After watching the Netflix documentary my biggest concern was that Sarma didn't seem sorry at all about how she treated her investors and employees.

IDK why any woman who was playing with a full deck would have given Anthony more than 10 minutes of time. Sarma had some screws loose somewhere.

I think one of the saddest things in this unbelievable saga is that Sarma's mother lost all of her retirement money.

"There must be limits as to how much can be forgiven due to gullibility."

You know what Navy Seals rarely do? They rarely tell anyone that they’re a Navy Seal! You know what else? They rarely let themselves get obese! Good job, Dr. Grande, as ever!

The fact that she didn't respond to employees when they texted concerns makes me think she wasn't fully innocent. I think she liked the excitement Anthony brought because she's a typical bored person who just wants to be super special. She was born into some money so she didn't put a lot of importance on throwing it around.

Lol her defense basically boiled down to, "I'm just an idiot".

I live for Dr. Grande’s sarcasm “Hilaria was eating gazpacho and reading Don Quixote”. 😂🤣😂

I felt pretty bad for Leon. He seemed to have the most stable personality of any of the 3 of them and he deserved better.

I thought Sarma dodged a bullet not becoming romantically involved with Alec Baldwin...but then she met Anthony. 😳😳

After watching it, I was so confused and couldn’t believe some people’s mentality. She clearly doesn’t take any accountability for her role in this scam…🤔

as Sarma’s former landlord, I can attest to the fact that the lying and manipulation preceded Shane by MANY years. Basically, she stole tips from kids who trusted and admired her, never showed an iota of remorse, and persists in casting herself in the role of victim. Omitted- Im not certain as to why- is the physical attack she perpetrated against former beau and business partner Matthew Kenney, and the desperation with which her backer worked to “back out” of involvement with her. She is someone who milks the lovely surface of her beauty for maximum sympathy and personal benefit. She has largely left my family in ruin- having removed all the ventilation from the raw vegan restaurant. This is a vicious manipulator who has been depicted extremely favorably by Netflix.

I firmly believed she was manipulated but culpable in the whole scheme…right until the audio from that phone call after she got out of prison. It’s difficult to believe she would be so open to have a lighthearted conversation with someone who, for all intents and purposes, ruined her life. Spending any time on Rikers Island would be life changing, not for the better.

She's both. She knew at some point that she was being scammed and just went along with it. She's also a horrible employer. No one in their right mind would give her another chance to run another restaurant. If you never cared about your employees knowing they won't get their salaries, you are a horrible person and a no-good employer and should never be trusted to even manage a restaurant.

So glad you’re covering this! As I was watching, was really wondering “what is Dr. Grande going to say about THIS?” Thank you! 🙏🏽🌞

"He spoke her language of nonsense" hahahaha that made me legitimately laugh out loud. Well put, sir.

My take on Sarma after watching the documentary was that she grew up beautiful, privileged, and VERY sheltered. She’s obviously capable on a cognitive level but has some major gaps in judgment and common sense. We really can’t know what a person is made of until they have to overcome some type of adversity

“He spoke her language of nonsense”. I think your doing a great service for everyone. Calling it as it is, not sugarcoating the bs.

Both are perps, no victim in this arrangement. Both were willing to be deceptive and larcenous for entirely selfish reasons.

They were both guilty. During the doc she kept saying she didn't know they were on the run, didn't know he asked her mom for 450k, didn't know why she changed her name and covered her tattoos when they left NY. No accountability. I thought I'd feel bad for her but I literally spent most of the time screaming at the TV. Only victim is the investors and her employees

Dr. Grande's deadpan humor is everything

Interesting point about gambling not having that self-limiting aspect that drug abuse can have. I'd never thought of that.

I'm a vegan and not weird or manipulative like these people. I don't have guilt issues, either. I just don't want to harm or eat animals.

I was married to a gambling addict…in Las Vegas, so you can imagine how that went. It truly is a terrible & destructive addiction. I love it when you talk about personality disorders

I really hate how people are using her to somehow show that veganism and vegans are bad people. Just because someone lives a vegan lifestyle doesn’t mean they’re a good person when it comes to other aspects of their lives.

I have mixed feelings about this. I was in a relationship for a brief period of time with this type of person. I was in my twenties, and finally caught on due to my friends, butI was absolutely convinced that he was a Navy Seal and that he was a MENSA member . This was many years ago, but the documentary made me look him up. He died last year, and for some strange reason I feel relieved.He really messed with my head, and now I feel guilty for feeling relieved he’s gone. Please, stay away from narcissistic sociopaths. They’ll still haunt you 30 years later.

can’t believe how she could fall for this kind of scam when obviously she was intelligent for business

It boggles me how she fell for his nutso BS and dissed her loyal employees/friends. He was so creepy I don't know what any woman could see in him!

