Julian Dorey Podcast - #360 - Dodging Harvey Weinstein, Alec Baldwin & INSANE Husband “Hostage Taker” | Sarma Melngailis

Episode Date: November 30, 2025

SPONSORS: 1) AMENTARA: Go to https://www.amentara.com/go/julian and use code JD22 for 22% off your first order! 2) GHOSTBED: Get 25% off already-reduced prices, PLUS you’ll get their Massaging Neck Pillow for free with your mattress purchase. Just go to http://GhostBed.com/julian and use promo code JULIAN at checkout. 3) RIDGE: Take advantage of Ridge’s Biggest Sale of the Year and GET UP TO 47% Off by going to https://www.Ridge.com/JULIAN #Ridgepod PATREON https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey ****TIMESTAMPS in description below**** 0:00 - Intro 1:29 - Sarma meets Matt, The idea for NYC restaurant 15:03 - Sarma Health Conscious, Bulimia and Stress, NYC on 9/11 29:14 - 9/11 Really Derailed the Restaurants, Trump Sues Sarma, Harvey Weinstein 42:20 - Red Flags, Sarma makes staff whole, Why investors trusted Sarma 49:25 - Sarma & Matt’s business arrangement 56:54: Sarma & Alec Baldwin, Sarma’s Dog & “Leon The Professional”, Alec Baldwin & Hilaria 1:07:31 - Sarma’s first heartbreak, “Mr. Fox” enters Sarma’s life 1:14:16 - Mr. Fox’s (aka Shane aka Anthony) Mysterious Background 1:26:09 - First Meeting Shane in person, Sarma’s lack of love, “Protection” 1:35:07 - Anthony was “cult leader,” Anthony’s Sarma nickname, “Bad Vegan” alters interview 1:43:20 - Sarma’s Annoyed w/ Bad Vegan, Sarma gets married to Anthony 1:49:48 - Anthony defrauds Sarma’s mom 1:54:59 - Anthony’s father, Anthony’s gambling problems, Anthony sociopath, $20 million owed 2:03:46 - Anthony sends Sarma to Rome, Sarma’s disassociation, Doc shows Sarma lost 2:10:13 - Anthony takes Sarma run from Feds, Anthony infantilizes Sarma, Sarma cries now 2:17:12 - Sarma & Anthony arrested (STORY), the immediate aftermath 2:26:13 - Case becomes criminal, Rikers, Plea Deal, Judge sees Sarma’s situation 2:33:20 - The Undiscovered Journal, Abuse cut from “Bad Vegan” 2:37:24 - Anthony Scientology-like abuse, The Horrific Ritual Anthony did to Sarma 2:48:34 - Sarma in better place now BUY BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Duck-Tattoo-Memoir/dp/1544548982 FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/ INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ****TIMESTAMPS**** 00:00 - Intro CREDITS: - Host, Editor & Producer: Julian Dorey - COO, Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@UCyLKzv5fKxGmVQg3cMJJzyQ - In-Studio Producer: Joey Deef - https://www.instagram.com/joeydeef/ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 360 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

But what is the real story? Because even I look back and think, oh my God, how did I even believe this guy's bullshit? And something that cults do when they target somebody as they'll learn all about that person, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, hopes, and dreams. Because these people present themselves as perfect, and then over time, I had written a very personal post.

Pretty much laying out there that probably deep down, I just wanted somebody to rescue me. He saw this. And so this guy, Mr. Fox, he somehow convinced me that we were gonna buy this $15 million townhouse around the corner from the restaurant. And I saw the broker was like a puppy dog around Chantanay, sociopaths,

and people will say this all the time. You know, it's like they were under a spell. And I think that was the case with me. There's a quote I put in my book, something about the more stressed and afraid a human or animal gets, the more prone you are to delusional thinking. I mean, the other creepy part of the story

is that he ends up. Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge help, thank you. All right, so we're going to figure out how this is afterwards, but we've been recording for a while and we were going through like all your formative years and relationships and the psychology there and everything, which is very dense and I really appreciate, I was just telling you off camera, but I want to say again on camera, I really, really appreciate you being vulnerable and going through that because it is. important for people to understand the context. And I think you probably, through no fault of your own, also couldn't even comprehend some of the things you were going through when you did because of how young you were or how vulnerable

you were and not having other resources there to talk to about it. So I think, you know, being able to give yourself some grace on that as well is really important. And it sounds like you have. But the crux of your, of the reason you're here is, is because of the whole story that happened to you over the past, you know, decade, 15 years, where, which was the subject of the documentary series, Bad Vegan on Netflix, which, again, we're going to talk about this now during this part of the conversation. But part of that, you didn't like how they, how they deleted out some stuff or didn't portray certain things. Other parts of it, I think, as an outsider, as I was telling you, I think. they did you some justice to be able to see that like, oh, some other stuff was going on here. But you were an award-winning restaurateur in New York City in the Grand Marcy Park area. You also had a business. We'll get to that around the food as well.

What was it called pure food and? The restaurant was called pure food and wine. And then the more accessible brand with the product line that had been in Whole Foods for a while. And the more casual juice bar takeaway side of it was called One Lucky Duck. And that's where that's how the tattoo generated or that's where I, once I got the logo for that brand, I then got the tattoo. Got it. A brand. So this all ends up because of a very bad relationship after a lot, you have a lot of success.

And then it blows up because of what happened there. And I want to get into that psychology. So for people watching this, we'll get the whole story here. And if it is a previous episode, again, I'm deciding this live, like, while we're doing it. So I'm not sure. But I will link back the previous episode if that is what it is so that you can get the context on, like, how everything got here. But you come out of culinary school, you're 27, 28, something like that. And first of all, in college, because I don't know much about that.

I never went to culinary school or anything. Like, when you go there, do you pick a. specific line like to be an expert in or is it more general? There's there's culinary schools that are two-year programs and I wasn't going to do that. I just went to a six-month program in New York City. Back then it was called the French Culinary Institute. I think now it's like the international culinary something something in it's actually located in Soho. So it was a six-month program. It was oriented towards restaurant work and because my mother was a chef and I had learned a lot from her without realizing how much I'd learned from her.

And then, so after that six-month program, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do in that business and ended up working with this guy, Matthew, on his cookbook. And then from there, got involved in his restaurant business. And then we ended up in a personal relationship. And then... How did you meet Matthew? Like, it was, what's funny,

is that he was, if you asked me back then, who was my favorite chef in the city, I would have said Matthew Kenny. And his restaurant, one of his restaurants was my favorite restaurant in the city. And his first book was my favorite book. And I had, I was talking to somebody about another chef's cookbook. And they said, oh, they already hired somebody for that position. But I know somebody else who's looking for somebody. Have you ever heard of Matthew Kenny? And I was like, yeah, my favorite book. That would be amazing. So I went and interviewed with him and got that job right away. Okay.

And how long did it take for that develop into a personal relationship as well? I don't know how long it took exactly. It took quite a while. But, yeah, he was getting divorced. and actually I was sort of I got the job and then I part of I think what made me realize that I should get divorced is that I was noticing that I was attracted to Matthew and that there was like sort of a spark there and it was like oh shit and so that's when I ripped the band-aid off with your first short marriage yeah but we and the reason I did that too is I knew that we were having enough issues and we had started fighting which I couldn't as we talked about it I'm I'm not I can't handle like being in a relationship and fighting a lot. And it was the right thing for that marriage not to work anyway. So I think that my noticing that I, there was like this spark there with somebody else was like, oh, okay, yeah, I got to rip this band-aid off, especially because we were about to put in an offer on an apartment to buy an apartment.

And I'm like, well, that's really going to complicate stuff. And I don't want him to, you know, I don't want us to like get into a situation with a mortgage and all that. And so all of that led to me being like, yeah, okay, I won't, we should get divorced. Right. And so, and then eventually I ended up in a relationship with Matthew and he moved into the apartment where I was living. And some things that should have been clues is just the extent to which I was covering a lot of the bills, even though he had 11 restaurants at the time. 11 restaurants. Yeah, 11 restaurants.

In New York. Yeah. No, not all of them were in New York. He was like a, you know how like there's Bobby Fley and Todd English and all of these TV chefs. He was sort of like a level below that. He didn't have his own TV show, but a lot of people knew who he was. And he was a really, he was like a really good looking guy, very charismatic, a bit like Metro, which I sort of make fun of him a bit for that in my. Like Metrosexual kind of deal?

Yeah. Like that was just weird because that doesn't normally seem like my type. you know he wore really nice clothes and like was very into his personal grooming and right a little bit metro and and he was uh he was a very pretty guy you know what i mean like and he wasn't he was in really good shape but he wasn't like a big masculine dude um so good looking guy very uh charismatic and we sort of had this shared passion for food and restaurants and I got involved in his businesses and as I said when I got into that relationship I had money from my prior work at at Bain Capital and Barrister into my prior career and so I got into it I ended up within the

first couple of years in a lot of debt because his businesses were having a lot of issues and I ended up putting tons of money into it and yeah and that really sucked but what ended up happening is all of his restaurants closed and they were all in a very precarious place and then 9-11 happened just funny because today is 9-11 so when 9-11 happened that you know if your business was in a precarious place that's going to push it over the edge um so his businesses really came unraveled and I had by that point I was involved in some of them financially and then they all ended up closing and but we were still together and we were going to open a new restaurant together with a with a new partner and the whole vegan thing just happened because

this friend of his took us to a raw vegan restaurant one night and we were like what we're going where for what what's raw you know what does that even mean and went in with super low expectations and that experience changed everything so you didn't you had never really been exposed like a vegan lifestyle or anything like that and this is the first time and so maybe matthew also saw that as like a huge business opportunity as like a trend that's happening now kind of i mean that one dinner was just completely changed everything because we're sitting there the food was way better than i thought but it was this small crunchy cafe And we're sitting there eating and this guy, Rob, was, he was, I think, but I think at that time he was in his 50s, but like completely like ripped in really good shape and was talking about how everything changed for him when he started eating only raw vegan food.

And while he's telling us this, I'm eating the food, which is a lot yummy than I thought it was going to be and I feel really good. And I'm also sitting there noticing in this kind of a crunchy place that doesn't have enough AC and it's not really comfortable. and I'm watching like supermodels coming in to get food to go. And all of this stuff is like, I'm noticing it all in my head. And then we're chatting with this, we chatted with this girl at the next table. And she was talking about how she eats this way now exclusively and she feels much better and her life has changed in all these ways. And she's like, yeah, but my friends, they won't come here.

And she was like, I wish somebody would open a cool raw food restaurant. And the moment she said that, it was like, there it is. There it is. Light bulb. Light bulb. And I knew, you know, when somebody says something, you get weird, like, chills, vibes. I knew I sort of had the sense of like, oh, yeah, that's what we're going to do. And so after that dinner, we started to really explore the concept. And at the time, there was one restaurant in Northern California that did high-end bra vegan food. Nobody else was doing it. So we decided that we would try as an experiment for two. weeks to eat only raw vegan food for two weeks and just like see what happens and how we feel and what happened is that we felt amazing and like totally different people and this wasn't I was not somebody that I grew up eating good sort of wholesome food I ate a lot of fruits and vegetables I ate very healthy so it's not like I went from eating crap food all day long to then eating this healthy raw vegan food and noticed a big difference I went from eating pretty healthy

food and already eating a lot of fruits and vegetables in addition to everything else. All right, buckle up because this is one of my favorite strange but true rabbit holes. There's actually a working theory, a legit anthropological theory that Santa Claus may have been inspired by a psychedelic mushroom shaman. I know, I know, you've probably heard this one before, but I got something cool to offer you in combination with this working theory. Those red and white Christmas colors, the flying reindeer, the jolly mood, they all trace back to Amanita Muscaria, the bright red mushroom with white spots, as seen in Mario, Alice in Wonderland,

Christmas art, everywhere. That mushroom isn't just symbolic. At the right dose, Omnita Muscaria can actually give you this warm, jolly, euphoric feeling and enhance your sleep instead of destroying it like alcohol does. It's completely legal in almost every state, totally non-addictive, and people have been using it for thousands of years for relaxation, vivid dreams, calm, and these gentle, feel-good psychoactive effects. This thing is been hiding in plain sight for your entire life. And look, it's no secret that America is struggling with stress, alcohol, benzos, depression, you name it. But people are looking for alternatives that don't wreck their brain or their health. Amanita interacts with the same GABA system as alcohol and

benzos, but in a non-addictive, much gentler way. And the folks leading the charge on bringing this mushroom back into the mainstream are Amantara. They're the largest and most trusted Aminita Muscaria supplier in the United States. With over 45,000 customers, they've worked to do this in an ethical, sustainable, and high-value way. So look, whether Santa was tripping on mushrooms or acting as some ancient shamanic symbol, that part is still debated. But what's not debated is that you can tap into the spirit

of that Christmas mushroom yourself this holiday season, legally, safely, and without destroying your sleep or your next morning. So go to amantara.com slash go slash julian. That link is in my description below. That's amantara.com slash go slash julian and use code JD22 for 22% off your order. Again, that's code JD22 for 22% off your first order. Much love and happy holidays.

Were you always like really health conscious? Because like you're in great shape. It seems like you've always been in great shape. Like were you someone that worked out and thought about this stuff a lot? Like your performance, your mental and physical performance, or at this point, no. I think I was somebody that early on was health conscious, but more from the perspective of not wanting to gain weight. So when I was young, I was always really skinny or I was always very thin when I was young.

And then all of a sudden, I think at the end of high school, I started to, you know, get a little padding and it was like, whoa, what's happening here? And I was stressed out about doing my college applications and I put on, I don't know what, 15, 20 pounds. And nobody would look at me and say I was fat, but I just had put on some weight for the first time. So when I went to college, I did the reverse freshman 15. So I went to college and I started, I think I started in high school, but I started to go to working out a lot and going to the gym, which was much less common back then than it is now.

So I started going to the gym and lifting weights and working out. I had definitely developed, this is also kind of correlates with everything in my background, but in high school I had developed a bit of an eating disorder. Nothing really extreme, but I did sort of the bulimic thing for a while, but also realized that that wasn't really effective and not a good long-term strategy. So you didn't continue to struggle with that? No, anybody who has struggled with it knows it tends to be something that never fully goes away and can sometimes come back during stressful times.

But mostly it was like the end of high school. And I realized, all right, well, this isn't this isn't a good long-term strategy and I got to do something else. So then I swung the other way. And when I went to college, as I said, I did the reverse freshman 15. I lost, I lost, I lost, I think I lost 15 pounds before I went to college and then I lost another 15. So I definitely got, I definitely got too thin in college and I was pretty regimented about, I didn't even drink a lot of freshman year, mostly because I didn't want to drink beer. alcohol calories. And also, I'd kind of been there, done that. But I was pretty regimented about what I was eating and exercising in college and then definitely got a bit too thin. Like, I have

some photos of me in college where I look really skinny. Have you had that? Because that's what I was going to say. At first, you were making it sound like that's just something, oh, well, that was a quick phase or whatever, but exactly what you said after that. Like, usually when you talk with people, there's all different kinds of eating disorders, but specifically with bulimia, that's one that it can come back up a lot to that life. Like, have you struggle with that at other points in your life when you had high stress situations? Yeah, no, for sure.

