gets explained towards theend of the series, when try not
to get into any spoilers just outof the gate. First of all,
if you haven't watched this, Iknow I always say this for the doc
doc worlds, but do do goand watch this one. I think it'll

(02:52):
make this conversation much more entertaining foryou. And this isn't quite one of
those stories. It's easy to breakdown for you in a linear way like
I've done with some of the otherones. So I really do recommend watching
it. It's good, it's wacky, it's wild, and it is worth
your time. It's a four parter, it's not a lot to get through,

(03:15):
so yeah, there will be spoilersnow. I think the title somewhat.
The reasoning for the title comes intoplay a little bit at the end
when because of the way that Sarmaand Anthony are apprehended through the sort of
silly pizza thing, all of theheadlines and the reporting of this is vegan

(03:37):
woman busted by ordering a pizza andnow the big vegan. Her downfall was
pizza. She's not a real vegan, this was, and that was so
small in the story that aspect ofit really had nothing to do with a
pizza, right, But that wasgetting all the traction in the headlines.
And that's because there is I don'tknow if it's a community, but there

(04:00):
are a lot of people out therewho don't like vegans. They feel that
vegans are very holier than now andlook down upon the rest of society for
not being as pure. There's alot of that. So people find vegans
annoying. Yeah, I find vegansannoying, and I'm pretty much a vegan.
Yeah that's true, they are,And yes, there are a lot

(04:24):
of annoying vegans and that. Soit's easy to play on the same way
that the headlines were using the pizza, even though this documentary dives into the
story completely and sort of should knowbetter, almost it's doing the same thing.
Oh bad vegan, this will getpeople. Oh finally I have something
to shame vegans with. Oh,you're all like this criminal. Well there's

(04:47):
a scene very brief after the apprehensionwhere one of the police officers said,
yeah, there was a pizza orderedfrom Dominoes. And again, part of
the strangest is that Anthony and Sarmaalways seem to have separate rooms, right,

(05:12):
but the slab Anthony was eating thepizza and the wings, and the
police officer says, I don't thinkSarma had any of it, right,
which goes with her character because thenonce she's in prison, she's trying to
convince inmates and guards to be vegan, right, so she but I completely

(05:33):
agree with you. The headlines werevegan restauranteur eats pizza and his cot or
whatever the hell was. Yeah.Yeah, so they're playing that up,
but it not only does it havelittle to do with the story, it's
misleading. It's a bad title.Yeah, not that vegan. Bad titles

(05:55):
should be the title of the badvegan. Yeah. So do you agree
with me that this is good?Bad title? Good docuseries? Is how
I feel about it? Well,there were I don't know enough about documentaries,
so I would defer to you onthis, But it seemed to me
that the questions, the two majorquestions I have, I place at the

(06:21):
feet of the documentarian. I thinkit's their fault that they didn't answer the
questions I have, which are obviousquestions. The first one you alluded to,
which is that Sarma, the ownerof New York City's finest and maybe
the world's finest vegan restaurant, PureFood and Wine. It's called Pure Food

(06:46):
and Wine, has a connection withAlec Baldwin, who's a frequent patron and
apparently has some kind of crush onSarma and is the conduit to Shane Fox
slash Anthony Strangest. But it's neverexplored how Shane Fox knows Alec Baldwin.

(07:10):
Now, if they had said wetried to contact Alec Baldwin, he refused
an interview. Sarmo refused to talkabout the connection. Okay, but there's
nothing talked about there. So I'msaying, how is this major celebrity in
contact with this guy? What's theirconnection? You know, he's sending in

(07:30):
little cartoons and stupid quips through Twitteror whatever the device was. Yeah,
I had wondered about that. Also, there are a couple of moments like
that where I think there were somemissus by the documentarians. Another one will
come to assumed it's the same kindof thing, But yeah, I was

(07:53):
sort of left with the impression thatShane had maybe run into Alec at the
restaurant or somewhere and had a briefexchange and then hit him up on Twitter
and would constantly reply to his commentsuntil he became sort of recognizable to Alec
and oh it's this guy again,and then they had a little bit of
banter and that was kind of it. But if that's the case, why

(08:16):
would Shane neet Alec Baldwin. Ifhe's already in the restaurant, why not
just become a frequent patron the wayAlec Baldwin did get to no Sarma and
just work his way in that wayanyway. But I raised it only because
you said, is it a gooddocumentary? And well, it certainly kept
my attention, So I think onone level it's a sign that it's good.

(08:39):
I don't remember how I got intoit. I don't remember if you
suggested it to me, or whetherI had been caught up in this what
now appears to be an almost frequenttheme of swindling fraud, which I've have

(09:03):
enjoyed. The what's the one aboutthe Romeo guy, the Tinder swindler?
Yeah, the swidler, that one, the story of Elizabeth Holmes and her
fraudulent behavior with Tharoon Nos. SoI don't remember how I got into it,
but once I started, and againI'm not a frequent viewer of documentaries

(09:26):
on true crime, but once Istarted, it's so wacky. Yeah that
even that on its on its ownis entertaining and worth watching. Yeah,
this wakiness, the story is compelling. Yeah yeah, yeah, So so
you agree with me that this isworth watching for people. There may be

(09:50):
some some missed opportunities or drop ballsat points. But oh, what was
your second question? You said youwere left? Or should we not get
to it yet? We can uhtwo big ones, and there's a little
one which we can get to later. But the other big one comes later
on in this series, whence Armahaving now gone through, having had the

(10:13):
restaurant closed, having been picketed byher employees for failure to pay their wages,
having had the restaurant closed, havingfailed to pay her backers. I
don't think she's on the lamb.You'll have to tell me where this happens
in the series. I'm not thatfamiliar with it. At this point,

(10:35):
she somehow raises is it three hundredand eighty thousand dollars or is it eight
hundred and some eight hundred sixty eighthundred sixty after all of this failure,
Well, that hasn't gone into howwhat's her approach with whom? How?
How does she do? They saya couple of times, it's remarkable that

(10:56):
the speed with which she was ableto do it was unprecedented. And then
I guess you're just sort of toassume that she had enough good faith,
built up enough credit in the bank, as it were, to draw upon
friends or people that trusted her enough. I go with this state. First,

(11:16):
you can't imagine an institution, right, no institution giving her money unless
she's going to Deutsche Bank, andmaybe because they seem to be fraudulent themselves,
but who is going to be willingto sink money into It's not even
into the restaurant, which is closeat this point into her, right into
her to then use. Yeah,there are a few things like that.

(11:39):
I guess let's get into it becauseI know listeners, there are some of
you who just aren't going to watchit anyway. You've told me that,
Yeah, I know I should watchit, but I just like hearing you
talk about it anyway. So fine, we'll give you a little bit of
the play by play. You've heardus talking about Sarma already. She is
the quote unquote bad vegan here,and as my father has mentioned, she's

(12:01):
actually a good vegan. Sarma Melingalis. That's a Latvian name. I looked
that up. I said, what, because you know her father speaks with
an accent. He's interviewed in thisand I just thought, well, they're
clearly from somewhere else initially, andit's it's Latvia. So so yeah,
Latvian American restaurant tour. She startedoff, she went, she worked on

(12:24):
Wall Street, she went to majoredin at university. She majored in economics
and realized early on that wasn't herpath, and she was food was her
passion. So she started a restaurantwith her boyfriend. She meets this celebrity
chef, Matthew Kenny, who wasalready sort of a big deal in New

(12:48):
York fine dining chef, and theyfall in love and they start a relationship,
and then they opened this restaurant,and this sort of become a theme
for sarma Is. I don't wantto be too judgmental, really, but
it almost seems like she's incapable ofhaving a serious relationship with a mail if

(13:13):
it's not romantic. As well,she ends up dating someone every time she
meets these guys, even Alec Baldwinbecomes a potential interest. She and Matthew
will break up, you know,later on down the road, and then
while she's mourning him, she getsinto another relationship and then breaks up with

(13:33):
that guy. And this is beforeour grifter even comes in. So,
you know, maybe I'm making toomuch of it, but it seems to
be a theme. I thought,Oh, you meet this chef, you're
talking about a restaurant, and thenyou end up in a relationship together.
Of course you do. So he'sthe chef, she sort of runs the

(13:54):
business end of it, and theycome up with this. At the time,
this is like early two thousands,a pretty cutting ed restaurant, and
not only is it an all veganrestaurant, but it's just all raw.
Just to interrupt for a moment,I don't remember is is Matthew. Matthew
isn't vegan? Right? Is Sarmaat that point vegan? I think she

(14:18):
is okay. So the connection thenis that she's vegan and Matthew is a
top chef, and she kind ofsays, look, why don't we start
this vegan restaurant. That's kind ofthe angle. Yeah, there's none of
this here. We could do itall raw. And then he thought that
would be an interesting challenge. Howcan I make exciting dishes? But these

(14:39):
are the parameters I have to workand they have to not only is it
vegan, but it's raw vegan,and yet I'm making fine dining. There
just wasn't that there wasn't a veganfine dining experience and it's a hit.
It gets backing from the main investorwho sort of becomes a thread in the
story is Jeffrey Chodero. He givesher the initial investment and you know,

