Shane Fox, the real-life conman whose crime story the docuseries Bad Vegan: Fame, Fraud, Fugitive documents, is a serial fraudster who seems to just skate through life by leeching off his victims. Shane Fox is not even Shane Fox. The name Shane Fox is just one of the many aliases the conman Anthony Strangis uses.
Anthony Strangis was born on September 10, 1972, in Brockton, Massachusetts. He comes from a broken home. He did not have a normal and smooth upbringing. His parents split up when he was very young. His mother was unable to gain full custody of him so he split his time with both his parents.
Eventually, he grew closer to his father as he got older and moved permanently with him, which is just about the worst thing that ever happened to him because his father was not a very good man himself.
Anthony’s father once held his family hostage when Anthony’s mother threatened to leave him, and escaped the consequences with merely a clarification because he was a cop and the squad protected their own.
Anthony, prior to meeting Sarma Melngailis, had executed a fraud of similar nature with a different woman back in 2004. The victim was a woman named Stacy who he met in Tampa, Florida. Just like he did with Sarma, he told Stacy that he was a former Navy SEAL. In this case, however, he was staying in the country for his rehabilitation as he had been shot in the line of duty.
He told Stacy that they were reincarnated lovers who kept finding each other through time and Stacy, as much as it seems difficult to believe, fell for that.
Either he is extraordinarily charming or he has a knack for choosing extremely gullible and naive people as his target, or maybe both. But the loss had never been his, until only recently. For three months they dated and they got married. They even had a child together.
After trapping her with marriage and a baby, then came the excuses and lies and manipulation, which was his modus operandi. Apparently, there were demons after him and the only way to get rid of the demons was to start funneling money to a mysterious group.
To Stacy’s horror, he even in passing made a comment that a baby could be killed with salt as it wouldn’t show up in an autopsy.