It would come back once in a while. And I, weirdly enough, I wrote about it in my second cookbook. I have two cookbooks that came out a long time ago, one in 2005, and that I co-authored with Matthew, even though I wrote most of it, or all of it. And then the follow-up came out in 2000. I wrote that one myself and I put a lot of personal stuff. There's a lot more narrative in that cookbook than in most cookbooks because there's, of course, the point of the book is the recipes and the food, but there's more narrative in there

because I'm talking about raw vegan food and the philosophy and why it works and my own personal situation and I wrote a bit in the end of that book about struggling with having had an eating disorder and I also think that it's very common with people who, get into eating really, really healthy food. It's a way of almost addressing that disorder. And what helped the most is I think I wrote about it in that cookbook because shifting my focus to food being about wanting to be healthy versus just wanting to lose weight. And so when it shifts to being about wanting to be healthy and wanting like vitamins and nutrition and taking care of yourself in that way, it changes your relationship with food.

And then it doesn't, it can become less, like, I don't struggle with, I'm not going to have a struggle with eating a box of cookies and wanting to puke it up because like I look at the cookies and I don't want to eat it. I look at crappy food and I don't want to eat it. You're thinking about how you feel after? Yeah, and just knowing what I look at it and I look at it and I see the ingredients and I don't want that. I don't want to ingest that. So, you know, if I were to like binge, I'd binge on like something healthy and just too much of it.

Right. So that helped a lot in my relationship with food. And but yeah, when I was younger, I certainly, you know, I, I would, I. I would eat stuff with, there was that whole, like, no fat craze back then where, like, fat was the enemy. And now, of course, it's all changed. It's always shifting. But back then, I ate healthy mostly because I wanted to stay thin versus I was trying to be as healthy as possible. Right.

Yeah. So that definitely shifted. And so it was during that, just trying to remember the beginning of this loop, it was during that period towards the end of high school where you're focused on getting college and stuff, where you put on weight. and that's where you started having the eating disorder because you wanted to take that off? Yeah, yeah. One of my friends in high school was this guy who was a, he was the, I think he was the featherweight

Taekwondo champion in Massachusetts. And we were hanging out in school once and he like ate a couple of hamburgers or something. And I remember he was like, oh, I shouldn't eat in those. I'll be right back. And then he came, yeah. And then he came back and I was like, what'd you do? And he told me, he threw it up.

And I was like, wait, you can do that. Oh, my God. So it's from a dude that I learned that. And then I was like, oh, interesting. And so, yeah, that's how I started. Okay. You had a lot going on. You had a lot going on in a young age.

Yeah. I mean, the eating disorder thing is definitely very highly correlated with like high performance, having high standards for yourself. A couple other things, too. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely, and it's correlated towards, like, some of the things that might have been psychologically instilled in you with some of the younger relationships that we talked about

where you struggle with self-worth and things like that. Those are some common threads. But so you get this idea to do this restaurant with Matthew, especially after not just sitting in the first, one and realizing that there's a market for this, but then actually trying out that lifestyle for a couple weeks and feeling good and performing well, and you're starting to believe in it and do research in it. But real quick, before that, you said he had these 11 restaurants and they were all going up and smoke at the same time and it kind of got dovetailed off or finished

off, I guess, with 9-11. Why specifically were they all going up? Was he just biting off more I think he could chew too quickly and investing too much money? Yeah. Well, yeah. So I think he had some early successes and then thought he could just kind of keep repeating that. And also just was not, I mean, I didn't see it at the time. But, you know, he would open a new restaurant and spend all kinds of money on useless shit and just didn't really care and would, would. you know buy super expensive chairs and um you know i don't know i mean i wasn't there when he was

building his businesses by the time i stepped in they were already in a in a really bad place and i didn't really see it because i wasn't doing a bunch of due diligence you know i didn't i trusted him so um you know they did sort of one by one closed and he was downsizing and downsizing and then um yeah and then 9-11 sort of really pushed it over the edge. Where were you on 9-11? We lived not that far from it, so I was standing on the street watching when the second plane hit. It was the day, I remember, it was the day after my birthday. And oddly enough, I remember the moment, because Matthew left before I did, and then he called and said, you got to come outside right now. But I remember my, this friend of mine

had given me a whole thing of cupcakes. And I remember I was sitting there obsessing over like wanting to eat the cupcake but not wanting to eat the cupcake. And then that's when 9-11 happened. And so I went outside and we lived on Christopher and Greenwich Street. So it's not that far. Yeah, you're right there. Yeah. So we could see it like right there. And we're standing there with a bunch of other people watching and going, wow, like this is fucked up. That's crazy. A plane flew into the World Trade Center. What a, you know, insane accident to happen. And you're watching that, having all those thoughts and then the next plane comes and goes right through and that like i had goosebumps right like i had goosebumps right now just saying that because it was this fucked up moment of realizing

fuck that was intentional and like what what's going to happen next so we we went back inside so i was not standing there when they fell i was inside inside our apartment we lived in this building on um at six 666 Greenwich Street and we went inside and the TV was on and Matthew still had restaurants open then so he was calling and I remember noticing how like all about business he was acting and being really oddly eerily impressed by that but it was also a little bit unnerving you know it was kind of like all business as opposed to being sort of horrified or afraid or concerned about people's welfare. It was more about like, are we opening?

Are we closing? What are we doing? So, yeah. So we were inside and then, you know, the buildings fell, which was astonishing. And then the thing happened in the Pentagon or whatever. But I remember we went back outside. I wrote this chapter in my book

and described what this was like, but we went back outside for a little bit and just the parade of people covered in dust was totally surreal to see when you were inside though and they fell so you're not staying there watching it but do you i mean that was like an earthquake do you remember that sound like did you hear it but without looking at the tv did you hear it and go what the fuck is that um i remember i i think i i think we were glued to the i was glued to the tv so it's happening live. And I mean, I don't, I can't remember if I registered the sound outside and the sound on

the TV or what. I just think I was kind of panicked because at that moment it felt like, you know, is our building next, you know, like what's going on here or like, are we about to die? I don't know. I just remember being pretty, that was fucked up. But when you went outside and people are running with dust all over them and you're at, can we pull that up on the map, Dave, just get an idea. So you're at the corner of Christopher and Greenwich, you said, right? Yeah, 666 Greenwich. Yeah, I think it's a, I think it's a mile. I've done this. I think it's, it felt a lot closer because it's a straight shot down that street. A mile's not far. Yeah, no, mile in Manhattan especially isn't that far. That's right there. Yeah, that's why I was thinking you're right

by the Christopher Street pad train stop. I know exactly where this is. Get off there all the time. Yeah. So, yeah, and the eerie thing is that, yeah, people were not running. It was like zombies they were just shuffling covered in dust sometimes some people with like one shoe on and you know and they're just like a bunch of zombies and nobody was running because both buildings had already fallen and by that maybe they had run immediately getting away

but yeah a mile up they're all walking and so the dust is not reaching quite that far like the dust storm wasn't getting up to where you were no because we wouldn't have stayed outside but everybody just covered in that dust and just like shuffling like zombies and they were clearly all in a state of shock that was crazy to see did you know people in the towers who died um I didn't know anybody no I didn't know anybody personally one of Matthew's friends was there and I just remember because he came to our house the first anniversary and I remember his stories about what it was like to be outside when people were jumping. I mean, it was just, like, the people that had jumped before the towers fell. Yeah.

But I didn't know anybody personally that was there. Yeah, I can't even, it's still one of those things. It's one of the first things I can really remember, like, the whole day. How old were you? I was eight. so you know like i remember literally every single part of that day and like you can't fully process at that age the gravity of what this is but you know you know you're like whoa this is and we knew we knew people in those towers we there were a couple people from around where i'm from in south

jersey and families that that we knew that my parents were friends with where nick brandy was one of them he was a victim there was another one whose name is escaping me right now but he was a Mantua guy and my mom was friends with the family it's like you know that part hit home and it's just so insane that like this place right here that we're looking at on the wallpaper obviously like this is a newer version of skyline that has freedom tower but that this could get invaded and like you could have a couple skyscrapers there and then a hundred and two minutes later they're gone you know but to I've watched some many documentaries over the years just as like a memory of like this formative part of my childhood

that also represented this moment where the chapter of the book of the world changed, right? Like it flipped from the Ridenheim 90s immediately into this new kind of dark chapter that we still have pieces of playing out very much today that have changed the world and had reverberating effects. But, you know, to put in perspective just the human stories like you speak of, on that day and the impossible decisions some people had to make you know they said they're working at their desk at 846 the building gets hit and by 859 they have to make a decision about well I'm going to die do I want to die now or wait to burn another 10 minutes now I think I'll die now and jump instead and it's just like oh it's insane that that that can happen and then it's insane that

things like that still happen around the world. You know, that one, it's like a commercial airliner flying into a building is pretty nuts, but, you know, you see these places where buildings just blow up every day and, you know, people die these horrific deaths and I don't know, there's just something about it, like living in the 21st century humanity with internet that can connect us all and the ability to like, you know, see all different perspectives, the fact that those kinds of things still happen with such commonality in the world just doesn't really register for me sometimes, you know? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to confront people that would, that are fine with initiating those

types of acts, you know? I mean, it fits right into the conversation about sociopathy and certain types of personalities where they view other human beings as piece, you know, player chess pieces. That's exactly right. Yeah. And, like, just doesn't, there's no, the suffering other people doesn't register at all in any way, other than in a sort of a sickeningly gratifying way, too. I mean, in terms of having power over other people and having power over other people's lives, I think they get a rise out of that. Yeah, there's a real sickness in that for sure. And it exists more than we would be comfortable with admitting. Right. And I think people don't want to, they don't want to acknowledge that that, that there are more. of those people out there than people realized. For sure.

Yeah. For sure. You can't perform it your best if your body isn't recovering at night. And the truth is, most mattresses just don't give you the support you need. That's why GhostBed developed their exclusive ProCore technology. It's designed to provide extra support where your body is the heaviest, the hips in the back, so you stay in better alignment without even thinking about it. The result, less tossing and turning, less back pain, and more of the deep sleep that fuels your recovery.

It's the ultimate sleep hack. Let your mattress do the work so you can focus on everything else. Every ghost bed mattress is made with premium materials and proven cooling technology to keep you comfortable all night. They're also built to last, backed by a 20 to 25 year warranty. You'll get a 101 night sleep trial to make sure it's the right fit, plus fast and free shipping, and most orders arrive in two to five days. Also, unlike other brands, ghost bed mattresses cost up to 50% less than comparable brands, so you're not overpaying for quality.

Plus, right now you can also get 25% off already reduced prices, and Ghostbed is even going to throw in a massaging neck pillow for free with your mattress purchase. Just go to ghostbed.com slash Julian. That link is in my description below and use promo code Julian at checkout. That's ghostbed.com slash Julian, link in my description below, promo code Julian to get 25% off already reduced prices. Upgrade your sleep with ghost bed, the makers of the coolest beds in the world. Some exclusions apply, see site for details. But that was where it ties in with your story. In addition to having to like see all that and like even try to register that, you know, you're in this relationship with Matthew. He had all

these restaurants. He was making dumb decisions. They were falling on hard times. And you said September 11th kind of took out what was left to them. So, you know, I don't need like an exact timeline. But are we talking like within a few months of September 11th, basically all of his restaurants are closed? No, it took longer. I think it was more than a year. Because I remember they were still open on my 30th birthday, which I think was the following year, right? That would have been 02. 23 years ago, yeah. Yeah.

So, because I remember my 30th birthday was at, I think, what was potentially his last remaining restaurant, which I had put a bunch of money into. Oh, you yourself, put money into it? Yeah, that's why I ended up in a whole bunch of debt because I put money into his restaurants. I paid one of the ways that I ended up putting a lot of money into his restaurants is that when his company wasn't able to make payroll,

I was the one cashing employee checks. so I spent over $100,000 in the end cashing the checks of his employees all the while just like that's the thing about me is you know like I'm going to help I'm all in I'm thinking that Matthew and I are in this together and I want to help and I want his employees you know I want the employees to get paid

and that one restaurant I was very involved in so I felt like some you know I worked with those people so I was cashing everybody's checks Which, you know, then, oddly enough, years later, when this whole thing that's the subject of bad vegan happens, I'm accused of being this horrible person that didn't pay her employees when I'm not. I'm the opposite. So I was, that was one of the ways in which I funneled all this money into his company. I also was, had paid rent for some of the restaurant rent. That's a lot of money. Oh, it's a lot of money.

I mean, that's how I got into so much debt. And oddly enough, so who was his landlord in that restaurant space, just if you could guess who his landlord was in that restaurant space where that final last restaurant was, who then subsequently sued Matthew and also sued me because I had paid the rent. Is he sitting in the Oval Office right now? Yep. Come on! Yeah, this woman Tina Brown one said, I think she's, I think she's, Wait, Tina Brown, like the Vanity Fair lady? Yeah, she said, you're nobody in this city

unless you've been sued by Donald Trump. And I'm like, I've been sued by Donald Trump. I remember. I've really made it. I've made it. A suitor, we worked it out. Nice lady. Yeah.

It's funny because I almost went to, I almost went to a meeting with him and this other guy. So I almost would be able to add to the story by saying I was in his office. and I'm glad that didn't happen because it's just weird but I was going to go to a meeting where to discuss that whole situation

but his financier Jeffrey Epstein was that the email invite Jeffrey Epstein was not involved but another guy named Jeffrey was involved Oh God, all right I just can't shit out of me over it I was like a joke but god damn I know I had some weird near misses

Like I had a weird interaction with Harvey Weinstein too That was like a All right All right. Let's go. Let's go back to that near miss. How did that happen? That was just I passed him. This was when I left, I split up with Matthew. I'm running pure food and wine, the restaurant and one lucky duck on my own. And I'm walking down 14th Street. For some reason, I was walking west and sort of towards the meatpacking area. And I saw him on the street. I knew who he was, you know, Harvey Weinstein of Miramack. And I just remember thinking it was so weird because he wasn't in front of a...

Now I understand there's one of those sort of private club-type places that was there, but he wasn't in front of like a loud, busy restaurant. Yeah. But he was standing on the street, talking on his cell phone. And I remember as I was approaching, I was like, that's Harvey Weinstein. And I think I'd seen him at some parties and events, and I saw him once subsequently at a book party. But as I was walking towards him, he saw me. he saw me and he, like, put the phone down and said, hi.

And of course, I'm like, it's Harvey Weinstein. I said, hi. So we started to have a conversation. And he said, do you, are you an actress? It's so gross. He said, are you an actress? And I said, randomly. And he said, do you want to be?

Oh, come on. Yeah. And I said, no. Oh, my God. What a sick. I mean, we know he's a sick fuck. I mean, but we didn't know any of this back then. I mean, none of that was nobody knew any of it back then.

And I just, you know, and meanwhile, I felt awkward because whoever he was talking to on the phone was like, hangy is sitting there in his hand. He didn't, he kind of said, hold on. So, and at that point, I would give my card to anybody, but because my business card had the restaurant on it and whatnot. I thought you meant credit card for a minute. I was like, oh, my God. I think he asked, like, what do I do or something like that? And I think I said, you know, I have a restaurant. I have a business.