Listening to their phone convos I just can’t imagine how someone could stay with a man that talks to her like that. It’s very degrading but mostly it was just so annoying - the constant yelling and anger. It’s not like she was a nobody or was ugly. She was very pretty and successful and could’ve gotten someone so much better. Also why would a Black Ops navy seal be fat? So many red flags. There’s no way I don’t think she noticed

I’m stuck on the gullible part, how on earth could anyone really fall for such blatant BS! He was hardly subtle…..

Thank you so much for this! I mean, I felt I suffered 4 hours watching that documentary. To imagine that you have to do the same and study it then come up with your analysis...my hat's off for you, Doc.

I don’t think being a vegan has anything to do with the case. The big question should be “Why did a sometimes smart, pretty woman have trouble finding someone?”

I don't know how this intelligent woman can succumb to Anthony's mind manipulation. Sarma is a beautiful, intelligent woman, yet she must have had some sort of self loathing to allow Anthony to deplete her not only financially but make her doubt her reality.

Afternoon Dr. G., An intriguing post about gullibility, manipulation and narcissistic behavior. Thanks for the enlightening perspective.

I am vegan, and not at all prone to magical thinking or guilt transference. I am a believer in evidence, not faith. I don’t eat animals because I don’t need to. I take personal responsibility not to contribute to the cruelty of the meat and dairy “industry” and the degradation of the planet. There is concrete science and morality behind my decision. I am a retired nurse in my 70s, ideal weight, clear complexion, energetic and healthy. I don’t ridicule others for what they choose to eat, and I don’t announce my preferences to others when invited to dinner.

Wow. That guy's claims were some of the stupidest I have heard in a long time, and the fact that she believed them (or that she even wanted to) is beyond sad. How does one have a "normal" life after such actions?

he seems like the opposite of the kind of guy that an attractive cosmopolitan vegan would go for. I can't understand why she was impressed with all the military stuff. I thought vegans were against that too.

When I watched the documentary I found her statement about the possible relationship with Alec to be random and had no purpose. Was it her way of saying my life would have been different only if? And how could anyone seriously believe someone could make their dog immortal? 🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️

I just finished watching that entire documentary. I was blown away on how well this guy wiggled his way into all these people's lives and there pocket books

I understood from the documentary that Sarma did not have sexual feelings toward Anthony. They seemed to be using each other financially, although Anthony benefited the most because of his lies.

I was waiting for this analysis. Thanks for explaining how Sarma could be a victim but still partially responsible for being too gullible.

An inspiring story for all lazy, broke, unemployed, out of shape, and larcenous losers. Your soulmate is out there somewhere.

I've been the victim of narcissism , and until I learned this term and studied what it really meant, I had no idea how hateful, cold and evil these people really are. Time and time again narcissistic con artists flatter and deceive lonely women. They study them, groom them and then become their ideal "saviour". Sarma is not the first beautiful, intelligent woman to be taken in in this way. When I watched the documentary, what stood out to me most was how she CONTINUALLY pushed aside her gut instincts. As I've looked back on my relationships with narcissists I can see how I did the same - red flags are the words we use to describe that feeling in your gut that something is off. Depending on our own upbringing, life values, experiences, needs etc, sorting out what to believe can be very complicated! One has to dig very deep, peel back layers to figure out why we have certain behaviours and beliefs, where they come from and what drives us. It's not only men who are narcissists of course. Empathic men such as Will Smith and Prince Harry have also been targeted by deceptive narcissistic women, and we see them doing very out of character things as a result.

I don't like her!! She let that con artist steal her own mother's life savings that she needed to retire on!! That's unforgivable and inexcusable!! And after he failed to repay the first $10,000 I wouldn't have given him another dime! She knew money was leaving her business too! She's either guilty as sin or dumb as a box of rocks!! Great video Dr. Grande!!!

It's not just the vegan community in which magical thinking runs rampant. The raw vegan community is even worse. I got sucked into the cult-like raw vegan world when I was a teenager and following the advice of a bunch of "gurus" nearly destroyed my life. I went to Sarma's restaurant (which was surprisingly delicious), and owned hers and Matthew's recipe book. At the time, seeing her as this smart, well-educated, beautiful, vegan business owner, she was kind of a role model to me. However, she always struck me as strange and I couldn't quite figure out why. She just seemed a little stiff and dead behind the eyes. I stopped paying attention to her around the time she was arrested; I was so deeply indoctrinated by veganism back then that I was more turned off by her eating non-vegan food than her criminal activity. Reflecting on all of this - her odd, flat affect, her gullibility, and susceptibility to manipulation - I wonder if she might be on the autism spectrum.

