‘Vegan Bernie Madoff’ Offered Plea Deal After Bamboozling Investors, Workers, Feds: DA

GRAMERCY, NY — Sarma Melngailis, Manhattan's "queen of vegan" turned "vegan Bernie Madoff," cried in Brooklyn federal court Monday, even as prosecutors offered her a plea deal that would put her behind bars for one to three years instead of 15 years, her maximum potential sentence for the charge of "grand larceny in the third degree," according to the New York Post.

Melngailis, 44, is accused of stealing $844,000 from investors, withholding $40,000 in paychecks from employees and failing to pay $400,000 in sales taxes to the government at her now-shuttered vegan restaurant, Pure Food and Wine, in the Gramercy Park neighborhood.

If she turns down the Brooklyn District Attorney's plea deal, Melngailis faces up to 15 years in prison. She is currently free on $350,000 bail and is scheduled to appear again in court on Jan. 23.

Her former raw food restaurant at 54 Irving Pl. once served high-end customers such as Chelsea Clinton and Alec Baldwin, according to Vanity Fair. Melngailis was a Wharton graduate and also owned three juice bars called One Lucky Duck, and had a line of her snack products sold in Whole Foods.

Melngailis and her husband, Anthony Strangis, are charged with 24 counts of theft, tax crime charges and labor fraud.

The couple allegedly spent the restaurant's money on watches, casinos and hotels. The two fled New York in May 2015 and were arrested one year later in Sevierville, Tennessee, after police tracked them when Strangis ordered a pizza from Domino's using his real name.

“She’s the vegan Bernie Madoff,” Benjamin Dictor, the attorney for a group of former Pure employees, told The Post.

Photo courtesy of the Sevierville Police Department