And I don't know if he asked me or whatever. Either way, I gave him my card. But my card said, it didn't have my phone number on it. It had the restaurant number on it. So I never, I would give my, basically I would give my card to anybody who asked. It was like handing somebody an advertisement for my business. But it said on there, you know, Pure Food Wine and One Lucky Duck and founder and CEO. So he probably looked at that and was like,

oh, founder and CEO, she's not, like, what am I going to do? She's not in need. Right, exactly. However, when all of that stuff then years later came out, it hit me hard because I remember thinking that, like, say he'd reached out to me and, I mean, he wouldn't have known, but I, at the time, I did, I was always in this position of wanting the right partners and capital to expand in the way of business. So say theoretically he had reached out to me and said, maybe I'll invest in your business or something like that and come have this meeting with me in my hotel or come meet me in the lobby of such and such a hotel and then some female brings you upstairs.

Anyway, it just knowing that I could have been in that situation and knowing probably what the outcome would be, which is that you get in that situation and then you freeze and like think that suddenly it's. your fault and you shouldn't have come up there and what do you do and then and then yeah i mean i can see how the ones who got into that situation with him i can see how that happened 100% yeah and it felt kind of i just felt so much compassion for them because me and my background i was not the sort of this assertive type with boundaries where had i gone up to his room first of all would have either refused to do that or the moment he did something creepy or like whipped it out or did was I would have been like no I'm leaving you know instead you just you like freeze in the moment and don't know what to do and then that then allows the opportunity for the bad

shit to happen and then not suddenly you're like well I don't want to make them mad and that's how that stuff happens yeah you all and in in this case like you know who the guy is too good so you And, you know, there's fear because he's like a powerful guy. And, I mean, at least, you know, for me, it probably might have been different because what's he going to do to me? You know, it's not, I'm not trying to make it as an actress. So he wouldn't have had the same type of, I wouldn't have necessarily been as afraid of him. But that's still crazy that you are someone he doesn't know.

You're just a normal, attractive lady walking on the street. And he says, are you an actress? Like, like he goes, he's that. comfortable in that type of... It might have registered that he knew that I recognized him. You know what I mean? Maybe. Because I looked at him and I, you know, he probably could tell that I knew that he was Harvey Weinstein.

Right? Because he's not a good looking dude. No. Right? So if I looked at him and had that moment of recognition in my face. And there was like hardly anybody around. So it's not strange that he noticed me walking down the street. street because I don't know what time it was but I just remember it was it was definitely dark and there weren't a whole lot of other people around but yeah I just years later I remember thinking

like that's wild yeah well we got into this because you were paying you ended up getting sued by Donald Trump because you're trying to pay down the rent of your boyfriend who's throwing these restaurants technically like down the tubes and then dragging you into it so you would said this towards the very end of before we took a break but you know he Matthew was the first guy that you can consciously look at from a financial situation at least and like pulling you in onto his own actual problems as a relationship this was probably the first time you encountered like a full blown sociopath in that way I might have something to say about some of the high school relationships but leaving that aside yeah like this dragged into affecting your net worth in an

extremely negative way affecting your boundaries in every possible way and you trying to help someone and please them in a way that was completely detrimental yeah to your life yeah and and the fact that he would um you know any normal healthy person would never take all their girlfriend's money and all her savings and allow herself to get put in massive amounts of debt, you know, nobody would do that. But he did, so. Now, how long were you in that relationship, approximately? Four years in total. It's easier for me to be able to say these things without worry that he might make some kind of a bullshit claim or whatever, because since then, he's i mean all of these people will never change and they'll keep doing what they do and so after

he and i broke up he continued to do what he did and has met you know fucked over so many other people subsequently and then there are a couple of big articles one in the new york time one in the l.a times and one in the new york times that really expose a lot of stuff he's done subsequently so you know it's not like he could argue that i'm what i'm saying right isn't true or whatever i understand that abundantly clear that he's not a good dude but for so it's when you're putting the money into his failing restaurants this is in the period right after 9-11 i guess like leading up to it a little bit so you've been dating him for a couple years what was like the the and i'm going to come back to the initial idea of the vegan restaurant a minute but what was kind of the straw where you finally

realize, oh, I got to get away from this guy. The problem is that when, you know, you get entangled with somebody like that financially, mm-hmm. Now it's much harder to get out. Yep. Right? So when we started having, when he started treating me a lot worse, right? Because these people will present themselves as perfect and in all the ways that you

you would want them to be, and then over time, you know, he would start to, I remember he, so some of the red flags that I now can see quite clearly, but I didn't, they didn't register as red flags at the time, is that I remember hearing him talk to his ex-wife on the phone and how cruel and callous he was. And I remember, even on 9-11, I remember he was, in the aftermath of 9-11, he was kind of a dick and really harsh about everything, as opposed to being compassionate about the fact that everybody's like, freak the fuck out. And I remember, I don't know, well, you probably don't remember because you were very young, but there was this whole follow-on like anthrax scare. And everybody was like on edge. And so people were afraid to be at work.

And he just was very, like, cold, all business about it. And I remember that registering as a bit like, doesn't he care about people? I don't remember the context, but I remember one time him speaking to one of his managers who was older than him too, older, experienced, nice guy, and being really just condescending and rude. So there were a lot of, but I remember thinking, especially the way he spoke to his ex-wife, like, God, that's horrible. I'm like, well, he'd never speak to me that way.

And then, of course, down the road, he did become that kind of an asshole. But, and I started to resent him more and more for the financial stuff. And also because you would think that having put me in a whole bunch of debt, he's not going to go, like, spend money recklessly and take, you know, expensive taxi rides instead of the subway. Or, like, I mean, I remember one time I think, you know, or like, have an expensive gym membership. It's like he couldn't hand. He had to live a certain lifestyle

and have nice clothes and fancy things. And so then I'm getting really resentful of the fact that he is still, you know, I'm racking up more and more credit card debt and he's like wearing cashmere socks. Like what the fuck? And his employees, when the restaurant finally did close in the end,

and I'm like fully drained, I'd already spent over 100 grand covering their payroll and paychecks, but when it closed in the end, and now I'm in debt too, a bunch of his employees were still out that money that they weren't paid. And I remember, I don't know how much time had passed, but certainly more than a year, and pure food and wine was open, and I got one of those checks from paying capital, like a deal that was done years ago that I'd co-invested in, probably a couple things. thousand dollars not a lot of money came back and i got a check paper check um i don't know how much

money it was maybe it was like 20 grand or something it was it was some little random deal and so i just got this unexpected money and i went and track down some of his former employees and paid them what they were owed and i didn't have to do that and they were completely surprised and glad and it made me feel good because that even though it was his businesses I was involved and it weighed on me as if it was my responsibility another thing that is common with people like me and that can get exploited is I will take things on as my responsibility even if it's not all feel like to my responsibility so but what was so telling is that when I told him like oh hey I went and found Gustavo and you know I gave him 500 bucks and then I found so and so and he was like why

what the fuck did you do that for? There were a rube, let them go. And I'm like, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, so there were just, there were like a bigillion red flags. But by that time, you know, like when you're, when you're in debt and you're with somebody, you can't afford to break up and one of you move out.

So it, it, it, but eventually we did split up. So you guys. Am I understanding is correctly, you guys started pure food and wine together and then split up and you took ownership, but you bought them out? Yeah, it's a bit strange. So there was this outside dude who had basically paid for the restaurant and we were just taking a salary. And so when we split up, Matthew just exited and that guy was kind of in charge. And so it was his call who was going to stay. Was that the guy in the documentary?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so one way or another, like there was no way I would ever leave that business. I mean, I was very attached to it. And I think it was abundantly clear that the people that worked there were very attached to me.

And so even though Matt... Why were they very attached to you? Because I'm the one that gives a shit. Like I'm the one that takes care of them. Matthew was a dick. He was kind of a dick to a lot of, they didn't like him. You know, they, yeah, they didn't like him. And so, and I think this guy, Jeffrey, saw, too, that I was the more responsible party.

And so even though Matthew was the one who had a reputation as a chef, you know, the restaurant's already established. So one way or another, Matthew left and I stayed. So at least, even though I ended up in a bunch of personal debt from that relationship that I never got out. out of. I felt like, well, you know, I found my perp through this relationship. I ended up stumbling upon this whole raw vegan concept. And then that led me to buy purpose. And now, you know, I have this restaurant. And the one lucky duck brand I'd started on my own. So that was really mine. That part was my part of the business. I started that. A friend of mine put a little bit of money in. And I started that e-commerce website and the brand and all that.

Yeah, that was really mine. Anyway, and so Matthew left and I stayed. So I felt like even though I went through that disturbing relationship, at least it led me to my purpose. And now I'm growing this business and I have, you know, my future ahead of me and all that. It seems like, and we'll get to other parts as it moves along here where this will tie in as well. but it seems like people along the way you've never had trouble getting people to invest money in you or invest in the business. Why do you think so many people have done that for you over the years?

Like what made them believe in you that much? Like just the fact that you were so, you personally believed in this concept so much? Or was it also or more they just really liked you as a person? I think that it's funny when people say that because asking for money or asking for investment is like not makes me queasy. But I think that a lot of successful investors will say that they're investing in the people, right? And so it's the look at the numbers, but it's more about is the founder, you know, are they living this? Are they passionate? Are they sincere? And that's the kind of thing that you can tell and you get a sense for. And I think that, you know, for all my insecurities and, you know, lack of

boundaries and my personal relationships and whatnot, I really believed in that business, still do. And it meant everything to me and it was my priority. Yeah. So you're doing this for a while and you had said a few minutes ago during this whole time you still are carrying that debt from the old days so you could never fully get out of that hole even despite of the I never got out of that debt um uh you know the restaurant always did really well but the one time that we struggled was the 2008 there was like a whole economic downturn in 2008 and a lot of restaurants in New York got taken out a lot of really especially high-end restaurants got taken out. And, you know, so, like, that would be a time where I went for months at a time

without paying myself any salary. So I just could never get out of that debt that I owed because it was a lot. It was overwhelming. And, and, yeah, and then also over time, you know, And I was putting whatever extra cash flow the business was generating, I would be putting into the one lucky duck and expanding. And then later on, we had a lot of money in the bank. I opened a production facility in Brooklyn. So I was kind of always reinvesting money into the business as opposed to taking more out of it for myself. And I just always had that long-term vision that, well, my personal debt sucks, but it's not a big deal. because eventually I had such big visions for the business

that I just was putting money back into the business and I thought eventually that'll get taken care of down the road. Yeah, it'll just suddenly like hockey stick or something like that. The wallet that I used to have was a clunky thing. It was about yay thick and it took up my entire side pocket no matter what pants I was wearing, whether that was loose sweatpants or jeans. Pulling it out of there was a pain in the ass and it wasn't exactly sleek or cool to say the least.

But now I got the Ridge wallet, and this thing is awesome. You probably already know Ridge for their unique, slim, modern wallets. Chances are some of your friends already have a Ridge wallet, and they slide that thing right in and out, no problem. Pause. But now, Ridge has stepped it up yet another level with their new game-changing Ridge 2.0 wallet. Everything's better on the 2.0.

It's 10% lighter. They made it more modular with improved cash straps, money clips, and air tag attachments, and the newest surface design has tonal logos and matching plated cash straps. Ridge is made with premium materials like aluminum, titanium, and carbon fiber. And on that last one, luckily, this isn't a submarine. If you know, you know. Your Ridge 2.0 can hold up to 12 cards plus cash,

and it comes in over 50 colors and styles to choose from. Furthermore, Ridge wallets have a new industry-leading built-for-life warranty. So even if your wallet is lost or stolen, they've got you covered. For a limited time, Ridge is having their Black Friday sale. So head to R-I-D-G-E.com. to get up to 47% off your order. That link is in my description below. This is by far the biggest discount Ridge has given all year long.

So once again, use that link in my description to head on over to ridge.com and get up to 47% off your order with their biggest sale of the year. After you purchase, Ridge is going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them I sent you. Snap up Ancestry DNA's lowest price ever in our incredible cyber sale.

With 50% off ancestry DNA kits, it's the perfect time to help a loved one unwrap the past and with their latest update they'll discover their family origins like never before with even more precise regions and new and exclusive features their best gift our lowest price 50% off ancestry DNA only until December 2nd visit ancestry.ca for more details terms apply what are your relationships like during this time period pre anthony and post matthew uh that's when i met that guy tobin Oh, right. And I was with him for four years.

Okay. Yeah. So how does, how did Anthony first come into your life? So I met him because he had been tweeting with Alec Baldwin, and Alec Baldwin and I had had a very brief little thing. I would call it a friendship. Friendship with benefits? No, no, I did not. I did not sleep with Alec Baldwin.

It's just, you know. And there's a whole chapter about, there's a whole chapter about him and that relationship in my book. You want to take a little quick detour on that? I mean, it's Alec Baldwin we're talking about here. Yeah, well, it's weird because of what's happening now

in his whole situation, but I think last week there was this very charming article about him in his current relationship and situation and highlighting his house in the Hamptons, which is weird because I was at that house and like, I remember that and that.

And I did go to his house in the Hamptons once and stayed overnight in a separate room. But he and I, why are you laughing? You want to play that sound effect, Dief? No, don't do it. But yes, anyway, Alec, I thought was significantly older than me. I think he is 16 years older than me. and even though I felt very this wasn't something that really made sense for me

and I was trying to encourage him to I thought he should get a dog and so that's how I ended up getting Leon my dog is because I would try to think he should get a dog he really wanted to get married and I think he wanted to have more kids of course now he's got like a thousand kids He's got a few. And I definitely didn't want kids, so it's like, all right, well, you shouldn't be in a relationship.

Like, we shouldn't go down that road because I don't want kids. Anyways, so he just seemed, it seemed to me like he should get a dog because maybe that would help him find a relationship or help him feel better. And he's got lots of money, so it was easy for him to take care of. He's got this big house in the Hamptons with a yard. It seemed obvious to me. Like, he's a guy alone. with this big house in the hamptons he should have a dog and he should get a rescue dog so i kept sending him all these images of dogs that i would find and then i stumbled across this one um

image which was leon and or his name was his rescue shelter name was quinn and i got weirdly obsessed with i was like this is the dog you got to get this dog and he he never adopted a dog in that way and I got weirdly obsessed with that image and something about that dog this is the only time I've ever I'd ever felt this way but in some way that I couldn't comprehend or didn't know how to articulate what was happening

I felt compelled to get this dog like I got very weirdly obsessed with them and it never occurred to me that I should get a dog it made no sense for me to get a dog you'd never had one before no my mother and my stepfather had dogs when I was younger but I never had my own dog. And I was working all the time.

I was really busy. I was working all the time. People were always telling me, oh, you should take a vacation. You should take better care of yourself. I was overworked and exhausted. And I was, at that time, I had moved my apartment

and the one lucky duck offices into the same location. So it just would be a weird context in which to bring a dog. But for whatever reason, I was like I couldn't help it. There was some sort of weird force. And so I eventually went to go

to Brooklyn where he was at the shelter to go see him and I it was just bizarre it was like I had to get him there's and it wasn't you can't explain it I can't I don't know and I was crying like no other dog if no I if if somebody else had adopted him I would have been devastated but I wouldn't have gotten another dog getting a dog did not make sense but for some reason I had to get this dog so but I'm the reason I'm telling the story is because it's just another thing that this guy, Mr. Fox, later exploited, kind of that I, that I had that connection with my dog, who I then named Leon, and that I felt like there was something, some, something that got, as if, you know, in some way, we were like, meant for each other, you know?