Oh this is PERFECT! I just walked out the door of my job, now I get to listen to Dr. Grande on my ride home.niiiiice😎

Recently, there seems to be a rash of documentaries about scammers, gas lighters and the like. It is fascinating in a weird way, but "Bad Vegan" could have been told in less than four hours, it's repetitious and really drags. I love the way Dr. Grande calls out poseurs.

The Netflix documentary is strange to me because in the calls, she sounds like she can’t stand Anthony. Maybe these weren’t the actual calls and they were not getting the tone right. She sounded like he was a nuisance that she couldn’t stand. Not a man she was “following” or in a relationship with.

Thanks so much for doing this one, Dr. Guru! So lemme get this straight. Neither decades on Earth NOR an expensive degree from Penn have to hinder you from being the queen of a utopia in the clouds with your immortal dog after shoveling over hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone who gets fat just for you! Do I have that right?

It’s amazing AND encouraging that people SO delusional are still able to be worth millions 🤯

they had absolutely NOTHING in common except an inherent wish to be something special..but that was still enough for him to get his con artist fangs deep into her neck..this is scary & shows how little it takes for scammers, long con artists & cult leaders to recruit their victims..they just play on their vanity & magical thinking..these scammers might be the only ones to beat narcissists at their own game ..oh well

It's beyond obvious they made all this crap up to fall back on for when they eventually got caught. Extremely disappointed in how many people seem to be falling for her act.

Thank you Dr. Grande for another comprehensive and clear analysis.

" they tend to think of animals as more like humans." Choosing to acknowledge the sentience of other animals might seem that way to people who are not. That's sad because I know that one of the main things that bothers vegans is seeing animals brutally and miserably denied the opportunity to express their natural capacities unique to their own species.

As someone who is not easily manipulated, I had trouble understanding how Sarma believed his lies, but my main takeaway from watching the series was that Sarma seems as though she hadn't properly processed a lot of what happened. She'd switch from being highly articulate to answering a question with 'I don't know' and she seemed genuinely confused about some of her own actions. I absolutely agree that she knows right from wrong and had to be accountable, but I wish we could hear her side of things 5 years from now when she's hopefully gone to therapy or worked through it all a lot more. She seemed like she hadn't fully untangled herself from the fantasy yet.

So glad that Dr. Grande is here to ‘filter’ my Netflix viewing choices. (You’ve definitely saved me from losing several hours of my life) ☺️👌✨

The worst part about when narcissists split up is that now other people have to learn how horrible they are. As for Gambling, I've seen at least two examples of it destroying families.

I just finished watching the documentary last week. From my perspective of all the contributing factors (how Sarma was as a child/teen, her sister saying she needed to help Sarma express her feelings) and how she spoke and was in front of the camera, how she and her employees described her personality being able to be very professional in the restaurant but then being very withdrawn and almost anti social when not working in the restaurant) I feel like she could very well be Autistic. That would greatly influence hurt naivety to being manipulated as well as putting up with the verbal abuse (Anthony was exceptionally verbally and emotionally abusive). It would also effect how she expresses any remorse or fall out from the whole ordeal and I genuinely felt deeply empathetic for her. I also am very aware of narcissistic traits from my own life experiences (although Anthony to me fits someone with NPD not mere traits). I feel she was an absolute victim

"Feelings of inappropriate guilt..." I often say that I was born with a guilty conscience. For the first 45 years of my life, I could commit the slightest offense or mistake and then believe that I had done something very wrong and I was a terrible human being. Or, if someone even suspected that I was guilty of something of which I wasn't, I would FEEL guilty.

She knew exactly what was going on! She may look young but she's 50, 10 years older than Anthony, I think she liked the situation and at the end of the Netflix documentary he tells her out of all the people he ever met, she's the smartest, her answer? "I agree"

Fantastic content. Thanks so much! One of my newfound favourites

“She’s was okay with subjecting her poor dog to living with her forever” Omg I fell out laughing!

Dr Grande, you explain with remarkable clarity. I’ve learned much from your channel.

"Anthony was a reincarnated navy seal demon magnet" I cannot fuggan breath I am laughing so hard lmfao Dr. GRANDE!!! It's Sunday now BE NICE holy shid that was a good one!