(15:01):
puts a few million into the restaurant, and it seems like a great idea
because it's drawing celebrities and it's gotstar power and it's sexy, and Gwyneth
Paltrow's writing about it in her blog, and it takes off. It's a
big hit. So it unravels alittle bit because their romantic relationship unravels,

(15:28):
Sarmas and Matthews, and they bothindependently contact this Jeffrey and say, look,
I've broken up with Matthew. Ican't work with him anymore. Look
I've broken up with Sarma. Ican't work with her anymore. And so
he's sort of forced to choose oneof them to go forward with, and
he picks Sarma, much to Matthew'schagrin, and then Matthews gone from our

(15:52):
story. He's broken up with Sarma. He's not part of the restaurant anymore.
So, yeah, that's Sarma.She's Let's talk a little bit about
your impressions of Sarma before anything happens. So I just mean she's a talking
head through this. Most of thedocumentary is various talking heads, and she's
omnipresent. How does she seem toyou? What are your impressions of Sarma

(16:18):
just as a person, if youcan separate what you know she is going
to happen to her. By thetime the documentary is being made, she's
out of prison, right right,okay, And I think they're making it
at least in part while she's inprison. She had done some of her

(16:38):
own before she goes into Rikers.She does her own little documentary which not
to be released or anything, butjust had someone interview her and get all
of her story on film because shethought something like this might come down the
road, and she was right.But then they don't end up really using
any of that except one little bit. So when they use that footage,

(17:00):
technically, yes, they were filmingit while she was there. So I
raised that because I find her distant, emotionally distant, and maybe even emotionally
unavailable, and so I don't knowfirst how much time has passed and how
how raw ironically all this is forher emotionally but she just seems almost detached

(17:26):
from it. Yeah, and youthen begin to wonder if she is in
many ways emotionally unavailable, because herrelationship with Anthony with Shane's slash Anthony is
odd, even when they will discusslater get married. Her relationship with her

(17:48):
family seems strained. Although they seemin contact, there doesn't seem to be
a lot of emotional bonding there.The only living creature she seems bonded with
is her dog Leon. Yeah.But at the same time, Okay,

(18:10):
that's one side, and I don'tremember, You'll have to remind me.
She as a child and as ayoung adult is kind of withdrawn. Right.
She is a loner a little bit. Yeah, she's a little different,
weird haircuts and a bit of aloner. Not a lot of friends.
Yeah, she's a strange amalgam ofparts. On one hand, I

(18:40):
was going to say she's weak willed, but she isn't. Really. She
keeps a diary or a journal,yeah, impressively so. Yeah, but
it seems to lack insight. Shedoesn't seem to be clued in at all
of what's going on inside of herbased on in relation to what's happening outside

(19:06):
of her. Yeah, that's completelyodd to me. And as I say,
the emotional distance, she doesn't appearto be interested in emotionally bonding.
Now, on the good side,she has trouble with small talk. She's
very uncomfortable in the restaurant scene whenshe has to be schmoozing with customers and

(19:30):
maybe even investors. And yet thephotographs you see of her are these glam
shots where she's on the cover ofmagazines and she's in the bar, she's
got a martini in her hand,and she seems very relaxed. She's good
at playing the role, even thoughshe's not interested in it. She's not

(19:51):
comfortable with it. I feel thesame way, and it's a shame that
we don't get to see what she'slike before all this, And the same
with the family. She does seemcompletely distant and even cold through a lot
of it, and the family doseem hurt, and they probably are so.
But yeah, we don't really geta glimpse of what it was like.
We see photos and things, butit would be interesting to see.

(20:15):
She doesn't seem like a fun person, But you have these testimonials from all
the people when the days were good, when the restaurant was thriving. They
loved her. They called her sarMama. She took care of everybody.
They loved her coming in. Soshe must have been This must have really
done a number on her, andyou can imagine why. But yeah,
I got that. There there wasone moment and it's I think in the

(20:37):
last episode where she's talking about Ithink his name was Jim, a former
employee that she fired for some sortof unfair reason. He got a little
testy with her in an email thatpeople weren't getting paid and I think he
worded it, I was a littlemore aggressive than I should have been,
and she responded by firing him.And she talks about how she ran into

(20:59):
him about a year later on thestreet and they hugged and she sort of
apologized, and she gets emotional inin the talking head segment telling us about
this, she gets a tear comesdown her eye and she her voice breaks
and you go, okay, sothere's a an emotional being in here.
Yeah, there is. There wasthat, So that was huge for me.
That's the guy looks like a bouncer, right, bald headed guy.

(21:22):
Yeah, yes, I would notdescribe her as cold hearted, not cold
hearted, just cold, a littlecold. Yeah. But then there's this
other I don't want to call ita creepy element, but it's I found
it bewildering because I'm not again quitesure of the relationship. And that's with

(21:44):
the seemingly homeless man she befriends.So she seems to have She doesn't seem
to be guarded in any way,because otherwise I don't think this Anthony slash
Shane would have been able to penetrate. So she's not guarded. She seems
very open and very friendly. Soshe befriends this homeless man mostly through Leon

(22:07):
the dog, but then because she'llgo on walks with him. And this
man started talking to her because ofthe dog. Yeah, yeah, and
then but doesn't he then come intothe restaurant And I'm never clear on his
relationship with her because at one pointwhen the family fears that I I guess
it's actually has she been arrested andthey're they're worried about the dog. This

(22:32):
guy street guys worried about the dog. He calls the father, right,
so yeah, so he's talking tothe family. Then he says, well,
I'm going down there. There aren'tenough police agents in the state of
Florida's or wherever the hell they areto stop me from getting the leon.
What what? He gets in acar and he's driving down there, and

(22:55):
the father calls and says, no, we've got the dog. He's fine.
So he turns around. Well,okay, here's a homeless guy who's
befriended her. She's befriended him.He's coming to the restaurant. He he
knows the family. I have noidea who he is. At one point
he says, he what would youhave done? Differently? He says,
well, I would have I wouldhave killed Anthony. I would have dumped
him in the river. But itis an odd relationship. And then you

(23:19):
wonder, think, well, whydidn't she give him a job? Maybe
he didn't want one. I don'tknow. For a while, I think,
but you're right, it's a glimpseof she has some compassion. Yeah.
And the other guy nas nas right, Yaz, who's another guy who
this is the Russian guy that shemeets through shame, also sort of being

(23:44):
grifted. He's also been grifted,but also seems like a grifter. So
everybody in the restaurant is concerned abouthim because he seems so shady, and
yet in the documentary he's coming acrossas being on the out, constantly out
looking out for Sarma. Well,I don't know is that true or is
he just trying to present himself thatway, right? It's hard to tell

(24:06):
with these guys. Yeah, Sothere are these characters in her life,
and I still don't know what emotionallyshe is seeing in them or how she's
attached to them. Are there justkind of figures who come in and out
of her life and they don't reallymean anything. I don't know that's fair.
It's unclear. It's part of theabsence of emotional depth. And I

(24:26):
don't mean to be unfair to Sarma. I just didn't get it in the
documentary. And I don't know ifit was made that way to have her
come across as being cold and distantand emotionally unavailable. And it's hard to
tell, as you say, withoutknowing how much she's been impacted. You
know, her personality has been impactedby all of these events. So we'll

(24:51):
briefly touch on how Shane enters thepicture, and it is through Alec Baldwin
because Sarma breaks up with Matthew.He's no longer in the picture. Alec
Baldwin is a regular at Pure,he comes in all the time. They
become friendly. It seems like hehas a crush on Sarma and she's not
quite interested, but thinking about it. Almost she mentions, and she's,

(25:15):
as I mentioned to always getting intorelationship. She's in another one, so
she's not available. But she saysthat when Alec Baldwin meets the woman that
he goes on to be with,it felt like she missed the boat.
It was a missed opportunity. Oh, I was thinking I should have dated
him, but thought I was tooyoung for him, and he ends up
being with someone who's even younger,so she was sort of lamenting that fact.