Why did you name him, Leon, change his name? Well, I was advised by the trainer at the shelter that it's good to change their name, like new new space new life new name um but i did consider leaving his name quinn i kept it as a middle name but he um do you ever see the movie the professional i knew it i knew it i knew it and i'm like are you just waiting to like add that into the psychoanalysis cocktail i knew it yeah that movie is my favorite movie that's your favorite movie yep yeah leon's protecting the vulnerable young girl. Yep.

I knew it. I fucking knew it. My favorite movie. And so I named him Leon. Of course, I always wanted to get a cat named Matilda, but, um, so yeah, he was, I named him, his official full name was Leon, Quinn, Trujillo, Sterling, Brit. Trujillo was for Rob Trujillo from Metallica, who I, like, loved him, had such a thing for him.

And, um, yeah, that was his full name. Wow. Yeah. So, yeah, definitely, that's another little rabbit hole to go down. But that movie, the first time I watched it, I think I cried for like an hour afterwards. When did you watch it? I was in Boston working for Bain Capital, and I'd gone to the local blockbuster. Yeah.

Oh, I remember Blockbusters. Yeah, okay. I was little, but, yeah. So the videotape. And so, yeah, I mean, I forget what year it came out, but it must have been a couple years after that. I think it was 94, so you watched it a couple years later or something like that. Yeah, a few years later. And you cried for an hour after watching it.

I just remember crying a lot afterwards. Did you think about why? At that time, no. I wasn't thinking about why in particular. So why now? So why now? Like, do you know now, why affected you so much? I'm sure it's just having identified with the Matilda character.

And I think also, you know, it's very brief, but I think in the beginning it's clear that she sort of doesn't fit in with her family. And then, you know, what happens happens in the beginning of that movie. And then, yeah, and then he's, of course, like, protecting her. Wow. All right, so you wanted Alec Baldwin to get the dog, but then you get the dog, you named Leon, and you didn't date Alec Baldwin? No, we sort of slid into the friendship zone.

But he would have had to, like, be meeting hilarious at that point, right? He met her after, so he met her at my restaurant. You did it. No, I didn't. Everybody thought that I did, especially when the whole thing about her Spanish accent came out. People thought that, like, somehow I'm behind this. Yeah, Sarma's like, that's bad for me. my brand. I don't know anything about it. Yeah, no. So he came to the restaurant and I wasn't there

that night. He called me and I was sitting on the couch at home. And I always lived right near the restaurant. But I had like come home, put on PJs, was like watching TV and completely exhausted and chatted with him on the phone a bit and then hung up. And I didn't, I don't think I knew if he was staying or what. I don't know. But one way or another, I remember my, my friend Justin, who had been my dog trainer, Walker at the time, but we were also friends. He texted me and was like, hey, Alec is here. And I was like, I know, I know he called me. And then he was like, Alex's talking to some hot brunette.

And I'm like, I don't need to, who cares? I don't tell me that. Anyway, it turns out that was Alaria. But I was not there, had nothing to do with it. Never met her before that. Didn't know her. I had nothing to do with setting them up. You weren't like a little jealous, like a little?

Oh, no. it definitely I wasn't jealous but the fact that I had thought that he was too old for me and I'm and there was a 16 year age gap and then he ends up with her and she's so much younger than me it definitely I mean I was I was at an age where you start to feel very vulnerable about your age as a female and so it definitely made me feel weird but I didn't I wasn't jealous like oh I want to be with him because I didn't you know and I generally you know there was something about Alec where you said something about this before there's something about Alec about when I met him we became very quickly weirdly close in this way you ever meet somebody where you feel weirdly

like you already knew them oh yeah like in a past life if that's a thing yeah so that's happened to me a number of times that I felt that way with him because I know I felt incredibly comfortable around him like just fully at ease like I went to his house in the Hamptons and it was like oh this is I just felt very relaxed and I felt um and I cared for him very deeply like I felt like I loved him but in this way where I want him to be happy and you know therefore I wanted him to be happy I wanted him to get a dog I wanted him to be happy and so when he met Alaria I was happy for him um yeah I was happy for him because I was happy for him because I was happy for him because because I, you know, I know that he wanted to be in a relationship and wanted to have more kids. But it definitely, I mean, just because, of course, I'm going to feel a little bit funny about it. And I, so, and then I was in that strange limbo time

because I was heartbroken because Tobin had left me and I'm, I never, I was really heartbroken over that. Why did Tobin leave you? Well, I knew that there's something about me that I end up in relationships that have a built-in expiration date. And are you like keeping a list? No, it's just there's been, it's been weird. There's been about 15 times today. I'm not exaggerating where I've read your mind on exactly the term that's going to come out.

Yeah. Well, it's, now I've realized it's common with people with certain personality characteristics of mine. you end up attracted to relationships that, you know, people that aren't necessarily available or a relationship that has, there's no, you know it's not going to last long term. And because Tobin was so much younger than me, when we first got together, I tried to break up with him early on basically being like, look, this is never going to work, you're going to want to be with somebody younger, like, I'm going to end up heartbroken because I really, really, really, really liked him. And he was like, well, but if we want to hang out, why wouldn't we

just hang out? And I was like, well, okay. I think he said, like, you know, a meteor could hit the earth or one of us could get by a bus. Like, if we just want to hang out, why wouldn't we hang out? And I was like, okay. And then that turned into a four-year relationship. But all the while, And the reason it was okay, certainly because, again, I didn't want to have kids. So I know aspirations or goal of getting married. It's not like I got into that relationship thinking, like, Tobin and I are going to get married. I think I knew that inevitably he was going to want to move on. Not that if it had worked out, maybe we could have stayed together.

I mean, certainly there are relationships like that that work out. But it's very unusual, especially when the female is that much older. And he's young. Like he hadn't lived his life yet. Right? So he shouldn't really theoretically be like tied down with me necessarily. So we didn't have any explosive end to the relationship. And by that time, there were a couple of times where I'd gotten really frustrated with him and kind of thought like, yeah, we should break up. And I think I had a sense that the end was coming. So, but yet I couldn't, I couldn't be the one to break up with him. I didn't want to. It's like I loved him and it would have hurt too much. And I I mean, so eventually he was the one who was like, yeah, I think I should move out. And it wasn't a, it was like this slow agonizing breakup because it just happened at like this glacial pace that was gut wrenching.

So first he moved out into his own place, which made total sense. Because once I combined the one lucky duck office with my home space, now. Now, it was a bit awkward for him because my people that worked for me were around during the week and I think for him too, we probably just felt, I think he felt like he needed to be more on his own. I think he was conscious of the fact that I never had an issue with the fact that I'm paying the rent. I never asked him for any money.

I'm paying the rent and I'm paying the bills and he had a job and whatnot, but that was fine. I would have paid all those expenses anyway, whether he lived there or not. So it wasn't like I resented him. I didn't think he was taking advantage of me that way. You didn't think he was freeloading. No, not at all. But I think as a dude, and I think he sort of felt like it was maybe a bit emasculating or I don't know.

But anyway, he went and got in an apartment, a really shitty tiny room in someplace in Brooklyn. And then eventually he ended up moving back to Colorado. with, he was in a band and they all moved back to Colorado, which was devastating for me, too, because his, one of the guys, I was really friendly with all of his friends, too, and one of the guys that was in his band was Jonathan, who was a manager at my restaurant. So when I met Tobin, it was kind of in the context of him working in the juice bar and takeaway at my place, so I hired him there, but once we started a relationship, it was like, yeah, we can't, you can't work for me, too. so we agreed that he would find a job somewhere else

and I hired his friend Jonathan instead who's great and Jonathan was a great manager and great person and so when he and his band left it was like I not only lost him but his friends do so and I was heartbroken for the first time in my life because I'd never really been heartbroken you'd never been heartbroken before

I had been little heartbroken like in high school and stuff like that like when you have a crush in a guy and kind of but I felt really heartbroken over Tobin because he was just such a good person he was such a good dude and

and so I was still in pain over that and over a long period of time when that guy Mr. Fox came in my life and I had been on Twitter I was on Twitter very early

so like my now X my, I'm at Sarma, so I got like just my first name because I was on there very early and Alec joined Twitter and was new there and so he would interact with me and followed me and I would interact with him a little bit here and there and I think he had met, I don't know if he had met Alaria by then or he had just met Alaria at that time. So we weren't really in regular contact but we sort of bantered back and forth on Twitter and he was friend there was some guy on twitter that he followed and followed they followed each other on Twitter and so somehow I think I just thought that he must know him but that guy is the guy

that turned out to be who I call Mr. Fox and so I he started to engage with me on Twitter and was funny and so we followed each other and then it ends up in the DMs and then it all explodes. And so how does he, did he, I forget, I get it mixed up, did he introduce himself as Anthony once you knew him or was it Shane? He said his name was Shane Fox. Okay. That's why I called him Mr. Fox. Right. So it's Shane Fox, but his real name was Anthony Sturgis, right? Anthony Strangess. Sorry. I don't know why that made me laugh. Anthony Stranges, but yeah, so his real name was that. And what did he say he was? So you're just texting with. the mirror in the DMs.

Yeah. What is he? He's very mysterious about his identity. And looking back, it's all of it. The whole story is like humiliating looking back. Because even I look back and think, oh my God. Like, how did I even believe this guy's bullshit? But, again, it's just my wiring.

I'm not, I'm not by nature skeptical and suspicious of everybody. So it's not like it occurs to me to think that this guy is lying and full of shit because in my brain I'm thinking, why would somebody lie? Why would they do that? So he's very mysterious about his identity and there was something very intriguing about him. And he's, of course, doing all of this deliberately. One thing that I talked about on another podcast recently with Mark Vesente, who understands all this psychology very well. And something that cults do when they target somebody to bring in is they'll learn all about that person and they'll figure out, okay, what are, what are this person's weaknesses, vulnerabilities, hopes and dreams? And this guy, Mr. Fox, he was asking me a lot of questions. I'm giving him a lot of information, not knowing that's what, that he's kind of data mining.

But on top of that, I was always a very open book, and I had written this very, I had a blog on my, the website for One Lucky Doc had like a SARMA page, and there was a lot of personal stuff on there. and I had written blog posts about, you know, my experiences with eating raw vegan and things that related to food and health and wellness. But I also started to get really personal in there. And I had written this one very long blog post that it's almost embarrassing that I put it up there. But I recently put it on my substack because it came up in this context that I had written a very personal post about all of my frustrations, hopes, and dreams.

And there is so much information in there. And I shared it with Mark Vicente because he's involved in another documentary. I'm working on. And he was like, he said, when I read that, like, she was a goner. Like, all the information was there. Are you talking about, like, ex-relationships? Like, what's the... No, it was more about, like, what matters to me, what type of a person I am, what are my frustrations, what's agonizing to me, and pretty much laying out there that probably deep down, I just wanted, like, I wanted somebody to rescue me. And that was all there and laid out. And also the fact that a lot of things about my personality that were probably like,

he probably read that shit and was like, oh, my God. How long was this blog post? I put it up on my substack because it came up in this, because I ended up talking about it extensively in this other podcast. I don't know how many words it was. Usually I know how many words things are because of writing my book. I'm very aware of like, this is 3,000 words. This is 200,000 words.

but it's it's pretty extensive okay do we have it thief by any chance you looking for it's the name of the post um it's on my substack i actually think it's the one thing on my substack that i put behind the paywall um but i mean i would it's funny i asked mark i'm like should i put this behind a paywall he said yes 100 even though at this point i don't think that's something my entire life's history is out there so if somebody wanted to to try to manipulate me. It's not like by putting out this additional information. They're going to, that's going to be the thing that's going to allow them to get to me.

So I would publish it publicly. I have no problem with it. But I was very personal and open in that. And you might find it fascinating from a psychology perspective. For sure. Yeah. The reason I asked if you had written about relationships in there is because you described as like your dreams and all those things. And like I was trying to see if like you also went back.

to look at the things that went wrong and reveal that so that he could see like, oh, all right, she fell for a guy like that, or she liked this about someone that turned out to be toxic. I can pull on that string and then try to sell her this thing over here. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there was a little bit about what had happened with Matthew,

and that was also kind of a public story because it had written in the tabloids what happened. When Matthew and I split up, it was like this whole page six situation. And page six was right, wrote about it as like the lead story a few different times and of course they sensationalize everything but so my breakup with matthew was in the tabloid so he had all of that information about what had happened there and then i sort of allude to it in that post and but what i wrote

about where i was vulnerable is that i wrote about my all of my aspirations for the brand and how much i believed in it and how frustrated i was because i was always wanted to wanting to grow the business in the right way and I had been in a position where I was regularly approached by men who would say they wanted to invest or help grow the business and it would turn out that they had ulterior motives or they were just a lot of shit was happening and now knowing my personality and my wiring like I would kind of fall for that shit over and over again I didn't have my guard up. If somebody claimed to be interested in my business, I would believe them. And then, you know, and then maybe they wrote me into like having a bunch of meetings and then

they'd like make a move on me and that would be really frustrating. Or I would have people that came in, saw what a really amazing opportunity it was and thought they're going to come in and take control. And I was also very wary of certain types of investment, having come from the background, having worked at bank capital, I was very aware of what can happen with a lot of brands when money comes in and it's that type of money where they're investing because they want to flip it in a few years and make a return, right? Whereas this is, I mean, this is like my identity, right? I mean, I wasn't in this brand because I wanted to make a bunch of money and sell out. I was in it because I wanted it to become a big thing that outlasts me and does

a lot of good in the world and becomes very big. I had very big goals for it. And I really believed in it, but also knew that somebody could come in and open up locations all over the world, but do it in that way that there's so many brands this has happened to where they start out as these really cool brands that people love. The outside money comes in. It gets all corporate, blows up, and then they become corporate feeling. They feel more like fast food type brands. All of the personality is gone. All of the integrity is gone. and all of the stuff that made people really love that brand

in the first place is kind of all driven out of there. And the people work there like, they don't care. You know what I mean? All that special stuff is gone. And I didn't want that to happen to it. So I was very wary of that type of investment too. So I was trying to find, like, and I was overwhelmed and overworked. And so I just was trying to find the right business partner situation

that could help me grow the business in the right way. And I'd been through a lot of fucked up shit. where it almost went awry. And so I just was in that space of being really frustrated and exhausted. And I wrote very openly about all of that. So he sawed us. Yeah.

Yeah. And this is when you guys are, you know, he's just the man behind the screen. Yeah. And so he's able to craft a persona and basically feed me enough little bits of information where I'm in a place where I so badly, I'm going to do that thing that people do,

even when they have met the person, where I'm going to fill in the blanks and I'm going to project what I want onto him. And so it was very easy probably for him to give me little bits of intriguing information. And I, you know, and I'm sort of like taking the bait, taking the bait, taking the bait. And he had done this before.