Coincidence! Just watched part one two days ago and wondered if you'd cover this case. I thought she might be a victim, but seeing the employees stiffed of their wages I'm think she's as bad as him. Great analysis presented as adeptly as ever. Would she be a narcissist who met an even bigger manipulative narcissist than herself.

I really needed Dr. Grande to analyze this case. He did an amazing job as always, making me laugh a lot too😂

"I guess she had to put her shape-shifting utopian queen plans on hold." 😂 ( I hate that, when that happens)

She dodged a bullet not hooking up with Alec Baldwin, but as a vegan, she could already pronounce cucumber

...awesome on the Vallow-Daybell comparison and what an insane story!

Is it just me or am I enjoying these videos too much, lol?

As one of the folks who asked for this, I thank you Todd! You and I had basically the same view of this from the available data. I love your academic approach, as it is a breath of fresh air in a sea of pop psychology and other weird trends. Solid analysis. Dr. Klajic

God damn it! Dr Grande!!!!You NEVER EVER disappoint with your choices of topics. I love your dissections and discussions. Love the content. You ROCK!!

I watched it too.. there's something for everyone here, but the story isn't new or all that interesting; woman achieves success, but is lonely. Woman meets man online who gaslights her, love-bombs her, then cons her out of house and home. Then they both pay the price. This has been happening forever. Nothing more to see here folks.

I saw the the documentary this woman was so blind that she destroyed everything she worked and lost her freedom.

Thank you SO much for covering this!😊

Thank you, you saved me a lot of time watching this.

That Netflix documentary should have been 2 episodes. It was like slowly ripping off a band-aid! I am much more content with Dr Gs storytelling than Netflix. Quick and to the point!

FYI…I am vegan but do not feel any guilt for other people choices…✌️

I for one needed the funnies in this episode! I had not heard of this case, very interesting for sure!!

You're too funny! I just discovered your videos and am really enjoying them. Yes, you have smart and educated analysis of stories I am very interested in. But mostly, your dry sense of humor has made me literally laugh out loud several times in every video. Thank you!! I am happy to have encountered you.

When he said fantastical thinking often associated with Vegans, I fell out laughing! Great analysis Dr. Grande. I feel bad that she got played so badly though. She could have been successful, but she fell pray to a user.

so glad you cover this she goes into more detail on her blog actually as the ending of the series was factually inaccurate, she has paid the staff now with the netflix money, she couldn’t afford to fight shane on the grounds of coercion, in england coercion is illegal

Yes!! Dr. Grande, I've been waiting for this one. Interested to hear your thoughts. Here we go!!!! .....

Good Afternoon, Dr. Grande. Always eager to listen to your thoughts. 👌

Once again, these people were convicted of stealing over TWO Million from people and get only one year and 4 months jail time. To me, stealing 2 million and have to spend less than a year in jail is worth it.....

Love your humor delivery. I’m always amused

I love the analysis but your humor makes it even better.

''She was ok with subjecting her poor dog to the misery of living with her eternally.'' LOL

ROFL … it was so hard to stop laughing after the, “she was okay with subjecting her poor dog to the misery of living with her eternally.” I’m so grateful for your dry wit, Dr. Grande; laughing out loud is priceless.🙏❤️

I been waiting on this thanks Dr.

Really interesting episode! Great analysis.

If not for hearing the phone calls I would never have realised how narcissistic mind control works. He berated, swore, made her feel crazy, wrong, doubting herself. He makes out that she's the one doing him wrong by refusing to give more money. When she tries to get a straight answer from him he attacks then tries to pull her back in with love bombing. Plus he also conned her mum and others. What's worse is he's now free and able to con others. Con artists don't change, we've all seen how that ends.

Hard to believe she was that gullible. She had to know…

Thank you so much for covering this.

Your subtle sarcasm is GOALS.

In my native country, sarma means cabbage rolls. They taste good but smells terrible. I will never understand why women/men buy those grand stories their potential mates claim.

Lately, I have been watching your videos every night to help me fall asleep. Your voice is very calming. By the way, I'm vegan, and I think of animals as children. I do not believe in magic or god or gurus.

"A reincarnated, navy seal, demon magnet..." Dr. Grande's dry sense of humor KILLS me! 🤣 Seriously though - Sarma must have some cards missing from her deck if she believed 1/4 of the garbage coming out of Anthony's mouth. I couldn't watch the series through - Sarma was maddeningly and continuously stupid.

Wow, thank you for this analysis!

Dr. Grande, I enjoy your videos a lot. Could you make an analysis on the leaked 2022 Batman's movie scene with the Joker? I just watched your previous videos on the character and remembered that.