(25:38):
You know, Okay, well thisis just weird. So she ends
up breaking up with the guy thatshe was with at this time after Matthew
during Alec Baldwin. This is ahard break up for her, apparently,
and she's a bit depressed, andshe ends up adopting this dog that she
originally intended for Alec Baldwin to getbecause he was feeling lonely. He didn't

(26:04):
want it. She ended up adoptingthe dog and fell and madly in love
with the dog Leon. So thisis her relationship with Alec Baldwin. And
then he, as you say,we don't really know how, but knows
this Shane Fox, who Sarma thinksis a has a valid connection with Alec

(26:29):
Baldwin because she sees them interacting onTwitter. She can see it there.
It's not like he's only messaging Alecand Alec never responds or anything. So
she can see their friends and thinks, okay, well, if Alan Alec
Valleg is for this guy, hemust be cool, and he is cool.
Shane Fox, boy this guy.So we're introduced to Shane Fox the

(26:57):
same way. Presumably Sarma is introducedto Shane Fox as this sort of mysterious,
very flashy, big money important dudewho's got drivers and chauffeurs taking him
around. He's wearing role xes,he splashes a lot of cash and actually

(27:19):
I should back up. She hasn'tmet him in person. It's all online
through the Twitter stuff. And thenemails with Alec and then she starts talking
to him this Shane Fox playing Wordswith Friends. This game was popular at
the time, and so it wasalmost like they were using that as a
dating app, just having chats witheach other, playing the game, and

(27:45):
he had a lot of sort ofhe was very handsome in his photos that
he presented on his social media.Good looking guy, looks pretty cool.
And then when he finally meets herin person, he's a little bit fat,
kind of frumpy, a little sameguy from the photos, but let's
put on a few pounds. He'snot quite as impressive looking. And Sarma

(28:07):
thinks, well, I shouldn't beshallow about that. We have a connection.
So, yeah, he's a littlefatter than I thought, but yeah,
I'll get him on a vegan diet. He'll be good. But yeah,
it's key that he comes across asimportant and wealthy. That's crucial,
right. He wants her to seehim in this way, and he goes

(28:33):
out of his way to almost overthe top, gestures like we're going to
Tiffany's. And they has this driverpicked them up and take them to Tiffany's
and he's I want you to lookaround. They take them to the exclusive
floor of Tiffany's and they sort ofroll out the red carpet for him,
and he's hells Sarma just pick outsome things that you want, you know,

(28:53):
whatever you want. Of course theydon't end up buying anything, but
they're just being sort of entertained bythe staff and he's putting on a show,
right, But it makes you think, well, okay, a lot
of this must be legit. Heobviously can afford a role x, He
is able to pay drivers, presumably, so it's hard to doubt that the

(29:21):
guy has money, right. Theguy has money, appears to have money,
right. And then there's the otherside of Shane you haven't mentioned yet,
which is his mysterious occupation, whichappears to have something to do with
some kind of black ops. Atone point, I think it's Sarma says

(29:45):
to me, means sort of likeBlackwater, private security. He was,
yeah, sort of like that.But he it's alleged that he's going off
to various places around the world wherehe is troubleshooting for the government and is
unavailable, can't be contacted, isout of communication, and on a couple
of occasions, may need some resourcesfrom her to finish off the job that

(30:11):
he might be doing, right,which is so odd, Which is yeah,
completely odd. So you've got thisthis kind of shady, mysterious background
and some obviously flashy money and themysterious background, the shady occupation. This
is common, I guess for griftertypes. For these Charlatans is using the

(30:33):
oh I'm ex military, I workoff the grid, you know, I'm
kind of Jason Bourne from the Bourneidentity. It's best that you don't know
about what I do, right,because then it's you can't really disprove it.
I think the right Vanity fair journalistfrom the documentary says like, yeah,

(30:55):
you can see if someone's been inthe military, that's pretty easy to
look up. But there's no likerecord of who the secret services or you
can't just look up and see whoblack ops operators are, right, So
it's hard to disprove good cover,right, And it's do you do you
want to get into the family.Oh? Yeah, because and this is

(31:18):
a good leaping off point for it, because it's interesting that Shane apparently everyone
he meets he has similar stories thathe tells, but they're a little different.
But he's often saying that he's aNavy seal, the next Navy seal.
This is a common thing for grifters. They take it a little further
than it needs to go. Youprobably could have just said you were ex
military, but no, you haveto be the upper echelon. And he's

(31:42):
sort of lucky that he doesn't get, you know, say that to the
wrong people, because there are alot of guys out there who make it
their mission to shame sort of falsenavy seals, stolen valor they call it.
They've got YouTuber who are out theretrying to expose these men because it's

(32:02):
that common. So he's obviously verycautious about who he tells things too.
And what's also unclear from the documentaryis how many people he has working with
him on the long con Right,it's good that this documentary is a series
and not just a one off,because they're able over the course of the

(32:24):
four episodes to show us that Sarmagoes along with him gradually over a long
sort of period of time. It'snot like, you know, a week
after meeting he starts getting money fromher. It's quick, but it takes
time, and he embeds himself andhe uses his flashiness and mysterious life to

(32:50):
sort of lure her in. Butthen he's very kind and warm and the
dog seems to like him, sohe has that going for him. He
does have some charisma and charm,something likable. Yeah, I'm not.
I don't. Leon the dog isthe connection. He seems very affectionate and

(33:13):
caring about the dog, which endearshim to Ssarma. But as one of
the restaurant employees pointed out, thetwo of them were never affectionate. They
never held hands when they came intothe restaurant, They didn't seem to be
in love. There was none ofthat. So my impression was that,

(33:37):
really the only connection is Leon thedog. I don't really understand what their
connection is. Yeah, she saysthat she loves them, she was so
in love, and but you're right, there's no sort of No one else
sees that, right and pet peopleare surprised. Yeah, they don't see
they're like that. Are they romanticallyinterested or is this just a new don't
seem to It's odd. And sheeven describes at one point that they never

(34:01):
really were sexual. They didn't reallyhave sex. There were a couple of
awful experiences that he subjected her to, but it wasn't a common thing and
they ended up staying in separate roomsfor much of the time. So you're
right, there's never really any romanceand yet she describes it as being so

(34:22):
in love with him that it washard to see any red flags. But
I think a lot of that isdown to Leon, who and this will
get into the family. Shane convincesSarma that he can get Leon to live
forever. Shane convinces Sarma that hecan get Leon to live forever, that

(34:58):
he will be immortal, and thatthis world is a charade, that there
is this other dimension that he hasaccess to that he can bring her into
as long as she trusts him andpasses all these tests, that then the
family quotes around the family almost likemanson, the family will embrace her and

(35:22):
they'll live happily ever after with allof the riches and treasures in the world,
and there'll be immortal. And you'relaughing because it sounds so ridiculous that
yes, there isn't anything that youcan grab onto as a hook into this
reality of theirs and say, oh, I see, I see. Because

(35:45):
at one point Shane is putting oneven more weight, and somehow I think
he blames Sarma, right, hesaid, this is your fault. I
have to do this. Well,yeah, because of you. This is
the depth of his He's so goodat manipulating and gaslighting that he's able to.

(36:13):
He's growing towards three hundred pounds.He's getting really heavy, and he's
telling her that this is a test. She has to see him and be
repulsed by his physical appearance and showthat she still loves him through that in
order to pass the test. Andthen once they enter this you know,
utopia, his weight will magically disappearand he'll be sexy Shane again. All

(36:37):
Right. It's just mindless, andit's mind boggling to me. There is
a moment where she's describing the housewhere the family lives. I guess in
this dimension, but to enter thehouse, you have to drop your physical
form. Isn't there some kind oftransformation of your physical form? You can't

(36:58):
be the tiny blonde human any more, what she calls her. You've become
one of them. And so they'resomewhere between aliens and angels. I guess
is the idea I'm picking up on. This is another thing that at one
point in the documentary, that sameVanity Fair journalist says, because she's in
the vegan world, and this isa little unfair because most vegans are not

(37:22):
like this. But he implies thatbecause she's in this world, it's she's
already sort of hipped to some ofthis stuff like crystals and psychics and spirituality
and sort of other worldly stuff.She wants to believe in that stuff anyway,
and here's a guy encouraging it.Right, Maybe we don't really know

(37:44):
what kind of a vegan she was. To me, she seems she was
clearly smart, educated, did WallStreet doing the restaurant things. She's business
savvy, so she's she's not somebimbo who's easily manipulated, and yet she
is. Ye, that's what Iwanted to ask you about. What where

(38:07):
do you see the entry point forhim? Is it her loneliness, just
a fundamental loneliness? What is itabout this guy that allows him not simply
to enter her life, but totake over her life? You know,
he's going into the restaurant one point, The people in the restaurant don't really

(38:27):
know what his connection is to thebusiness. He's coming in and he's asking
for files, right, Well,he files, which he takes away and
they don't know whatever happens to them. Where do you see this happening in
her? Well, it's a combinationof things because as I mentioned, it
seems like she's the type that alwaysneeds to be with someone romantically, and

(38:52):
so her relationship if one ends,it's not long before she's in a new
one. I've known people like this, maybe you do as well, So
that seems to be in play.She had just come out of the breakup.
She gets the dog that's helping alittle bit, but she needs a
partner. It's always what she seemsto be after, and so he was
the next guy up. Perfect opportunity. But also he's practiced at this clearly.