In the documentary, they were able to go to his literal ex-wife who he had at least one child with and was the other one a stepchild? Was that it? Like she already had a kid? Yes. Okay. So he, she went through, you know,

to use Nadine McAluso's term, like the trauma bonding. Yeah, trauma bonding. That he had very much done with her, which, you know, literally, like, he told her she was like a Navy SEAL. And then he got his real father to also back that up to her yeah his real dad was a crooked cop probably total sociopath yeah yeah i met his dad yeah so like that poor lady then then you know had a child with him and got left behind with the child and you don't know any of this because he you know did what what name did he use with her was it was it

different was he did he con her with a different name i don't even remember that no i think he was anthony to her. Yeah, because they got married, so, you know, birth certificate. Right. Okay. But to you, he was Shane. He was saying he was Shane. And he told you, was he, like, not specific, but he told you was like he's the secret agent kind of type? What was the context? Kind of, yeah, he was always implying everything. I mean, I remember originally, I think the very first time I asked him about what he did, he said something like he worked in commercial real estate, you know, like very vague. And, but then he sort of implied and then over time he implied that he worked in some sort of other business but you know not supposed to tell me and I think another thing about my personality is that I'm not

going to I'm so concerned with not wanting to make other people uncomfortable that I'm not going to ask the challenging questions because I don't want to be confrontational right right so like if you are weaving some bullshit story to me I'm not going to be very I'm not going to likely to try to poke holes in it because I don't want you to think that I'm an asshole that thinks you're lying because what if you're not? Then I'm going to look like an asshole for like accusing you of lying. You know what I mean? Yes.

It's like and you're almost afraid to ask certain questions. It's like if I meet somebody sometimes I'm like afraid to ask them if they have kids because in my head I'm thinking like, well, what if they had a kid but their kid died and now I'm going to make them uncomfortable by asking, I swear to God. That happens to me when I meet somebody. every time I ask somebody if they have kids, I'm almost afraid to ask that. I know, I understand.

That's just a fun. That's an extreme funny example. Do you think also an element of it? Because, again, like, you hadn't met the guy in person yet. So you're like, of course you're intrigued, but there's something, what's the word I'm looking for? Not necessarily seductive. Alluring is the better word.

Good call. Dief. Like something alluring. in the mystery of him? Yeah, 100%. And I think that that mystery, because there was always mystery about him, I think that was another element

that made it hard for me to close the door on him. Because, you know, I mean, people read mystery novels and watch suspenseful things for a reason. Like, you want to find out, you want the answer, you want to know, you want the explanation. So when I met, when I first met him, after that first weekend, it was like, oh, yeah, he wasn't what I thought, and there's something off. And like, all right, I guess that's not going to work out.

Like, I'm not going to see him ever again. But I wouldn't close the door on him because there's always that part of me that's intrigued. Like, well, but what is the real story? Who is he really? I'm curious. I want to know. I want closure. Like, yeah, that's dangerous.

How did it end up graduating to you meeting him in person? And how long did that take? It took, I don't remember, like, start to finish, but certainly I got very invested in it. He got me kind of emotionally hooked. And then at least another few weeks went by or a month or so. I remember it was a long time. And I'm sure he did that deliberately. Because by the time I met him, I was, I was, he had got me already feeling attached, intrigued.

Like, whatever he was doing, he got that. done. So that when I met him, I like, I was already attached. Whereas if I'd met him right away, I would have been like, oh, yeah, I'm not really vibing this. Wasn't he also like he made his profile picture look nicer than he actually looked, right? Yeah. I made a website for my book and I put up the photos like in order of what he showed me. And so the original photos like sort of the bottom half of his face. He's got a nice half of the face. And I've had a couple of people say, oh yeah, I looked at those photos. I could see why he thought he was attractive. I could see why you were in him. He looked. And because Tobin was the one that I was heartbroken over was

tall, very lean, kind of lanky, sort of more of like a tall skateboarder type build, which is much more my type like tall and thin and um and this guy presented as like super big and strong which normally that wasn't my type like the big like huge dudes that go to the gym like that's not normally my type but for some reason that appealed to me because I was heartbroken over tovin because I was feeling very overwhelmed with the work needing a partner needing like a business partner needing support just kind of exhausted. I was just really tired. And so he presented as, and I'd been through some like fucked up business shit. I had like a shitty guy who kind of came in as like a CFO and tried to basically get my company sold out to these other people. Like I'd

been through a lot of shit. So there were some struggles in there as well, even though the restaurant on the outside is doing well. It was doing really well, but I almost got involved in this bad this CFO guy almost got me into a deal where these other people would have taken complete control and expanded the brand, but probably would have pushed me into the role of like, all right, we know what we're going to take over. You just be the face of the brand and we know what we're doing. So I almost got into a bad, bad situation. And yeah, there's kind of a fucked up story there too.

I wrote a long time ago I wrote, basically wrote that story out because I wanted. wanted to remember it and I found it years later and I titled it one lucky duck and two fat fox because these two guys like did not represent the brand and that was the thing they didn't give a shit about people being healthy and what this does for the world and helping animals they just saw a money opportunity they saw and I was very aware of that I was very aware of the fact that this is a fucking home run and so I got to protect this thing so and these two guys were like heavy and ate crap food and didn't give a shit about, you know, the things that made this brand special from an integrity point of view. So after being through all that, I'm just

kind of wiped out. And this, the way, of course, he read what I wrote and knew that I was in this state. So he presents himself as if he can come in and solve all my problems. And even one, And presented himself as somebody that would be that protector and take care of me in a way. But, yeah. And also gave me a lot of affirmation, you know, was what you're building is amazing and complimenting me in that way and, you know, giving me all this reinforcement that, like, I'm smart and I have this visionary brand and I'm doing a good thing for the world and whatever he did, he knew what he was doing. So he can come in and be of service by being, you know, a savior figure to you, like, rescue you in a way. You're seeing that. And then he's giving you the affirmation about yourself.

He's hitting you right where you're vulnerable. The way that this happened is makes a really good case for why everybody should be doing as much self-examination as possible, you know, like understanding yourself. Like what is it that you might be susceptible to? what is it that you really want what is it that you're going to be drawn to what might you be subconsciously drawn to like bringing all of that stuff out of the subconscious into the conscious is the earlier you can do that the better because otherwise you're just vulnerable so when you do first meet him and he's not physically quite what he was supposed to be in the twitter bible you are already emotionally attached him first of all where did you meet him what was the

context and what were your first thoughts when that part sunk in? I it's like this is one of the more difficult chapters of my book to write because even writing the chapter I think I write that as I'm writing the chapter I want to barf all over my keyboard and I'm embarrassed like I write a lot of stuff in my book that I'm embarrassed to write but I write it because I feel like it's important so did I protect myself and meet the guy out in a restaurant like any normal person would no i fucking let him come to my apartment you know like there you go boundaries not my thing and and i'm just trusting him at this point i mean by now we've had all these long we've talked on the phone you know we've had all these long conversations but

i mean i also make the point that nowadays people kind of do this shit all the time very recklessly if you think about the way people hook up with tinder you know you're like meeting somebody online swiping right and hooking up with people, people do this shit all the time, or you're like meet somebody at a bar and go home with them. That's kind of, in a sense, more reckless because I had at least felt like I'd gotten to know this guy, even though I hadn't. Either way, yeah, it was reckless of me. And, yeah, so, yeah, let him right into my house, spent the weekend with him. Did you feel love for him? Like, did you look past some of the

differences between his profile and what do you look like in person and felt that attachment for him nonetheless? Here's where what I think I described before is relevant. So what people like him do is what this guy, Mark Vesente explained very well, what cult leaders do is what he got me attached to was not him. He got me attached to basically knowing what my biggest hopes and dreams were and knowing me so, understanding me in a way that these people are able to understand people very well and very quickly presents to me my hopes and dreams and aspirations and in a way as if like

he's the way for me to get there, right? So he's not consciously so much to me, but he's kind of presented himself as the road to me achieving everything I want for my business and my business. future and realizing all my potential and getting all this relief from the stress of my situation is all through him so that's kind of created this attachment plus all of that reinforcement that he's giving me that i'm kind of subconsciously getting attached to right all the affirmation and whatnot so letting that go suddenly would be hard there's a lady on youtube who's like people make i guess random youtube videos about documentaries and whatnot and there's this one lady she was like

yeah the beginning of it his name is chain and then later his name is anthony so i'm just going to call him shanthony i like that so she calls him shanthony i know she calls him shanthony throughout her whole thing i like it too because it's yeah very memorable as well yeah charma and shantany anyway so that's a shrama sorry sarma and shantany but he you just hinted at it and that's that's why i wanted to ask about next when he was playing on your dreams this is where it gets It's like beyond like Matt Cox, what I was talking about earlier with some of the patterns, he would, the way that Shantany would present himself outside of being this mysterious figure, potentially doing black op stuff, going off the map to do all these adventures, he would paint himself as almost above this world and you, a mere human, like he's, whatever it is, alien. His nickname for me was TBH, tiny blonde human. Tiny blonde human.

Okay. So he would make that clear designation there. And then once he kind of beat that, I don't know, like, what's the term I'm looking for? Like relationship dynamic into the two of you, like, you're tiny blonde human. I'm above that. I'm outside of this world. Yes.

He became like the guru and I'm the cult follower. So now he has distorted your reality on his humanity. This is where it got psychologically interesting for me. Distorted the reality by repetition and affirmation over time on his reality to you and how he's above you on the playing field, that then he was able to start saying things that objectively you and I can now agree are fucking crazy. Like, oh, you love your dog, I'm going to make your dog live forever and it can actually happen. And then what were some of the other things he was saying as well?

Yeah. I mean, it also was never that explicit, like so much about what he communicated with me was implied, vague, sort of confusing. And if I asked him to clarify, I would get more like what's called word salad where they just constantly, they'll just confuse. They'll answer you. And you're like, huh? And then you're more confused and you never get a clear answer. So he did that a lot. But yeah, he presented himself over time more and more, like, as if he's all knowing. And he would, it was just all very subtle. So, like, he would imply past lives. He did have, I think he has a memory and a level of intelligence where he knows a lot about a lot of stuff and remembers a lot.

And so he could kind of spout off a lot of information. And even early on, it was highlighted in the show that we, one of the ways that we used to interact online before I met him was we would play words with friends against each other. And he was, of course, really good at it. But even when he was around me and when we were now meeting in person and I still sometimes played that game, even not against him, but with other people. And he'd look at the game and go, oh, whatever. And he'd come up with some word that, like, I know a lot of words. He'd come up with some word where I'm like, what the fuck is that word i don't know what that way and it's like some huge point word like he seemed to me he's smart

yeah yeah he was definitely not an idiot um and but he would sort of say little things as if you know he had lived in previous lifetimes and it sounds cuckoo but it sounds cuckoo now but at the time right you think it was he had like conditioned it yeah he had conditioned it and there's a quote I put in my book from Andrew Huberman where he says, he said this in a podcast and I like scribbled it down. He says the more stressed a human gets. I think it, I don't know, I don't remember the exact quote, but he says something about the more afraid you are, the more stressed and afraid a human or animal gets. And I don't know how you would know how an animal would get. But he said the more prone you are to delusional thinking.

And so over time, he also ramped up the fear. And so the more he got me into like a confused state and afraid, the more likely I am to latch on to some kind of cuckoo belief. How would he do that? How would he get you, what fears was he praying on? Well, another way he got me attached is by initially borrowing money from me, not paying me back and then borrowing more money and then that's that was how he ensured that I'm never going to cut him out completely because I'm always going to want that money back so there were

times where I was like all right I there's something you know like this is not right he's stressing me out like I don't want him back because he wasn't living he wasn't in New York City he was lived in Massachusetts so he was sometimes you know be gone for a while I wouldn't see him and But I always, if he came, if he was like, well, I'm going to bring all your money back. And I'm like, well, now it's up to 30 grand. That's a lot of money. I want that money back. So, all right, if he's going to give me my money back, I'll let him come for the weekend again or something.

And then, of course, he didn't give me the money back. Does some mindfuckery on me and either it doesn't give me the money back or somehow gets more money out of me. And over time, it just got worse and worse. So he creates that financial tether that then builds and builds and builds. and it's just over like a year two years like what kind of time period one of the things that everybody says about what becomes very clear when you read my book or listen and um the show bad vegan is that bad vegan makes it seem like it hell happened very fast where in reality it took a really long time it was a number of years yeah you even you were technically even married to him we

haven't even gotten there for what like five six years something like that no no i'm i well four we were married at the very end of 2012 and then and then it ended 2016 yeah got it yeah but that's what i'm saying like this we're talking now all before you're even married this is all when you're just yeah and when we married like this was not this was like the polar opposite of any normal situation where you have some like romantic proposal and it's all happy and then you call your parents like no, he basically like badgered me to marry him and

acted like I would be protected and that there were sort of practical reasons to get married and he just kept badgering me and a lot of the ways he got me to do what he wanted me to do was just this relentless like he would just exhaust me and wear me down

and finally I'm like, fine fine, like we'll get married. And I remember going to City Hall Hall and being like, oh, God, I hope we don't run into anybody. Like, I was embarrassed by him. And by that time, he had gotten, like, fatter and fatter.

And he had this whole narrative that, like, his getting fatter was part of these tests he was putting me through. I mean, the whole story is so bonkers. That's why my book is lengthy. Because there's not, it's hard to summarize the story without, it's easy for somebody, you know, who might even listen to this, be like, oh, well, she's just nuts. Like, I don't know, it doesn't make any sense. Because it's hard to convey how this happens over time and how your mind can be so compromised

that you end up just going along with this nutty shit. But I did. And yeah, we went to City Hall and then got the license and then got married within 24 hours. And that was one of the things that pissed me off and bad vegan is he altered my interview. So I say something about how I'd had this phone call with an accountant who, who I'd asked him about, because this guy, Shantany, always acted as if he had all this money that he just couldn't access yet, right?