(39:17):
We'll find out later that he's donethis to a few other women,
in particular his ex wife, butnever to this level. That's another thing.
This is a huge escalation for himand his con you know, going
to this level, the amounts ofmoney that we're going to get into here.
But I don't know, it hasto be a perfect storm of loneliness,

(39:42):
gullibility, charm on his end,saying the right things at the right
time. Well, you know theyhave those. I don't know. When
she begins recording the phone conversations withhim, and at one point I think
it's nas this bartender slash Hello grifterslash gullible guy who suggests to her that

(40:04):
she should record the conversations with Anthonyor Shane, which she does. But
you listen to what he's saying,and it's it's just stupid drivel and threats
and demands. And you're thinking,there isn't any charm there. No,
certainly not at that point. No. Yeah, it's awful, But I
don't know any I didn't. Ihaven't seen anything from him that's charming other

(40:28):
than taking her to Tiffany's having champagneand looking at jewelry. Yeah, and
and and we have to take herword and his ex wife's word that there's
something about him that makes you fallin love. Well, that's what I
was going to say about the exwife. At least there, you see,
they have a loving relationship, theyhave a child together, they're married.
They seem to be their photographs ofthem, of the family, of

(40:51):
him with the child, with thechild. There seems to be some emotional
connection there. With Sarma, don'tsee any connection, any emotional connection other
than this dream that you can becomeimmortal and rich, have all of your
dreams come true. And then theyhe falls into this cliche line. You

(41:14):
told me you wanted happy forever whateverthe catchphrases they use, forever after or
whatever he calls it. Yeah,really is she even happy in this relationship
with this guy? I don't seeany moments of happiness with her. No,
Like there are some photos early onthat we see where she's smiling with

(41:37):
him, but they're few and farbetween, and there's we just don't have
anything to go on, even earlyon. Though she's skeptical a couple of
times, she's not, you know, as we've said, she's intelligent enough
to be like, wow, thisdoesn't feel right. For a couple of
the things, he starts asking herto wire money. This is so strange.

(42:00):
So they're in this relationship, buthe's not really around very much.
He doesn't live in New York,where she lives, so he sort of
comes and goes. But most ofthe time he's not with her, and
their relationship is through the phone,and she doesn't know where he is.
She just he says, oh,I'm you know, on a Black Ops
mission, or oh I'm visiting myfather or whatever it is. But he's

(42:22):
not with her, and he couldbe anywhere. Of course, we'll come
to find out. He's usually ata casino, but he doesn't say that,
but he starts asking her. Iwould love for them to have asked
her, okay, the first timehe asked you for money. Take us
through that, because I would liketo know when it first happened. But

(42:42):
eventually he just starts asking her towire him large sums of money and she
does it. So it's twenty thousandhere, forty thousand here, sometimes one
hundred thousand, and these random wiretransfers that happen seem, you know,
first every month, then every coupleof weeks, then sometimes even every few
days. And if she shows frustrationwith it, he says, come on,

(43:07):
we're almost there. You know yougotta you gotta pass the tests.
I want you to live forever.We need to be together forever. And
to the family, and my brotheris gonna kill me. This is another
thing. He has this mysterious brotherwho doesn't exist that's following him, and
it's sort of like a nemesis tothe family. Well, he's a demon.

(43:30):
He's a demon, because doesn't theex wife say something to him like,
well, if this demon is followingyou, why aren't you dead?
Right? Yeah, yeah, that'sright. He said that they've been following
him his whole life. This armyof demons, and his brother is one
his father real life, that fatherdoes exist, also seemed to be in

(43:54):
on some of the scams. Heand Shane robbed Shane's first wife of her
jewelry and went and hawked it atthe pawn shop together and then went to
a casino. Like the dad wasa degenerate gambler. Also, it's just
very strange. And he's used atsome point also to convince Sarma that everything

(44:15):
Shane says is true at one pointwhen she's having doubts. So and maybe
when you're just hanging on like thatand you want to believe stuff, any
little bit of encouragement and like thatyou'll take, you know, you just
go, okay, Well, thisguy says it's cool, and this dad
seems nice and yeah, so he'snot lying to me. I don't know.

(44:35):
But she's sending this money and he'ssaying that. What's sort of clever
about him on Shane Anthony's side isthat he's not saying, if you don't
send this money, you're gonna bekilled. These people are gonna come after
you, They're gonna kill me.I'm gonna be killed gutted is what he
always says. I'm gonna be guttedand you're gonna have to deal with it.

(44:58):
Yeah, there's some genius in thatbecause he's not threatening her, right,
It's all on him, So shecan't later say, well, he
told me he was going to killme or if I didn't send him the
money. No. No, hewas just saying that he was going to
die. And she loves him somuch that of course she'll protect him,
but she doesn't seem to ever ask, well, hang on, let's take

(45:22):
a step back, not talk toShane about this for a minute. Let
me just think this through with mymind. He's continually getting money out of
me, and he keeps telling herhe's not even using the money. It's
being shelved somewhere. And then oncethey enter the family, it all comes
back to her. Yeah, tenfold. Well, this is also part of
the strangeness of Sarma, the strangenessof strangests, the strangeness of strangests for

(45:47):
sure, and the strangeness of Sarmah, who I guess becomes becomes strangest sarmast
strangest because they get married, whichis another bizarre Yeah, and you sort
of forget get it, like becausethey do. Yeah, because they seem
so unmarried and just so uninterested ineach other that you know, by the

(46:07):
time they're on the lamb living inmotels and casinos, they mentioned, oh
yeah, well he's my husband.Oh right, she married him. Oh
God. That final part where they'refinally arrested and they come out and the

(46:28):
police officer says the sarmer, doyou want to go say goodbye to your
husband? No? Yeah, shesaid, do I have to? No?
No, I don't. I don'twant to. But I was gonna
say, going back to the money, Okay. For me to try to
make sense of this, say,Okay, Sarma on one level, is
so openhearted that she and this isreally incredibly generous on my part, She's

(46:59):
so open hearted that she's willing tojeopardize her restaurant, which is her life.
Yeah, they said, she threwherself into this restaurant, and as
Jordan said, she she is lovedby her employees and she seems to be
very good to them. But whenshe has to wire this money to Shane,

(47:21):
it just seems that she said,okay, all right, how much
do you need? And then hisphone conversations are if I tell you to
wire fifty thousand dollars tomorrow, areyou gonna do it? Yeah? And
she'll say, well, why shouldI I've already given you one and a
half million dollars. Yeah, andhe'll make light of it, Oh,
that's nothing when we when we finishedthis, we're gonna have that much a

(47:44):
week, or you know, justweird things like this sort of pooh poohing
the amounts that will somehow make itseem like he's got it under control,
or saying to her, you know, if that doesn't matter. This this
wire, it's this time. Youhave to do it right, right?
Are you gonna do it? IfI ask you, are you gonna do
it right? You know? Andshe said no, yeah, it's very

(48:06):
Yeah, I'm gonna die if youdon't do this. I thought you understood.
You said you wanted this. Yeah, this is that happily ever after,
right, you said you wanted thehappily ever after boy with him?
But what what you want to bewith this guy forever? Ye? You're
not even with him now, right, Yeah, he's not even here.

(48:27):
It's so weird. So it's justthat he was introduced by a celebrity that
she trusted. He splashed a lotof cash and looked flashy and seemed mysterious
and interesting. Okay, get itall. And then it breaks down because
just what else is he showing you? They're not interested in the same thing

(48:49):
she likes reading books. He's intomovies and video games. Oh that's the
other part of different food that thereis a wasn't this part of it that
the documentarian was saying that there isa theme in his story about the other
dimension and the family that's based upon. It's like thor thora, two brothers

(49:13):
battling for control of the world.Yeah, it's interesting that and it's so
silly, And there's an Indiana Jonesthing that he does like this. You
have to it's like the Indiana Jonesthing, Babe. You gotta take that
step where he just weird things thathe's just pulled from movies. I noticed
he has a weird tick. I'mnot even sure that this is I just

(49:37):
caught it, so I thought itwas interesting. There's a point when he's
messaging her attacks early on he says, I love you very much, so
and I think what he means isI love you so very much, but
he says, I love you verymuch. So if it was just one
I'd say, well, maybe hedid mean it that way. But then
later he's talking to the employees ofPure and he says, don't worry,

(50:00):
you'll all be taken well care of. He reverses the words of the phrase
he's trying to use, you'll bewell taken care of, but no,
taken well care of. I loveyou very much, So just a weird
tick that I noticed. So really, what's happening. Let's strip away all

(50:20):
the Actually I did want to askyou because listeners won't know this, but
as I called you at the beginning, I think the professor you are a
political science professor for many years,you're currently professor emeritus correct at Arizona State
University. But you're also a writer. I would say, primarily that's really

(50:45):
scribble. Yeah, you've written abook, Stocking White Crows, which deals
with a lot of well almost entirely, the afterlife or an afterlife, right.
The first third of the book dealswith this scientific investigations of life after
death. Yeah. Book, bythe way, Listeners is available where ever

(51:07):
mediocre books are sold. Stocking WhiteCrows. I'll put a link in the
show notes, and you've also obviouslyresearched a lot of philosophy and mysticism and
even psychics. So even you,though, have trouble seeing how someone could

(51:28):
be led to believe, because Iwas trying to give her the benefit of
the doubts somewhere like, Okay,maybe she doesn't literally think that Leon and
Shane and Sarma are all going tobe immortal. She probably knows that that's
not real, but maybe she thinksthat there is this sort of soulful connection.
He's sold her enough on this ideathat because they did say even as