That was his story. It's always a typical story. Like, oh, I'm going to get this inheritance. I'm going to get all this money, so I just need this money now. And so he had asked me to like sort of prepare for some kind of a transfer or something. I was talking to an accountant about,

like what would be the tax consequences of somebody giving me, five million dollars and my accountant was we were talking it through and he said he sort of made a joke and said like well you could just marry him ha ha and um and that was somehow i that story came out when i was doing my extremely lengthy interviews for bad vegan and then at some point down the road there's a whole conversation about him my marrying him and how he convinced me to marry him and he basically said I'd be protected and I didn't want to, but like,

finally I was just like, all right, fine, you warm me down. I'm like, fine, fine, fine. But, and so I say that we went to City Hall, got the license, and then you have to wait 24 hours to get married. Like, you get a marriage license, you can't immediately get married

after wait 24 hours. So I say, and then 24 hours later, we were married. And so in Bad Vegan, it talks about me having that conversation with my accountant that I could basically get this money why don't you just marry him and then it cuts to me saying and then 24 hours later we were 24 hours later we were married get no frills delivered shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with pc express pass get your first year for 250 a month learn more at pceexpress

when you're flying emirates business class relaxing in an exclusive airport lounge you'll see that your vacation isn't really over until your flight is over. Fly Emirates, fly better. So somebody watching it looks at that and goes, oh, well, she just married him because she thought he had money, which makes me seem kind of like I'm a bit of a grifter, you know, or like I just married him for the money when that wasn't really the case. So it's just, like, when I first saw that, I was annoyed. I was like, well, that's not how that happened. That's annoying. It makes me look bad but it was annoying but then in the car in the larger context of how that show was crafted it makes sense to me that he did that so had you brought him prior to being married had you brought

him around the restaurant at all had you brought him around any family any friends did anyone he had never um very minimally um but he he had come to the restaurant, but what's notable and what should have just been a screaming red flag that this is all wrong and what am I even doing is that I was always like embarrassed and uncomfortable and not remotely at ease, which was such a huge contrast to the way that I was with Tobin. I was happy. He was friends with everybody at the restaurant. He sort of fit in with everybody. Everybody loved him. I was always happy to introduce him to people. I went to visit his family he met my family like you know i was clearly very happily in love with tobin and happy around

him and we held hands and were very clearly like a cute happy couple and with shanthony it wasn't like that at all like i was i was kind of illities around him and um sort of always afraid which is part of what they do but um yeah i was always afraid and sort of on edge and then by that point he's sort of, I guess what they do is they make you complicit in a way because he's crafted this narrative that he's got this sort of shadowy identity that, you know, kind of works for the government, maybe, maybe not, you know, and, you know, he's clearly one of the good guys, but like, but yet, so because he, like, just theoretically, imagine if he really was some kind of like a spy or a some sort of a, you know, in some sort of a clandestine business or like the way

that people who work for the CIA don't walk around telling everybody necessarily, then you kind of have to lie about that to other people. I'm super uncomfortable lying to people and that makes me uncomfortable. So that's like that in itself was an element of discomfort around him because, you know, it's like if my dad asks me, well, what does he do? And then I'm like, ah, I got to lie to my dad. Don't worry about it. So I'm like being, I'm, now I'm the one supplying vague answers, which is now making me really uncomfortable because that's not the kind of person that I am.

She sort of already compromised me. And then they just, and again, cults will do the same thing. But it's like they get you to compromise your values like more and more and more and more. So anyway, yeah, I was always kind of ill at ease with him. And so you guys get married. and then after this you introduce them the people right i wasn't like hey this is my husband i didn't tell people we were married you didn't tell people so do you think you were like because you had loaned him a lot of money that you hadn't gotten back he kind of had this

psychological power over you so you're probably like within some of that cult vortex at this point did did you feel like looking back on it now i i'm not sure you could have felt it the time but now looking back on it did you feel like you were in a situation where even just like to friends on the detail they're like oh i'm married that needed to be secret to like just everything kind of had to be a secret and work with one place home was another the whole thing was so uncomfortable that it wasn't even hard for him to isolate me like these people always will isolate you from you know over time they'll isolate you from family and friends like even in a normal narcissistic abuse relationship they tend to isolate you from your family and friends and

even try to turn you against people it wasn't hard for him to isolate me because now i'm now i'm sort of i don't know how to explain our relationship so i don't want to tell anybody so i don't want to be around other people who are going to ask me about it um so it made it that much easier for him to to isolate me i mean i had a i think they cover this in bad vegan bonnie um who um I used to wear, I still wear it, but I don't ever wear it for a podcast because it's a ring that has these little jangly things on it, so it makes noise, and it has these little bands, and so I easily put that ring over my wedding ring. Oh, wow. So I wore the ring, but you couldn't really see it. Nobody would really notice it because I had this other ring on top of it.

And then eventually, like some people at the restaurant kind of discover you're married. How did that happen? Yeah, I mean, I eventually started to tell people a little bit. but then he started telling people to because you were at this point you're bringing him around i was bringing him around a little bit like i never really wanted to but it was kind of inevitable and then i mean the other creepy part of the story is that he ends up the first time he met my mother um i think he realized oh she's a really good target and so he got into my mom too and got totally messed with her head and got a bunch of money out of her in the end yeah it was like

$400,000 or something to what what do you think made your mom a really good target I think in some ways my my mom probably is has some similar wiring to me where she's also not going to immediately like she'll whatever made me I don't really like the word gullible but it's we're just not inherently suspicious and and and yeah so I mean, he was able to get to her as well. And he really charmed her. She kind of liked him when she met him. Yeah.

Yeah. And my stepfather, who had passed away a few years prior, had a, my stepfather was not a sociopath at whatever. But he was very different from my dad and very kind of big. He was the CEO of a company. He did have a temper. He was scary. Very dominating, very controlling, and so probably Shantany had already kind of pegged her and probably knew what he was doing when he tapped into that. So he sort of presented himself in a way that probably was similar to my stepfather, sort of like this take charge, kind of a big guy around the house, you know.

Did he also say something like commercial real estate or something when your mom was asking what he did or how did that go down? I don't really know. I mean, I'm sure he did a similar thing where initially it was something more believable. And then over time he started telling her that he's similar to whatever he told me that like he was involved in the stuff and he's going to. But he also acted like he was, he started telling her that like I'm having emotional problems and he's helping me and he's going to help me with my business. he's going to take care of me. And so he sort of weaponized my mom's concern for me as, you know, the same way that he presented himself to me is like he's going to be the one to help me realize my dreams and

solve all my problems. He made it seem to my mom like I'm falling apart. I'm a train rack and he's going to fix me. But you've also, unless something changed at some point in there, like to this point in your life that we're talking about it's not like you would ever like confided in your mom about stuff or going to her for a lot of advice on relationships let alone which made it easy for him to do what he did because they they definitely keep people apart and they want to keep people from comparing notes right so so he starts coming around the restaurant though and I guess like

getting access to the money and the income that's coming in yeah and he he works his way into so I had a really great, he had started as a bookkeeper and then kind of moved up and was like a controller. I don't know, titles weren't really a big thing, but ended up being like a general manager. But he was the one who did all the books in the accounting. And really good dude. We're still in touch now. And I love the fact that he's around and wants to come back if I am able to restart everything. But he was so great because everything was by the book, nothing would fall through.

the cracks like really on top of everything and that was really reassuring to have that because I'm kind of I'm like that by nature too like we didn't pay anybody over the I mean under the table like we reported everything like a lot of restaurants do a lot of stuff like they don't necessarily report all their cash sales or they pay people with cat we didn't do any of that and and that was like I did everything by the book and um this guy's name was Adam uh was very on top of everything so when I started taking money from the company and transferring it to my personal account. And he saw this stuff. And then Shantany was coming around. And Adam was like, oh, that guy is bad news. There's something. This is, I don't, I don't want to, I'm, you know, especially being in that

role of the accountant in charge of that stuff. He was like, yeah, I'm out of here. So he left. And then when I brought in somebody new, Shantany got right to that guy and made that guy his pal and his buddy. And that's part of how he got kind of into stuff. Yeah, that's what that's, I mean, that's like the most important job and fucking anything, whoever's watching that stuff.

So that's a shame you had a good guy and then, you know, you basically get a target after that. And he, so, and the thing we haven't said is that what's clear is, they talked about this in the documentary, but Chanthony, his father, as you mentioned, was probably a corrupt cop who also was like a gambling addict who got his son hooked on gambling at a very young age. So he was a compulsive, addicted gambler, and that's what the con was here, because he always needed money to go bed at the fucking casino. Yeah, but I, so I don't think, I wouldn't call him an addict, and I don't think that so is your past. think he was an addicts, no. You don't think sociopaths can be addicts to anything? I think they could be, so maybe it's just semantics. So I don't, I think they could develop compulsive habits. But when we talk about addicts, I think, right, when you say somebody is an addict,

whatever it is, if they're addicted to alcohol, drugs, porn, gambling, whatever, addicts, um, deserve, you know, there's, deserve sympathy, there's probably inherently some shame involved there. They don't want to be doing what they're doing. They wish they didn't have the addiction, you know, whereas sociopaths just have this need to be stimulated all the time and kind of this need for risk and whatever that thrill is, but there's no shame involved. And I think when he, you know, say he plays a game and loses a lot of money, like he just doesn't give a shit, doesn't matter to him. And that's where that book that we talked about earlier, Confessions of a Sociopath, helped me understand a lot of this. Because she talks about that, about how they behave recklessly a lot. And that's probably why they make really good, like, high-stakes traders on Wall Street because they can stomach that kind of risk. And they can stomach those losses, whereas us mere mortals or whatever, like that stuff would be really hard to swallow.

and it's too stressful. I'm like, I've never, I can't stand gambling because it's way too stressful. I would not want to have all this stuff on the line. I see exactly what you're saying, and I think it is a semantics thing, though, because I would make a distinction. I'd need to see the full context

on a scenario-to-scenario basis, but someone whose mind is chemically altered by hardcore drugs or alcohol, could then as a, I don't know if this is proper term, but as like a side effect, then lead a life of lies that leads to sociopathy and stuff like that. Whereas. I don't think it leads to sociopathy. I think addicts can develop really destructive.

They could end up veering into super destructive and harmful means of deception to get money for drugs or whatever. it is or money to gamble and steal from their parents and deceive people and um but i don't that doesn't then develop into being a sociopath yeah and probably they have shame about that and probably if they eventually end up in like a-a they're going to want to go back and apologize to those people and hate themselves for that behavior i do what i'm saying is yeah yeah and and i think that's like another kind of semantics thing, meaning they could exhibit some of those traits, but they might not develop into that actual thing. I do think there's a difference between some sort of sober-minded

addiction, though, and non-sober-minded addiction. So I do think it's possible, and I would actually argue that's my takeaway. He is on one hand, since being a child, he is addicted to gambling. But he has now, because he didn't like alcohol and that was another thing you talked about like he really didn't drink at all you know this wasn't a guy abusing substances or anything like that he kept a sober mind but in that addiction you combine that with the fact that somewhere along the way in childhood or whatever he developed into a sociopath and into a con man and one hand just hopping to feed the other that was i'm not saying i'm right i'm saying that's my read on it from the outside because he what's very clear as he was coming to you for money

over and over again from the beginning he was taking it and it was like the South Park episode and it's gone it's all gone like and it would never come back you never got paid back anything and you just kept bilking you and bilking you and this money

is money that's coming from the profits of your restaurant over to your personal account and out the door and eventually it starts chewing into not profits but revenues so that you can't pay people yeah like he personally used your business

as a piggy bank to drive it into the ground and get it to the point where this story kind of culminates to where suddenly you're not paying payroll and you're, as you pointed out, you're the same person who was paying

your ex-boyfriend's employee's payroll back in the day. This was something that was always personally. So something cracked here to where he kind of had this cult-like control over you as it appears to the point that now it seems like, and this is where I was trying to get through it

in the story like you disassociated from the very thing you loved the most which was the people that and the business you ran like that seemed like home base for you know yeah and it was never a scenario where there was never a situation where he's where you know payroll is due and he's like give me that money instead that never happened it was always that you know payroll was on like a two-week cycle and he'd get me to and there's always revenue coming into the business so he would get me to give him money and you know and sometimes he did give me some money back not a lot but sometimes he did give me money back so there's a lot of there are also a lot of things that i'm speculating i don't know i don't necessarily know i didn't watch him gamble away all the money um because sometimes

he was able to produce some money in a pinch that i needed to cover payroll Like he would drop little kernels that gave you hope and said, oh, maybe he's okay, kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, one way or another, he was sometimes able to come up with money. And for all I know, there was all kinds of other people that he was grifting at the same time that he might have been like, okay, I'm going to, you know, there's some guy he met through the casino that he's like, oh, I'm going to go get, you know, 30 grand from Jimmy over here. And I'm going to give that to her. And then I'll pay him back later with money I get from her. Like, I don't know. I'm just guessing.

But another interesting thing that I found out later, because I remember early on, he logged into some, like, Fox, once later on when the fact that he's doing all this stuff at Foxwoods and Mohegan that now I'm, like, aware of those places and he's taking me there, he once logged into a Foxwood's account and showed me, like, a screen that showed, like, $2 million of winnings or something. And I remember looking at that and thinking, huh.

And later on, I saw, actually in the context of Bad Vegan, they found this information to, you know, publicly available tax lien records or whatnot that showed that he owed over $20 million in taxes. yeah i i stared at those pages too being like what 29 yeah and um i do believe that most of that so he is of the personality that if you were a normal person and you started gambling and you got addicted or whatever and um obviously you're going to get taxed on your winnings right but all the money you lose you're going to keep track of that and you're going to deduct that on your tax returns like why wouldn't you that be right he didn't do any of that i don't think he i don't think he ever just bothered i don't think he cares so that's weird yeah yeah um but yeah the tax liens where he owed over 20 million dollars that's just like that's such an absurd number it gets beyond like

even comprehension yeah especially because again like he's 10 grand here 20 grand there you know what I mean like to go from that to it's like how many how many times have you he done this how much money would he have have to be on record as coming through him to then oh 20 million dollars in taxes it wasn't like all that was interest in penalties now he he would also keep talking about like his family and say like oh you're going to meet my brother or something like that and you would never meet the brother would never work out yeah and then he says i'm going to send you to roam yeah and sends you to roam alone on a trip and And it's while you're in Rome that like your payroll couldn't hit and you had to then call someone and get a loan to cover the payroll.