(51:52):
a teen, she felt like shewas different and special, like she was
destined for something. And that canbe I've heard that from a lot of
people. That can be something thatin all walks of life. I was
going to say, some true crimepeople people are going to be killers,
but also you know, people likeSteve Jobs. He said he always felt
like he was destined for something great. People like that. This can be

(52:15):
this feeling that people have from avery young age that stays with them,
and then when someone reinforces that forthem and says, no, you are
destined for something great, it almostsort of reaffirms everything you've ever thought about
yourself, and you really want tobelieve that, so you're a little more
susceptible to going along with it,like, oh, this is it,

(52:37):
this is the thing you know,but you don't. But you don't get
with her, or at least Idon't see anything with her where he is
saying to her how special she is. It's everything about how special he is
and how he can bring her alongthrough the family if she will pass these
tests. And you know, wedon't know that you can pass these tests,

(52:57):
Sarma. That's why we're testing you, because we don't know that you're
really anything other than what did hecall it, the little blonde human?
The tiny blonde human. So it'snothing special about her. The only special
part of it appears to be thedog, right and Shane, So you
think So where I thought you wereheaded with asking about some of my past

(53:17):
is that in an earlier part ofmy life I was I studied developmental psychology
and part of that was looking intocults, and cults don't have to involve
a big bunch of people. Itcan really be just a cult figure and
one person. And this is whatwe appear to have with her. She

(53:40):
seems to be being lured into acult. But what I find there two
things I find about that that areinteresting. One again, it isn't about
how special she is. It ishow special they are, and can you
can you live up to what we'reasking you to do? And that can
be a challenge to somebody in acult, and so you can see that
could be a lord. The otherpart of this, and there wasn't enough

(54:05):
of this in the documentary, infact, there wasn't really any of it
at all, is that it doesn'ttake much to get a person to join
a cult because once you can getthere their basic assumptions, everything else follows.
It doesn't have to be although theyuse techniques of a sensor deprivation sometimes
and sleep deprivation. Once you havethem believing the first thing, the other

(54:30):
things seem to follow. And thatappears to be the case with her because
they're these gaps that we've just beentalking about where he says, send me
money. We don't what's her motivationfor doing it other than to pass these
tests and be in the family andbe accepted. But I don't know what
her motivation really is. You werekind of alluding to it that it's that

(54:52):
she already has a past with crystalsand spirituality, and she's already buying into
that. But we' don't really knowthat. No, we don't know that,
And that would be good to know, because I don't understand what the
motivation is, because it certainly isn'tin their interpersonal relationship. No, and
you'd like it must be a littlemore than really thinking Leon can live forever.

(55:15):
You know, if I do this, if I send all this money,
leon will live forever. Let's justlook at that statement for a second.
If I continue sending money, Leonwill live forever. That she can't
believe that. So it's all ofthese factors together that if this sounds interesting,

(55:37):
I want to be special. I'vealways thought I was, and if
I do these things, maybe Iwill be too. He certainly seems special.
He's doing black ops around the world. He's like mister cool, has
all this money and stuff, andhe has this family. And so if
she believes some of that, maybethe rest is true also. And then

(55:59):
I thought reason I brought up sortof the life after death is maybe she
thinks that immortality is in a differentdimension, that this family thing can also
be the next phase right, thatit's not literally we live immortally here on
life, here on earth, butwe do die, but then we're together,
these sort of immortal souls that liveon. Maybe giving her a little

(56:22):
leeway there. Yeah, well,yes, if it were laid out that
way, I would kind of understandit. I mean, you just made
more sense of it in thirty secondsthan the documentary documentary documentary did at all.
Yeah, but the first when youwere talking, the first thing I

(56:43):
thought of was Heaven's Gate. Youremember the Heaven's Gate. Okay, so
these people, I don't think theywere all literate deadbeats, no, but
they believe that when the comic comes, right, that's the spaceship and they're
going to be They're going to sendthe spaceship. And they all believe that,
and so they killed themselves. Yeah. Well, you think how to

(57:05):
rational people do this? Well,you can look into it and understand the
cultish behavior. There isn't enough inthe documentary for me to understand what it
was that motivates her to be tobelieve these things, or even what she
believes, because she never really confrontsthe immortality of the dog, does she
is? She asked that, didyou really think Leon was going to live
forever. She is asked that,and she she's not asked directly, at

(57:31):
least they don't show it, butshe does talk about how she talks about
it. She says, he wastelling me things like he could Leon could
live forever, and we would enterthis sort of other universe. And but
she never says, which, ofcourse I knew was bullshit. But she
never says any of that. Shejust says that it's happening, So it

(57:53):
is weird. Yeah, if somebodysaid to me, you know, there's
a house down the street where youcan enter, but you have to transform
yourself into some other kind of being, well, your first reaction is,
well, let me see it,show me this. This is bullshit,

(58:16):
let me see this. She justseems to be going along. And again,
I don't understand the motivation, becausethis guy is so really unappealing,
right that I wish could he havebeen that unappealing? I mean, certainly
the people on the periphery, thepeople in the restaurant thought, who is

(58:37):
this guy. He's not a dynamo, He doesn't come in the restaurant and
they go, Wow, what agreat guy. Boy. I'd love to
have him running the show. No, he's creepy, he's strange, he's
stand offish, nobody quite knows whathe's doing. He's unimpressive. Yeah,
I think a lot of he mustdo a lot of the groundwork in those
early days when they're playing words withfriends and he's not there in person yet,

(59:00):
because you can sort of be whoeverwhen you're texting, right, and
if he's saying the right things andhelping her through this difficult time, and
she just feels like she has afriend here. And then when he first
does meet her, she goes,he's not quite as attractive as I thought,
but I'm not going to be ajudgmental That's not who I am.
And then he is still a littlebit charming and seems kind of fun and

(59:21):
they have some intimate love making andshe feels like, oh, this is
I'm in love And he's got todo that early work that then, I
mean, this is what these guysdo. He's not alone, right,
Well, you know that there arethese con men, and I wouldn't say
that he's a particularly good one,but look what he was able to achieve,

(59:44):
So maybe he is, Yeah,but I didn't. I don't For
example, I didn't see in thisdocumentary what I saw in The Tinder Swindler,
where you see how this guy operateswith women and it really operates on
women. I didn't see that inthis documentary. And I don't know if
that's because they didn't have time toshow it, which is too bad,
or they there wasn't anything there yeah, or they didn't have documents of that.

(01:00:08):
But the other side of this ishow Shane manipulates Psarma's mother to send
hundreds of thousands of dollars to him. Yeah. Actually, let's let's go
back slightly before that. Let's justtalk about how the money begins. I
think the first thing they're talking about, he's saying that he wants to buy

(01:00:32):
her out of this debt that shehas to Jeffrey Chodorow for the restaurant,
which, by the way, hesays, oh, that's easy, right,
we can see two million, noproblem. Yeah, And they meet
with some accountant who may or maynot have even been an accountant. It
could have just been some dude thatShane knew, which I think it probably

(01:00:52):
was, who says sort of jokingly, well, one easy way to do
this would be if you were married. Then Shane could give you money tax
free, and yeah, yeah,yeah, And then twenty four hours later
they're married. Twenty four hours later, this guy makes an offhand comment and
then Shane reinforces it on the drivehome, and then it's done and they

(01:01:15):
go down to the courthouse and they'remarried. And and that's his first way
in right, is that he's married. And then her money is our money,
right, And so that's how heuses it initially, that it's our
money. Now, Oh I needthis, he send me this from our
money. It's easier for her tothink about it. Well, I we're

(01:01:37):
married, we're together is but thedebt's never paid off. No, that
never happens. And they go tobuy a house to the townhouse in New
York. Yeah, they're gonna getthey get this house. It falls through
somehow. He's never able to putmoney on the table when he says when
it's time, yeah, he's sothe townhouse is a twelve million dollar townhouse.

(01:01:59):
If I get the numbers wrong,correct me. And he shows some
document and the document is like anemail or the figure on it like twenty
two million. Oh, I've gottwenty two million. It's available. And
then some other documents, but ofcourse it falls through. There's no money,
No, there's never any money.One time he produced some diamonds.
I think he took some diamonds outof his coat. So he has access

(01:02:22):
to some of these things, butit's all probably sort of staged. And
then it becomes these wire transfers.Again. He's never around, he's out
somewhere, and we come to learnthat what he's doing is he's receiving these
wires of forty thousand here, sixtythousand there, and he's gambling it.
He's just spending his days at thecasino, like all day. He's not

(01:02:45):
a drinker, he's not a drugaddict. He doesn't party or no,
none of that. He's just aboutgetting money and without any real long term
purpose. He doesn't put money awayso that this is my grift and I'm
gonna be taken care of her life. No, it's just to buy shit
and eat and gamble. Yeah,and live in hotels. Yeah, that's

(01:03:07):
it. Travel. But which evento like to see the sites or anything
cool. It's just to go todifferent casinos. And which is another strange
part. He'll say to her,you're flying to Rome, you have to
go to Rome. You have tostay there on your own for seven days.
You stay there. It's a test. Yeah, that was particularly what

(01:03:28):
a test of what? Yeah,you're just there on your own. I
won't be coming. No, that'snot as strange as the third party,
the person who's going to meet withJeffrey Chowderau. He's gonna go fly to
Miami. They're gonna have a meetingwith this guy MacArthur or somebody the oh
right, another investor, another investorwho's going to meet with Jeffrey Chowdera.

(01:03:50):
But it's a complete figment, it'sa complete creation. But Sarma is in
on the creation, on the sham. Yeah, well that's becomes so first
of all, this is why it'shard to walk the documentary through in any
sort of linear sense. Again,you really should go watch it. But

(01:04:13):
yeah, he sends her to Romeat that point because he needs her away
so he can go into the businessand take all the money out of it.
Basically, Yeah, which does,which he does, and then in
the business falls apart, the restaurantcloses Psarma's friends and employees are contacting her,
but she's like, no, no, don't worry about it. You'll
be paid, you'll be paid,and then she's taking out loans to get

(01:04:35):
payroll, and then that falls through, and then Shane's yelling at her for
doing that. It's all very bizarre, but he takes all her money.
She just gives him all the money. Then the restaurant collapses. The employees
can't be paid, they leave,they protest. She comes back from Rome
and as you already mentioned, somehowis able to draw upon friends to get

(01:04:58):
money and re open the restaurant,only for the same thing to happen again
not long after. But the signof how a sign of a different side
of Sarma boil a lot of SSSin that is that when she reopens the
restaurant, all of her employees leavetheir current jobs and come back to her

(01:05:20):
because they like her so much andthey like that restaurant so much. But
as Jordan said, then it collapsesagain, because how could it not,
because Shane Fox Anthony Strange's is literallydraining the funds from He's just taking all
the money which he now has accessto without her just wiring it to him

(01:05:41):
because he is married to her andthey have some sort of it's unclear,
but he's able to just or maybeshe did always have to send it to
him. I can't quite remember thatactually, because I think when they're then
tried later on. That's a bigthing, is that she takes all the
money and gives it to him,and that's a big part of her employees.

(01:06:03):
Yeah, so I guess she doesalways give it to him, which
is interesting because then he's not reallyguilty of anything, right, right,
I mean he is of some otherthings, but it's clever, right as
long as she's always sending it tohim, and he's her husband and he's
asking for it and spending at thecasino, he's not hiding anything. That's

(01:06:27):
what I'm doing. It's tricky,it's crafty, but it just makes you
go, how did she fall forthis for so long? And at one
point she says, obviously, Istarted thinking that maybe I was being conned
because I'm sending all this money allthe time and there's never any end result.
Okay, when do we get tothe house, when do we go

(01:06:48):
see the family? How many timesdo I send the wires before the test
has passed? That's not the point. That's not the point. Se focus
focus on the next wire, tryancefor you know. And so she's thinking
Okay, this, this could bebad, but she says, to admit

(01:07:09):
that that's what was happening, thatI was being conned, is to accept
that it's all gone, that Ithat I everything I gave up is gone.
I was taken advantage of, humiliated, and so I if I just
keep believing in it, and heis right, that'll be good. Right,

(01:07:30):
She says that you know? Andhe says, why didn't you call
and ask your family for help?And she said, hey, what would
I say? You know, whatwould they do? You know? She
would say, oh, he's takingall my money? How's he doing that?
Well, he asked for it,he says, she knows. It
sounds crazy, right, But it'snot only that she at that point is

(01:07:54):
estranged from her family, maybe outof shame or just in a bill to
say, what am I going tosay? And my design that he's contacting
her mother and getting money from her, right, Okay, that's completely bizarre,
and she won't tell it doesn't tellSarma. It doesn't tell Sarmah.

(01:08:14):
Whereas the father, he tries tocontact the father to do the same thing,
essentially meet with me privately, andthe father and the sister will say,
I don't feel comfortable meeting with youwithout Sarma, right, and he
won't do it with Sarma there,right, Okay. Now, the other

(01:08:39):
part of this is that they goon the Lamb right yes, which consists
of Shane saying something to her like, we're taking a trip. Yeah,
because so this is after the restauranthas collapsed the second time that's done now
and everyone hates Sarma basically, andShane just says, kind of like when

(01:09:03):
he sent her to Rome, Oh, let's go. We're just gonna leave.
We need to get out of here, and then pretty soon we're gonna
be able to join the family,you know. And of course they go
to Vegas. That's where they go, where they live in a hotel in
separate rooms, separate rooms, sortof a sweet kind of thing where I

(01:09:25):
guess Shane is filming this in partbecause you have Sarma in these various hotels
around the country in Vegas and otherplaces, crying and Press can't get out
of take it him. He's yelling, You've got to get up. I
don't know why she has to getup, He said, no, you
have to get up. What todo? What I think? To go
to the bank. He needs herto get the money. That's never what

(01:09:46):
It wasn't clear to me watching it, that's what it was. Maybe says
it at one point, Sarma,you've got to get up. We got
to go to the bank. It'sthat kind of At one point he does,
but yeah, she's crying and she'sscreaming. But then she says in
the interview, well, I wasn'theld against my will. He didn't lock
the door. He didn't lock mein. And she's wandering the streets of
Vegas while he's in the casino.Yeah, and she mentions that he well,

(01:10:12):
I was gonna say that he's goodat gambling. That can't be the
case because he never has money.But he had this ability to go to
the high stakes slot machines and somehowhit a jackpot like four or five times,
like six thousand, ten thousand,winning all this money, and so
that sort of comforted her somehow,seeing that, like, oh, well
he's good at this, so we'llbe okay. I guess he's going to

(01:10:34):
do that. But it's this sortof Stockholm syndrome kind of thing. They
do make a comparison to Patty Hurstat one point, right, but it's
this is by design with grifters,and these not even necessarily con artists,
but guys that abusers in just romanticrelationships, that abuse their partners. They

(01:10:59):
cut them off from their friends,cut them off from their family. They're
the only person in the life.They are controlling this person, and it
makes it harder to leave them becauseof that, because you're now You're all
they have, right, So Sarmais sort of like that. Everyone from
the restaurant has wants nothing to dowith me because I've screwed all of them.
They think I'm awful. My familydoesn't know what the deal is with

(01:11:24):
me. Little does she know,Mom's still funding Anthony. At this point,
Anthony's all I've gotten and Leon that'sit. It's us, and she's,
yeah, I'm absolutely miserable. Hopefullythis is going to pan out.
We're gonna we're gonna get to thefamily's house and all this money will be
repaid. She's cleaning to that,but obviously knows it's not true and is

(01:11:48):
depressed but doesn't know what to do. And then he convinces her to one
last time, we got to doone more why or get sixty thousand dollars
from this person in New York,where he's trying to keep her away from
New York. The journalist from VanityFair says that at this point he just

(01:12:09):
thinks that Anthony didn't know what todo. He said, well, I've
obviously gotten all of her money.She doesn't have any money anymore. I'm
kind of squeezing the mom now,but she's running out. I don't know
what to do. Like, he'ssort of doesn't have a plan. I'm
gonna get I guess I'll gamble.And this is like what I talked about
that he had no sort of endgame, right, He didn't put money away

(01:12:30):
or anything. It was just sonow he's drained this woman. He knows
he can't follow through on any ofthese absurd promises he made because they're not
real, and so he doesn't knowwhat to do. Really, he just
tries to get whatever money he stillcan. They end up in Tennessee in
this weird place. What is thatplace? I don't know. I didn't

(01:12:53):
know it existed. It's not ValleyForge, it's something Forge something Forge,
Tennis Pigeon Higeonforge, Tennessee. Itlooks like maybe a mini Vegas kind of
things. Strange attractions, Yeah,and there must have been a casino there
that must have been the draw.And they're living in a dumpy motel there.

(01:13:15):
She is living this sad life wherehe's playing Call of Duty in his
room and ordering pizzas, and she'sgoing to Chipotle to hang out with this
dude that works there. That's anotherpart of this that that runs counter to
the cult element, which is thatshe is confessing to this guy who works

(01:13:36):
at Chipotle. What is their relationship? What does this guy think of her?
Here's this young, attractive, blondewoman who comes and hangs out with
the night manager at Chipotle to talkabout what. Yeah, he claims that

(01:13:56):
she said, look, I'm I'mwith this guy. He's bad news,
so don't contact me. I'll contactyou and I'll come over here and we'll
drink our beards. But she neversaid to him, look, call this
number my father or my sister.No, call this person, or you
know, give me some money torun a car to get the hell out

(01:14:19):
of here. She's with a guythat she admits is bad news. She
knows that her business has been destroyedtwice by this guy, bank accout,
completely drained, no money, noresources. But she's married to him.
Still I keep forgetting that and goingand she's probably just thinking, what the
hell am I going to do?This is my husband, you know,

(01:14:43):
it's so odd. Well, maybethat's more. Maybe that's more of the
angle, that it's an abusive relationshipwith at least with Patty Hurst. She
became convinced that the Simbonies liberal rationarmy had the correct political ideology, that
her family was part of the problem, not the solution to the ills of

(01:15:06):
the country she brought into that.Yeah, there's nothing here except the family
and the meat suit and the otherdimensions and immortality and endless riches, none
of which has happened. But sheseems to have seen through it by this
point. Yeah, yeah, butshe just doesn't know what to do.