So everyone gets paid back at home. But it also felt like this was getting into a time period where he was literally physically pulling you away from the restaurant. Oh, yeah, more and more and more. Right? So instead of you being Sarma right at the door every time someone walks in, now, you know, instead of six days a week in there, you're three days a week or. whatever we're missing for two three weeks and basically like the pattern changes so your literal employees got to be like what's happening yeah they were all like confused about what was going on and how come she's not around anymore and what's going on and getting more and more on

edge i mean i i describe it like what it must have been like for them it'd be sort of like if mom got a new abusive shitty boyfriend that they all hated and now she's suddenly like they don't know why is she with this guy and we don't like him and can't we have our mom back you know and so I think they felt really I mean I know I think they felt really betrayed but they also you know on the other side of all of this

the ones who've been there for a long time none of them thought that like I'm some crook that was like fuck them I'm gonna take money and go gamble and buy Rolex watches yeah they just thought something's off well I mean but one at all on the other side of everything being destroyed, you know, they couldn't make sense of what really happened, but they knew something really horrible had happened. So they, this was the other thing,

because you had investors in the restaurant. That was how this initial thing started. We already went through that and everything. And like, that was still the case. But at some point, after that Rome trip, where you never met the brother, the brother wasn't even real. First question, was there, can you ever? remember a moment maybe it's after that trip when you don't meet the brother once again or whatever it might be can you ever remember

a moment where you might have like stepped out of it for a minute and been like wait a second am I am I fucking crazy before you know then being like no no it's all good like was there ever a moment where there was some sort of

gut instinct a lot of those little moments and the way I described in my book is a lot of the time I had like one foot in his reality and like I had one foot still kind of out in normal reality and so there were times where I was like this is fucked up and like is there a way out of this but the problem was it never seemed there was a way out of it and then he would find a way of kind of muddling my brain even more and what happens is that you know the situation was so dire and so incredibly confusingly

fucked up and I couldn't understand what his end game was so um so it's like if you had gambled and you might lose but there's like the possibility that if you just play one more hand you'll win and then it'll wipe it all out so that's kind of the dynamic he created where he's like every time I he got me to give him money every time he'd be like oh this is the last time you know this is going to be all over and and then it's like it's not all over but then for me to go all right well you're clearly a fraud fuck you i then got to turn around and accept the fact that i'm in a whole load of shit trouble because how am i ever going to dig myself out of this and how is anybody going to understand what happened because how am i going to explain what happened but i don't

even understand so that just made it easier for him to just keep me going to keep me going all along I'm over time, like, unaware, obviously, that this is happening, but I'm sort of sliding into more and more and more and more and more of a dissociated state. To the point that that last year, I'm like not there. I'm not there. What you're describing gets to a point that a lot of people, luckily, will never experience, right? Where it goes just beyond the pill. You're also describing something where in the middle of it,

you have a business with, you know, a lot of revenue, investors attach, employees who rely on you, all these other things, and there's money being bilked from it. And it's someone you're married to that you're in like a weird relationship with. Like there's a lot of variables that are far beyond what most of us will ever experience. However, at the base case, that mentality you talk about, I'll speak for myself and I'll bet a lot of people out there listening right now can 100% relate to this. There is a thing where, whether it be with friendships or relationships, Relationships, you insert it here where you get invested in people and you keep throwing good money after bad. No pun intended. Right? You're like, well, I'm this deep with them at some point they're going to come around. I'm thinking to like two in my head right now that I did this with where it's like, well, there's got to be something there. Like there's got to be something there. Or like when you're holding on to a girl or when a girl's holding on to a guy like, well, he'll come around or she'll come around or whatever. And they're not going to. But you convince your. that if you just play that hand one more time,

like the river's gonna turn, and it's gonna be the card we need in the deck, and it never is. And it's just, it's so relatable. You just had an extreme scenario. Yeah, it was a really, yeah. And I mean, it's probably similar to, you know, abusive relationships where, I mean, my situation was all psychological,

but in abusive relationships where people think that, oh, it's the last time, he's never gonna hit me again, it's gonna change. And, you know, usually that kind of stuff isn't like a one-time thing, you know, usually it's going to happen again. That last year where it's kind of like now looking back on it, you feel disassociated. That is the time when the second restaurant or the reopening of the restaurant, that goes belly up because he's been bilking it. And then it shuts its doors because the staff isn't getting paid. When he took me away, I didn't, for all I knew, the restaurant still might have been open that whole year.

That's what I was getting to. you guys quote unquote go on the run and the way you describe it is that you never thought of it that way you guys didn't have a conversation the restaurant was the doors were closed but it was still a restaurant like it wasn't you could have gone and open them it's just the staff wasn't there so the door no no the restaurant was like open and operating and he got me to go to Miami to try to he got me to go to yeah that was before and then and then no and then he had me come back and then he took me away. Yes, that's what that's what I'm saying. When he drove, when he took me away and we were supposedly on the run, the restaurant was still open and operating. So there were people there

working at the restaurant. Customers working. Yes. Okay. All right. And so then when he took me away, it's like, of course, then I disappear and then, you know, apparent, like, of course it all fell apart. But the entire, I think it was nine months in total that I was gone from when he took me away. When I was arrested, the detective or somebody could have said to me, like, well, yeah, your restaurant's still open because some people stepped in and took over and the employees, they're right. Like, it's not yours anymore, but the restaurant's still there. It's still operating. And I would have been like, oh, thank God. It's still there. But it wasn't. But it wasn't. Right, right, right. No. And, but the weird thing is that I had access to an iPad and I had gotten

another phone. So I was cut out of my email and my phone number and my own accounts, my personal accounts, but I had access to the internet. I could have, at any point in time, Googled to find out, you know. Why didn't you? That's how dissociated I was. I just, I was too afraid. Yeah, these were, when I was going through the whole documentary, like, so much of it made sense. And this part could make sense, too. This is where it gets a little weird for people. because it's impossible for people who haven't been through that to relate. But when you went off with him, and again, that's an important detail. I had that mixed up from the documentary.

The restaurant is open, but now you're going to go off in a car and go somewhere else in the country and not look back. So whoever's working there is not going to get paid for the work they're doing as it would turn out. But that wasn't a part of the conversation. It was just like, we are going to leave. Here's what we're doing. You're coming with me. You're kind of under my control. He told you to put a band-aid over your tattoo,

which is something that would be an identity recognizer for you. And he told you that you couldn't tell people your real name, so you needed a different name and you would like call yourself Emma or something like that. And he was going to call himself some other. I forgot what the name was. There was never a moment there where you didn't think like, that's weird. I mean, this is where I'm like, by this point, I'm not even thinking straight. But, and also where I don't remember.

a whole lot, but I remember when he drove me away, this would be like a really compelling scripted scene. When he drove me away, I mean, I was screaming my head off in the car, like, in some really primal way, just screaming. And he was just letting me scream. And I just remember, because we were driving, he had me go to Foxwoods, and we were, so we're driving in Connecticut. and it was spring, and everything was so bright, intensely green. And I just remember the bright green of the trees going by on those sort of back roads in Connecticut. And at some point, I exhausted myself from screaming

and just kind of leaned my head against the window. It was staring out at all that green going by. And then that was, at that point, as dissociated as I already was, that was like next level. like I am now no longer here. I'm like in a partial coma or something. That's the only way I know how to describe it. Because from then on, after that whole screaming episode,

from then on, I barely, I didn't cry. I didn't freak out. I was just like, I was like a zombie. And then you really treated me like a little kid because I remember he got me, like from a gas station. She got me like one of those Suduko books so I could do those puzzles, you know? And so I would, like, keep myself occupied in the car and eventually got me an iPad.

So I'm like, you know, like you try to keep your toddler occupied in the car watching movies on an iPad. Yeah, and finalize you, for sure. And I did ask him some questions. And what's Erie, and I explore this in my book some, is that nowadays, you hear people, even very accomplished people, entrepreneurs, you hear people now. it's sort of mainstream, especially like on Instagram reels or whatever. People talk about like parallel realities and like, what is reality? Are we living in a matrix? So he, a lot of the stuff that you now hear people say all the time are a lot.

And people that are successful and accomplished and have businesses and reputations will say some of that stuff. He was saying that as kind of his explanation for what was really going on. And he was like, just think of it like we're stepping into a parallel reality. And so we just have to go do this for a while, but we'll be back, and then everything will be as it was. Because I would be like, well, what about my brand? What about the trademarks? Like what, like, because in my head, he's driving me away. And part of me is thinking, like, well, who's going to renew the website URL?

And like, and, like, evidence of how completely dissociated I was is that he took me away from Leon, my dog, which is like, you know, Leon was like my kid. Wait, Leon didn't come with you at first? No, he didn't. Who was watching him? My mom. Your mom was watching him. Yeah, eventually we went back east. Had he already built in your mom, by the way, at this point?

Oh, he'd already built her. Yeah. So down the road, we did go back east and he got Leon back for me, which he made me believe was like, all going to be over. We're going to, like, we'll be back in the real world or something. But he did get Leon back for me, so I did have Leon in the end when I was arrested. But yeah, I mean, and I think part of why I, like, nowadays, now, I cry all the time, like, a lot. And I think in part it's because of that year, I was, like, everything was bottled up and I wasn't there.

And also, I didn't cry a lot when I was a kid. You know, I didn't cry when my parents got divorced, like, a lot of shit. I didn't cry a lot when I didn't have tantrum. So I seem to be making up for it now. But at some point, though, when, you know, you start off in Vegas, you end up working your way back in the middle America and to Tennessee. And at some point here, not like you're tracking it, but the restaurants closed down, people are like, hey, never got paid and so now like a case is out there saying oh my god like was there a fraud here let's get these people arrested we can't find them and you eventually you get leon back

you're in tennessee you're staying basically like shacked up in a in a hotel with shanthony and one day you know i guess FBI detectives like they what was it they used this is what they used with the headlines it was like someone ordered domino's pizza or something yeah so i didn't even know about the pizza until later on because we were in separate rooms we're in adjoining rooms and um um um he he had ordered a domino's pizza and somehow that's how they i don't remember if they arrested him in the lobby like i didn't i wasn't aware of any of this because he's in a different room so what ends up happening is that i'm in my room and i hear all this commotion in the hallway which weird because we were kind of at the end of the hall and so it wasn't like other guests or people

are around much and because i had leon leon's barking because somebody's right outside the door and so i go open up the door and i see like these cops out there and i'm like oh can i help you and they're like no go back in your room and i was like uh and then they go wait that's her and i'm like what you know and then they come into my room and i'm and then that i'm just like what and then And I think the detective had, I know he showed me my own photo on his phone. And the way I remember it is like it had some sort of like a wanted sign on it. I don't know if it said wanted or whatever, but it was some kind of a, it was clearly a picture of me. And as I very often posed and it was like a promotional headshot of me where I'm like this with my tattoo, right?

So then they come into the room. Ella McKay, coming to theaters December 12th. Your father's here. Why? A heartwarming new comedy from James L. Brooks. I'm a different person. I have never been in my life out this way about any other woman. Jesus! I wasn't counting your mother!

It's a perfect holiday comedy about an imperfect family. You can use a scream, Ella. Starring Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Camel Nanjani, Iowa DeBerry, with Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson. You should do that every afternoon. Ella McKay. You and the Per Noelle, the pro, the embalage, Cado. Rhesis is to demand,

the co-te-de-d-bellage, is who the maillard? The mull Reese on bird-arachid make your art of the deballage and with three mull on barred-arachid,

cream-e and chocolate fornard-pournard-a-pacet, you have to what to train to. To find, and again, and again, this pleasure

sucre-sallie and again, and again. The Pern-N-H-N-Biscuys, you, Tarr-Rise. There's nothing like Reisis.

Somehow explained to me that they arrested him or you know we've arrested your husband and like there was no like you're under arrest I think they just immediately could see that I was in shock

and Leon's like barking Leon was oddly excited because he's like oh these dudes are here to play with me like you know he was so friendly that he's like jumping around and I'm like oh sorry my dog he's really friendly so I'm trying to explain like I'm like my dog's really friendly like what's going on like what's happening

and then I probably was like You also very frail at the time, too, like, you know, you haven't been eating a lot or anything. Yeah, and I think what I, since they had already arrested Shampany, this, this detective Ray Brown, he said to me later, like, yeah, I, I don't know what he said, but, and maybe he said this in the docu, in the show, Bad Vegan, because they interview him in that show, but he clearly could recognize, like, oh, he's a certain. type. And so I think because he could recognize that he is a certain type, I am, you know, I am the, I'm the prey. The end of the, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm the prey. So I think he quickly recognized that, that I was the prey and so much so that they were very kind about, I was completely panicked about what's going to happen to Leon. Like, that was my biggest concern. I was like, what's going to happen to my dog? You know, like, you can't put him in a, and they said, well, ma'am, we'll take

him to the local pound. And I was like, oh, my God, you can't take him the pound. He's a rescue dog. Please don't take him the pound. And I'm like, we're in this crazy, bizarre town in Tennessee. And I'm like, but you can't take him to the, at that point, I started to cry. And I'm like, please don't take him to the pound. Please don't take him the pound. He has a rescue. Like, I don't, like, and I'm in Tennessee. Like, who the fuck isn't going to come get him, right? And so very quickly, they were like, all right, you know, Kevin here, he likes dog. Kevin will take him home for you like they were so kind to me you know not because i'm some like a white lady or whatever they knew they knew that that guy is a bad dude and whatever happened i'm something weirds up here

yeah and could you see because again it's very hard for people to understand this without experiencing it but naturally like your staff was very upset about what happened they ended up not getting paid and everything and some of them were interviewed you'd obviously in bad vegans some of them had really nice things to say others were like well we liked her and then she didn't pay us and they were upset about that could you see why they'd be like i don't know if i buy this like this like i don't understand what happened here like she's just trying to get out of it she she didn't well i can see why they don't understand what happened but i also there was one of those interviews where the the the employee is presented as being particularly skeptical and i know for a fact his well no i don't know for a fact i know i'm pretty sure his interview was edited in a way and he was kind of manipulated to say certain things because when that show came out you know he's like oh how are you doing love you sarah mama you know like they're all like that they all all of them every single one of them are that way and i'm like and then it comes across do you realize what you

said in the end of the show, you know, like, I don't think he even realized it. So, um, I think the director needed to kind of insert some of that element. I mean, they probably could have found, if they had found any employees to say shitty things about me, they would have had to find people who work there for like the last three months and didn't know me at all and had no history there, you know, but, um, yeah. Well, you, and this was something I was talking about with you before, it was like what, like six million dollars or something like that? That's what they were trying to say was the money that was gone.

Is that right? Or did I just make that up? No, that number does come out because I was trying to figure out at the end of it. Of course, I feel like no matter what happened, I feel responsible for everything. And then there's all this unpaid sales tax and all the money that was borrowed and money that's just owed all over the place, including like the money that my, you know, father. family had to like come up with for bail and legal fees and just the money that was taken from my mother and all the debt from before so i basically had estimated that at that moment in time

it was like yeah i owe like six million dollars that's where that came from um but he had gotten a couple of million dollars out of me i don't know the exact number because it's not like i was keeping a tally but but they were then calling that like out of the business and that's why they were charging you and also like it was you know and unfortunately this is like how this world works they do what they can sell too right like you're the popular good looking blonde lady who owns the popular restaurant and they can sell the domino's pizza and the headline right and i didn't even know so i didn't know that he had ordered a pizza the vegan lady ordering dominoes the way that i found out about the pizza was through another woman in the in the Tennessee jail where because

I was in this holding cell for six days that was not fun. It was like a big bathroom with a toilet in the corner. And this one woman comes in one day, and she's like, you're that lady from New York, aren't you? And I'm like, what? Yeah. She said, I've seen you on the news last night. You're that lady.

Got arrested because of a pizza. And I'm like, what is she talking about a pizza? And then Ray Brown, the detective, came in to see me. twice he came into the jail to talk to me and he told me that the pizza was creating all this commotion and that their office was kind of inundated with calls from press wanting details and so he came in to talk to me about it and he was like yeah well that's how we found you guys is because he had ordered a domino's pizza and I'm like oh okay point being it's like that's how that's how the media system works right and even when they were fact corrected because I mean

not that like in the grand scheme of things who cares about this stupid pizza narrative but they the the detectives um and i think one of them said this and bad vegan too you know he said yeah we were very clear with the media that she had nothing to do with the pizza but they're like ah fuck it it's a really good headline and you become the focus so they make it they make that the headline and then yeah and then i became the focus and it's the case was strange because i don't think it ever would have become a criminal case except for this one the one guy who went

and made it into a criminal case I know who did that and he was eerily enough he was this one investor where Shantany had said don't take money from that guy don't take his money and I was like but I need money

to reopen the restaurant I'm like I don't at this point I'm not picky about where the money's coming from and he had said don't take that guy's money and that's the guy I'm I don't think I know it 100%, but I think he's the one who turned it into a criminal case. Because I would have thought it would just be like a civil thing. Like, sure, those people could have sued me for the investment having gone awry or whatever.