(01:15:29):
Yeah. So it's an abusive relationship. I guess it's the only way you
can describe it. Yeah, Andit of course doesn't take long to unravel.
Right. The investors, presumably theinvestors from the second time around,
whoever gave her that eight hundred andsixty thousand to restart the restaurant after it
first collapse, now want their moneyor wants some return, and so they

(01:15:53):
press charges and a warrant has putout. Eventually, Strangest uses his own
credit card at this Domino's to orderPete's and Wings for himself, not for
Sarma, and that's how the authoritiesfind them. They come to the hotel,
they arrest the pair, They goto jail. Anthony can't get anyone

(01:16:15):
to bail him out at this pointbecause well, he doesn't really have anyone
except Sarma, and she's not goingto do it. Sarma, of course,
gets bailed out for family. Theyhave. They reconcile. Then she
finds out that her mom had beenpaying all this money. That's impressive too,
that he somehow was able to keepthe mother from ever contacting Sarma or
saying to her like, well Isent all this money. What's the deal?

(01:16:36):
You know? It's wild. Sohe's he's got something. Yeah,
he's got something. I still don'tknow by the end of it what exactly
it is, although two elements Irecall from the end of the documentary.
One is that there's a taped conversationbetween Sarma and Anthony slash Shane where at

(01:17:02):
one point he says something like,well, you know, I still love
you, and I'm glad to hearI can still make you laugh, but
they have almost an amicable exchange.Instead of her going off on I'm saying,
what a criminal. You are awretched, awful person. That's one
part where I'm thinking, boy,she just seems weak pathetic. But to

(01:17:24):
her credit, tell me if thisis accurate, she has attempted to and
maybe even paid off her employees.Yes, I don't know what kind of
work she's doing, but whatever isshe she has really tried to seek restitution
for what she did to them.Yeah, that's key, and they're all

(01:17:47):
still good with her. So she'sexcept chowdro except CHOWDERO, who said,
yeah I did. She asked himto speak for her or be a character
character witness, and he wouldn't doit. See what am I going to
say? Yeah, can't do it. But generally she sort of repaired her

(01:18:10):
image. I think most people knewthat she was being taken and that they
were surprised that it happened to her, But I don't think most held her
to blame. But that's something we'regonna have to talk about here. So
he ends up Strangest, ends upserving his time simply because he can't get
bailed out. So he ends upjust being in Rikers for like a year,

(01:18:32):
and then by the time he goesthrough trial, turns out his sentence
is less than what he already servedwaiting to be bailed out, so he's
pretty much done. Sarma is bailedout, but then after trial has to
go back. In the end,the figures are staggering, right, So
she personally wired strangers two million dollarsall told from her accounts. The mother

(01:18:59):
did another there are four hundred thousand. Then the money that he took out
of the company through Sarma. Itbasically all totals up to over six million
dollars. And this is like sevenyear period, six years. That counts
the investors, the eight hundre fiftyyears, eight and or sixty thousand chow
rows money all about. It's oversix million dollars. Yeah, and her,

(01:19:23):
as I mentioned earlier, they actuallyI don't think said what his charges
were. She goes down for grandlarceny and criminal tax fraud. The eight
hundred and forty thousand dollars from theinvestors, that's really what she's being charged
with. For strangest, as theysaid, he's not really done anything as

(01:19:49):
far as her wiring the money tohim and being the con man. They
talk about in the documentary that thingsare still murky in the legal system about
cons drifting like this and manipulating people. But because of the files he took
and some of the the money hedirectly took from the restaurant, somehow that's

(01:20:12):
what gets him. Yes, shemust there must have been charges for defrauding
her employees because she they worked forfree. Yeah, because she never paid
them. Yeah that's what. Butyeah, you're right, he doesn't.
What does he do that's actually illegal? Yeah, because her crimes could have
had up to fifteen years his Ithink one of the lawyers says, even

(01:20:35):
if he got the max for someof the things he was charged with,
it wouldn't have even been five yearsas a max, which no one ever
gets anyway. So yeah, whatwas illegal that? There's two questions here?
Where for you? Where does theline start for Sarma for you giving

(01:21:00):
her the benefit and being the victimto being responsible for some of this?
Do you look at her? Wasshe a criminal in this? Was she
a bad vegan? Or do youput the blame all on strangest and give
her a pass because she was somanipulated? Where do you stand? I

(01:21:20):
don't care that she's giving money tostrangest until it becomes money that isn't hers,
and then seeking investment money from peoplewith no return. At one point,
she takes a check to child rowfor a hundred thousand dollars and says,

(01:21:42):
I'm sorry it's not more, orthis isn't coming, this is coming
too irregularly. I'm sorry about that. And he talks about how much he
appreciates somebody doing that because it neverhappens in his line of work. What
surprises me is that in her lifethere is nobody who can come to her

(01:22:02):
and say, are you looking atthis guy? What's going on here?
It's not her sister, it's nother father, it's not her mother,
it's nobody. She works with.The only person who could have done that,
it's Alec Baldwin. He's the onlyperson introduced. Well, the homeless

(01:22:25):
guy sort of does or tries toright. He goes to the house and
says to are you okay, andand nas Nas the bartender slash grifter Russian
who says, you got to somethinghappening. You need to record him,
yeah, but nobody can sort ofsit her down, almost like in an

(01:22:45):
intervention right and say this stuff isn'ttrue what he's doing. Yeah, the
restaurant, your vegan restaurant that youhave loved and that people have loved,
has been destroyed, has been destroyedby you and this guy. Yeah.
Yeah, it's so it's wild.As you're watching it, you just think,

(01:23:06):
how does this happen to people?And yet we know that it does
all of the time. Yeah,and people, there are people out there
that prey upon others and make itthere. And what's interesting is that in
the modern world, a lot ofit is online. It starts online because

(01:23:28):
you're not seen. You can bewhoever you want to be. You can
convince people. That's why so muchof it is done through email and texting.
And well, this is a lessonfor people. People have got to
spend some time introspecting to figure outwhat are the things that I'm gullible about
where I can be vulnerable. Forexample, we know that people my age

(01:23:53):
are victims all the time of scamartists on the phone through email asking for
social security umbers asking for People aregenerally pretty caring, pretty open and want
to be helpful, right, especiallyif they're accused of making a mistake let's

(01:24:14):
say, well, I want toI want to overcome that. Oh okay,
I shouldn't have done that. Well, that's a problem. Let me
take care of that. How muchmoney do I need to send you to
get this taken care of? Yeah? It happens all the time. And
we think that we are somehow invulnerable. I don't know what we think we
are. But you need to spendsome time looking at yourself saying, oh
boy, I could be taken here. Yeah, and it's a real problem.

(01:24:39):
You need you need people around you. I mean, you need people
around you that you love and trust, who can say to you there's something
off here. Yeah, and youthink the legal system does certainly need to
figure out how to be a littlebit better with you know. I'm not
necessarily saying that Strangest deserve more prisontime or anything like that, but one

(01:25:01):
of his hawking heads in the documentarysays there needed to be some sort of
when he got out and had donehis time, some sort of tag that
goes on him for the rest ofhis life that says dangerous, don't give
him money? Right if he saysthings, there needs to be some sort
of label or or something through financialinstitutions, you know, kind of how

(01:25:25):
there's like a sex offender registry somethingthat says grifter con man, if he
gives you, if he asked formoney, heads up something, because he
really he could just do it again. He's out, He's he will.
I mean, this is what he'sdone. Yeah, this is what he
does. But as I said,this is happening all the time, that
it's not by accident that there's thisflood of fraud documentaries. Yeah, where

(01:25:51):
people want to believe things. Yousaid this earlier. People want to believe.
They want to believe that they're animal, will be immortal, they will
be with their loved ones forever.I said, listen, I can tell
you that you can investigate that possibilitywithout needing to spend hundreds of thousands of

(01:26:14):
dollars to somebody. For instance,reading Stocking White Crows by Jack Crittenden,
uh huh, fascinating, But it'sfascinating and disturbing because what is it about
Psarma that you see that's so unusualthat separates her from the rest of the
human species. There's really nothing.She's just she's a vulnerable, sort of

(01:26:40):
likable person going through her life.Yeah, he did the same thing to
his first wife, which, asyou say, started seemingly as a more
authentic relationship. They did seem tobe a regular couple and didn't get married
the next day. They got marriedLee like a year, but they were

(01:27:01):
in a relationship. He was notgrifting at the beginning. And then he
starts saying, oh I can Ican take advantage here he starts with his
weird stories. Yeah, although wedon't really get the story about how they
began, how that all happened,she does say that right right away he
introduced himself as an ex navy sealthat was wounded, and it was clearly

(01:27:23):
not true. As they say.The father, who was a cop and
had his own sort of abusive past, that's a degenerate gambler and a drunk,
unlike his son, who could haveschooled Shane on how how to walk

(01:27:44):
the line between legal and illegal.Yeah, I think so, and he
I would have loved if they couldhave gotten strangest or the father. Was
the father real or was he oneof Shane's friends who came in and pretended
to be the father, you know, another grifter. I think the father
was probably real because the first wifeseemed to really know him who he was
specifically, and was like, ohno, yeah, the dad and Shane

(01:28:06):
both robbed me, and you knowthis family of degenerate gambler grifters. It's
so odd. There's a strangest ofcourse, declined to be in the documentary,
but I would have loved even justa few minutes to hear of his
perspective on this. I mean,you get some of him from the recordings

(01:28:29):
have hit the calls where he seemslike a total dick. But there's part
where they take the mug shots whenthey're apprehended and they're in the classic black
and white jumpsuit, and one ofthe employees that's a talking head in the
documentary says he looks like the hamburglarin his picture. And I just burst

(01:28:51):
out laughing at that part, becausehe really does. Just look at these
mug shots. Maybe I'll use thatas the episode artwork. But now,
you you spend time looking at truecrime documentaries, I do, how how
would you grade this one? Well, it's not your standard murder true crime

(01:29:15):
doc You know your killers and yourwho done. It's so it's kind of
nice to focus on something a littledifferent, but still very much a crime.
So it's it's nice to have adifferent type of true crime story and
one that's maybe something, maybe alittle more pressing to our lives, you

(01:29:38):
know, something that most of usare likelier to encounter than murder and serial
killers. So yeah, I thinkit's a one. I think it's a
compelling story. Highly recommend watching ittoo. I think it's mostly well done.
I probably give it an A frommy letter grades an A plus,

(01:30:00):
but A and whether it's you know, if it's going to go up against
some of the all time classic truecrime documentaries, I don't know that it's
that type. I don't know ifI would immediately think of it as a
true crime documentary, even though itvery much is. It's more just a
wacky story about sort of nutty people. But well, all the way through

(01:30:25):
it, I'm asking the same questionwith every episode, how is she falling
for this? How is this goingon? Yeah? And I never really
got an answer, And again Icome back to where I was at the
beginning of our conversation. I don'tknow if that's just wrapped up in human

(01:30:48):
behavior and human nature, or ifit's the fault of the documentarians for not
giving us more detail. Yeah,I think it's probably a bit of both.
And I think also it's unfortunate thatwe don't get to hear their conversations
until she starts recording him, whichis when things are already pretty bad.

(01:31:09):
So it would be nice to havesome examples of some of the kind things
he said early on, or whathis charm was, just some examples of
his charm, because we do getsome texts, but they're pretty basic and
like, I love you forever andit's you and me, babe, it's
just gonna be us forever. Doyou want this? Believe? You know?
Stuff like that. We're like,okay, but it's not anything that's

(01:31:31):
you know, so it must havebeen you know, when you meet someone
and you fall in love, theinitial period is very oh, I'm on
cloud nine and you feel great anyway, and so you're in a spot where
you can, I think, betaken advantage of. And he's obviously practiced
at it. He knows some thingsto do. There are probably some key
things, key points that he triesto make and I but there was never

(01:31:56):
a time what I thought she lovesthis guy and boys she happy in this
relationship, nor did anybody around herever say anything like that. So do
you think she wants this forever,this guy and this relationship. Well,

(01:32:17):
then you wonder if it's just aboutpassing the tests because she's sort of a
competitive person and wants to be special. And then go, if I pass
these tests, I will be too. That might be a motivator and then
that has more, that has morepull for me. Yeah, the Leon
piece of it is bizarre. Buthe wondered too, how he how he

(01:32:39):
was strangist? Did he talk withauthority and look right into her eyes and
say, you need to believe thatimmortality is possible. I was out fighting
wars in North Africa and this blackOps mission that was all very high tech
and scary, and let me tellyou, there was this mystic there that

(01:32:59):
who knows what kind of things hesaid. But if you're believing that he's
living that kind of life and hehas a way of convincing you of things,
and you want to be special,and you're heartbroken and you're in love
with this dog, and it alljust kind of comes together again. I
mean, I don't know. Sadreally? Yeah? Pathetic? Sad and

(01:33:28):
pathetic. Well, do you wantto give a letter grade? Okay,
so it kept my attention. Ididn't skip episodes. I watched at all.
I found it fascinating because I foundit baffling. But I have these
questions that were not addressed, andI don't haven't didn't get enough of what

(01:33:50):
I wanted. Yeah, so Igive it a B. Yeah that's fair.
I think the story is wacky andsort of fun enough as a viewer
that it gets the A. Butyou're right, it is. There are
some maddening questions you're left with andyou do want it to be a little
deeper, to get deeper, andmaybe they just couldn't, but but it

(01:34:14):
wanted them to acknowledge that they couldn't. Right, say that, yeah,
acknowledge it. Yeah, we couldn'tget an interview with strangers. He wouldn't
come on, We couldn't. Sarmawas not really forthcoming about the relationship.
Nobody around or really understood the relationships. We couldn't get any information from anybody
around them. The only person wecould have, the only being we could
have talked to was the dog,right, and the dog was not forthcoming

(01:34:38):
either. Right. So now we'releft but just be up front about it.
Yeah, that's fair because it leavesus. It leaves me disturb that
humans could fall for this, Iamong them, could fall for this kind
of thing. But the hope isthat you, as I said earlier,
you have people around you who couldmaybe pull you back into reality, right,

(01:35:00):
but maybe not. Maybe you're that'simportant. Maybe that's part of it.
You know the fact that she wasan introvert, and they said even
before he came along, she wouldgo to work and I was very happy
there, but her nights were spentjust going home and cuddling with Leon.
Yeah, then that was it fora long time. And so she doesn't
really have friends outside of work,and yeah, it's interesting. Yeah,

(01:35:28):
there was nobody in the documentary whosaid I confronted her about this relationship and
she refused to talk to me aboutit or pulled away. There's nobody who
said that. Yeah, that's true, and so maybe some of her friends
let her down a little bit aswell. The Tinder Swindler. You think

(01:35:51):
I should watch that one too,Maybe not for doc doc world, but
just in general. Is it worthwatching? Yeah? Yes, I'm interested
in in fraud because I mean morethan more than murder and savagery. I'm
interested in fraud because it's it's soprevalent, and I think because we have

(01:36:16):
this sort of rash of documentaries comingout now, it must be something that's
on people's minds and maybe more likelyto happen to us. Yeah, and
it's just amazing to me how howbrazen people are in their lies. Elizabeth
Holmes and parapos comes to mind theTender swindler Um. There you can see

(01:36:43):
a little more of two factors involvedbeing overwhelmed by attention from somebody who is
appears to be incredibly wealthy and someonewho is fully attentive to you and really
seems to make want to make youhappy. That's not what I saw.

(01:37:08):
We saw the first part, right, We're strangeness is presenting himself as somebody
who's really rich. But you didn'tsee the second part where he's showering her
with attension, and you know theywould go to the restaurant and he's just
he only has eyes for her andhe's being so solicitous of her, and
what can I do? You know, do I see in the background there's

(01:37:28):
none of that totally different style.Yeah, so yeah, it'd be a
good contrast. Okay, well,I'll take that on board. As a
as a recommendation, I just Ihave a public service announcement for your listeners
in twenty twenty three, they shouldbe on the lookout for a new true

(01:37:49):
crime series coming from Hulu based onthe book Under the Bridge, and an
important one to watch out for becauseone of the contributors, one of the
writers, is none other than myson, Todd Jordan's brother, Todd Crittenden.

(01:38:10):
That's right, and it's about orbased on a true crime one that
I don't know about. But somesort of murder of a of a person,
murder of a person took place undera bridge somewhere in the eighties,
was it? No idea? Thisis one of my responsibilities as a as
a as a parent to watch outfor my children and where I can broadcast

(01:38:33):
the good news about their contributions,as I do with Dark Dark World.
Well, it's much appreciated, Dad. So we've plugged Todd, We've plugged
the book. What else do Ihave coming up? I've got a few
videos coming from the YouTube, acouple of logs. I'm gonna get the
Edman back. He and I'll bedoing something soon. And I've got several

(01:38:58):
cases. As I mentioned, onmy last episode, that were sent into
me by this Nate Bartel's character thatI talked about, who not only sent
me a bunch of cases that heclaims have not really been covered, but
also a plethora of links and informationfor me. He's put the research on
a plate for me, as itwere. So that's helpful. And there're

(01:39:20):
some really interesting ones in there.So Dad, Cactus, Cactus, Jack
Jackson, w J. Thank youfor coming onto podcast. Getting into your
nicknames or do I leave those alone? Oh that's up to you. I'll
save that for another time. Allright, thank you, thank you for

(01:39:40):
coming out, thank you for invitingme. It's enjoyable. Yeah, I
had a good time, enjoyed thedoc and enjoyed the discussion even more.
Listeners, Be safe, be kind, see bo

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