But it's not like that all of that investment money I then took and ran off with. And that's how the indictment and the tabloids made it seem like I raised all this money from investors and then ran off with it all. Well, because the money was raised from investors went in to reopen the business. And then he built, he built money. But then he was able to get some money out of the business. Right. And then we left. And so there, because you guys are a couple, and regardless of the other circumstances,

that's why they put the two of you in together. And then you are the more sellable headline there, which, you know, it's not your fault, but that is just how it is. Right. And I mean, if the prosecutors thought that on the surface, I'm like, you know, I'm this shitty person who took all this money and screwed over my employees and they all this money like yeah of course i could see how they would want to get that person who did that yeah but i would have thought that very quickly they would the more evidence that was pulled up

the more they got out of you know my computer my background our communications our text messages the journal our emails the journal um well the journal they didn't i don't know when it turned up but i didn't find out about the journal until much later and um but i anyway i their way I just would have thought like all right well surely once they look into this they'll realize that like this was my biggest nightmare come true and um but yeah no they never did and then I was out on bail so I was in Tennessee for 10 days or so then I get extra extradited to Rikers and that was surreal and that was the first time I saw him again is right we're getting extradited and that was really weird because by then I've had like 10 days

of coming, there was never like a wake-up moment where I knew, there was never a moment where it was like, okay, 100% he's a fraud. It was like this sort of slow process of this gradual realization of this is my biggest nightmare coming true. Oh my, like, it happened in various stages. But seeing him again when we were extradited to Rikers was really, really bizarre. but were, you know, I mean, you know, that, like, picture of Luigi when he's got the, like, yeah, yeah, I mean, I wasn't in the orange uniform, but had, you know, the shack. I'm back in my, like, dirty, gross clothes that I'd come into, into the Tennessee jail with, and, but I have, like, the big old leather belt, and I'm handcuffed going through the airports and getting flown back to New York with marshals on either side. but they were they were the even those marshals transporting us were pretty they were nice to me it wasn't they weren't treating me like i'm some kind of threatening hardened criminal but either way

the two like they they charge the two of you they used kind of the headlines on you and all that but like that's what i'm saying there's something there where the prosecuting offices want to win right that's what they do and that can that's That's really messed up. That can go the wrong way. And they could have, you know, they could have really looked into it and gone, oh, wow, look at, like, this man defrauded her mother. He defrauded her. They could have put the focus on him.

And they could have thrown it out. And they could have then spared the people that were, who were destroyed and messed over after me. You know what I mean? But instead, they didn't focus on him, so he got out after a year and then went on to screw over all these other people, which is depicted in this other series called. toxic he should have been sentenced way longer and all that but the interesting part with this is i'm just looking at this from the outside looking in without having heard the prosecutor speak because they weren't interviewed in the in the documentary and all that and just knowing the context of like the sdn y and the eastern district and all the cases i've seen and covered in here that goes through

there the fact that for a story this big with that many headlines and who you are and you know the amount of money and the victims of investors and then there's the employees on the back end, the fact that they, because you had to take a plea deal because you had no money and you're going against a behemoth, which is unfortunately how the system is designed and it's the smart move in that scenario. But like the fact that they sentenced you, it was three and a half months in prison. It was four months, but because I'd already spent some time there. Right. So four months in prison for that kind of headline of a case and those kinds of charges tells me that even if you want to make the case and it's a fair case that like they

should have looked into it more and said like hey maybe this was actually all this guy's fault and she was a pure victim here it tells me that there were people in that courtroom on the other side of the desk and probably at the judge's seat going all right this is not exactly what it looked like the judge seemed to know kind of yeah the judge seemed to know that something messed up it happened. And he did say at my sentencing that it seemed clear that there was lots of evidence that I had tried to run my business in good faith. And when he said that, it made the sentence. I don't know how to describe it, but I felt like, okay, fine, I, you know, I'll go back and do the sentence. But the fact that he said that made it so much. A little affirmation for you.

It was some affirmation. Yeah. I'd be really curious if he would, like, I don't know how I would ever know this, but if the judge would read my book because, I don't know, maybe he wonders what the hell happened. I wish that they would, I wish he would read my book so we'd understand for subsequent cases. I mean, this kind of stuff usually is more important for family courts to understand when these types of coercive control manipulation stuff is going on in where it's being resolved in a family court. there's like a custody battle and tragically kids are involved because they'll very these people very often weaponize the sure the whole legal process but yeah i mean i think you're right that the you know they had laid out this whole indictment and i thought that they would start to the more evidence they pulled up and then what ended up happening is it was i know it was

my birthday because i remember it was which is september in i had been arrested in May. I'm out on bail. It's now that summer. And then it's September. And I got a call from my lawyer. And she said, I just found out the, the prosecution has recovered, a journal of yours. And I'm like, a journal of mine. Where did they get a journal of mine? Well, apparently it was among Anthony's belongings. Like a journal of mine. Yeah, it's from 2014, 2015. She's like, Yeah, I haven't seen it yet. They're going to send me a PDF. I'll send it, you know, when I get it.

And I'm like, my first thought is just that it's weird that like, oh, my, everybody's reading my journal. Like, that's weird. But I'm like, why did he have, why did he keep my journal? And then she sent it to me the next day. That day was my birthday. Because I remember I'm going to this job actually in New Jersey and I'm in the way back getting a ride in the car and with these two people in the front and they're playing loud

music and I'm she had just sent me the the PDF of my journal and I'm on my phone like scrolling and I could read it really fast it's my own messy handwriting it's like a PDF but I can scroll it and I'm reading it and reading it and I just start crying quietly but I just start crying because I'm thinking I'm thinking to myself like oh my god like this is it like I'm just exonerated like there's nobody who could read this and think that like I'm an asshole that tried to do all this. Like, I'm like it's all there in the journal. I'm writing about being terrified of him. I'm afraid of him. Like, why is he making me send him another wire? I don't understand what's going on. Like, I want to, the whole journal, which if anybody's curious, like, I've

thought about, like, I should just post the whole thing somewhere with a link and people can read it. How long, like, is this over a couple years, this journal kind of thing? It starts, I think it starts January 1st, 2014. And I write in it periodically. And then there's periods where it drops off. And then I write in it the beginning of 2015. And then one of the last journal entries I write, I write something like, I write something alluding to this whole sexual abuse thing that happened, which they cut out of bad vegan. And what happened there? There's a whole, like, really cringe, icky, explicit chapter in my book about when that really started. But I allude to it in my journal and I say something about how I refer to like those girls in Ohio. And I somehow allude to this kind of really icky sexual abuse. That he would do to you. That he did, yeah.

As a married couple. well again as you said we weren't like a normal married couple so it's not like we never slept in the same bed and we weren't we know we were in separate hotel room so we're clearly not behaving like a married couple but you're also by this time he'd like i mean he he's now you know he's become this person that's terrorizing me so i'm afraid of him but this is where that weird trauma bond thing happens where where like you're terrified of this i'm terrified of this guy but yet he's just also the only person who can get me out of it and the only person that knows what I'm going through

so it creates this fucked up bond so because I remember having these sometimes as much as I hated him and I was terrified sometimes the idea of like if he just abandons me then I'm stuck with this whole problem you know he's the only one who can get me out of it is how it seems so

but you know like yes like yes I had sex with him early on you but over time like I'm like that's no longer happening so you know he didn't he didn't physically turn you on over time no it's the other way around I was repulsed by him and so and then this is also this so this is what he starts doing after I got the restaurant reopened which

it I find it really impressive I think it's objectively impressive that I was able to raise money and get that place back open and like, oh, it's operating me down. It's like, holy shit. Yeah, and I went through, I mean, that was exhausting. And meanwhile, the whole time he's there berating me and torturing me. Just like I'm trying to get the restaurant open and he will is like yelling at me to go run errands for him or something and like, you know, and then questioning me

like some kind of interrogation about who did I meet with and what did they say and what happened and blah blah blah just that's when it really was ramped up in the most extreme level of like culty control and bullshit and even did this thing that I heard Leah Remini from Scientology explain this in an interview and I think she talked about it on our show where she actually talked about it on her podcast with Sarah and Nippie where in Scientology they would do this thing where they would sit you down and then berate you and try to provoke you and you'd have to not get angry and if you get angry there's going to be consequences and so it's like a training you to not respond to this abhorrent behavior and but it's presented in a way as if we're teaching you to not react to your emotions yeah so he did the same thing to me and would sit me down in this dark apartment and scream at me and berate me and he would take he did these things he knew really irritated me he'd take my phone right in front of me and start going through it why did you text this person

what did they say and um and like pushing me around and just and i would have to like not i would have to sit there and not get mad and he framed it as if he was trying to teach me to not be reactive and would say that any time i lost my temper bad things would happen and that the restaurant closed the first time around because I had lost my temper and freaked out on him like a couple of weeks before. So anything negative happened blamed it on me. When did this turn in more sinister like into sexual abuse? All of it was gradual but what happened so he's already doing the stuff where he's like sitting me down yelling at me brating me and I'm like exhausted and but I had gotten the restaurant open which all which was what mattered more to me than anything else and this is I think I said

before, I think he felt that this might have been a point where he might have lost control over me because I might have, now that I've got the restaurant open, I could have maybe gone to one of the investors or somebody. I could have at that point found a way to like get the fuck away from him, right? Like I'm in all this debt, all this messed up stuff has happened, but I could have theoretically potentially gotten away from him at that point. And I think he knew that that might happen and so he had to make sure that didn't happen and i just remember um he i was working late because now i'm at now i'm back being at the restaurant all the time again i'm there early in the morning till late at night and he sends me a message and i have all this in my book he's like

bring home a bottle of wine and i'm like okay but i'm like he doesn't drink why is he want me bring me home a bottle of wine and i'm thinking like oh maybe there's some good news like maybe finally this is all over or whatever so i come home with the bottle of wine And he wants me to drink. And then he explains to me that he has to put me through this thing. This is another culty thing. India Oxenberg explains in, I don't think so much in the vow, but there's another documentary that she made about her experience in Xiam.

And when Keith Rainiery, like, forces her to do all the sexual stuff, but he frames it as if it's part of her development and therapy. And a lot of cult leaders do this, and it's really icky. They're also married to this guy. something about that that's like you're stuck I you know this is like a part like he's my husband like he's trying to care for me well it wasn't really that it was more it was more that by this time I'm already a place where I kind of weirdly have to do whatever he says because again if I lose my temper I'm going to lose everything I mean another very culty thing is like if you leave the

cult, your life is going to be ruined and everything you're going to be destroyed. And so he had me kind of convinced that if I ever walked away from him or turned away against him, that my life would be like a living hell for the rest of time and in perpetuity and doomsday scenarios. So I'm already conditioned to this place of like, I have to do what he says. So he, the weird part is he explains that he's like, I got to do some stuff here, you're not going to like it. And, you know, but it's part of, I don't remember what he said, but he's basically telling me that he's going to have to do all this stuff to me and he's going to have to be forceful. And, but he's got to do it.

It's just part of what has to happen as like, you know, to get to the next level or who the fuck knows how he phrased it exactly. But, and he's like encouraging me to drink. more of this wine and so it's kind of like he didn't he definitely didn't use this word but it's it's as if he said all right I have to rape you so and you just have to go through with it and I'm like yeah so he asked me if I had a pair of tights or something and I'm like tights and I found a pair of black opaque tights and he wanted to blindfold me so he blindfolded me and um and then uh basically it's like

enacting this scene where you know he's yelling at me and get on your knees and take all your clothes off and do this and blah and it's like this whole scene that i put it all in it was the most cringy chapter to write of my book because i described the whole thing and what i remember of it and um but But I remember after that, you know, and I'm crying and, you know, and he's doing all kinds of disgusting shit. And afterwards, I remember thinking that, like, something crossed my mind where I was like, oh, so that's what it feels like to get raped. Like, now I know what that feels like. But it's weird because you don't really think of it that way because legally I'm married to this guy. And not to mention, he told me this.

This is what he's going to do, right? So I can't, you know, in theory, I could have started, like, punching him, even though he could have physically overpowered me because he was big and strong. But, I mean, I could have started punching and kicking and screaming my head off. I'm in Manhattan. If you start screaming your head off in an apartment, somebody's going to come and hear you. So, you know, he basically told me I had to go through with this. but yeah and then afterwards he's of course he said he was never going to do it again but

what I write in my book is like which of course meant that of course he was going to do it again eventually so he was in there was there was I think that's more than then of course just he's trying to wear you down and control you I there's some sort of uh sexual uh that gratification there, for sure, that he's into. I think what gives these types of people hard on is the power, like the control, you know. And so it's in all levels. So the control of being able to control my behavior and all these scenarios, but then also that control by being able to do what he did to me in that scene. And so I have G-chats from the next morning where I'm like pissed off.

And all along, I would sometimes, I'm angry at him because the next morning, I'm going to get up and go early to the restaurant at like seven in the morning or eight in the morning or whatever it is. And I'm like running around to get ready. I got to walk Leon. I got to get to the restaurant. And I'm like, shit, where's my bra? Where's my bra? And I'm like, fuck, it's in his room. Shit, I have to go in his room.

I'm like, knocking on his door timidly. And he yells at me. And, you know, I'm like knocking. He's like, what the fuck do you want? you waking me up like a total asshole and I'm like oh and I go in there and I'm like I need my fucking bra you know and so I like grab my bra and run out and he's yelling at me like don't ever wake me up and whatever so when we have this G chat after when I'm at the restaurant um it's just that we have this conversation where I'm referring to like why the fuck do you

think my bra was in the first place fuck you you know and so I refer in writing various times subsequently to what he did and and I even used the word rape where I'm like you don't fucking rapes you know because he'd say something about like oh I love you and I'm like you don't fucking rape somebody you love and like oh you said that so I said that stuff in writing the prosecution had all of that they're reading all of that they saw all of that and still are like yeah fuck her she should go to jail and the prosecutor was still pushing for one to three years for me and him like the same sentence for me and him as if we're both culpable or equally i i could understand that fucked up shit happened i'm technically irresponsible give me probation or whatever or

even whatever the sentence was but but they didn't like it's almost like he was an afterthought like they didn't really care about him there's no focus on him and no he's out there just doing it and by the time the whole thing came to a conclusion he'd stayed and the whole time i was out on bail he'd stayed in Rikers. So he had already spent a year. So he gets released before I go in to serve my sentence. So he's out, clean slate, can go off the rest of his life, do whatever he wants. And I've got not only going and serve time, but then come out of that and deal with the aftermath of all the debt and everything that was destroyed. And like now it's on me to repair all that damage. Feel like you're in a good place now? No. It's been some years? I mean, I'm in a way better

place and I've learned a ton and so it is sort of psychologically fascinating you are definitely psychologically fascinating for sure like it's it's a wild ride and I really appreciate you going through everything with us today and like in the detail that you did I know I know that's a lot but we'll we'll put out we'll put these out separately probably a couple weeks apart or something like that but there will be two from this so book links down below so people could check that out if they want to compare that with the documentary that you laid out and explain what they didn't leave in there today, that's on Netflix. You can go check that too.

But thank you so much for doing this summer. Yeah, thank you. All right, everybody else, you know what it is? Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button

and smash that like button on the video. They're both a huge help. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.