A former editor at perpetually-edgy millennial site Vice has been accused of offering his interns huge bribes to become drug mules for an international criminal gang.
Yaroslav Pastukhov, who used to edit the music section of Vice Canada, allegedly offered $10,000 payments to cash-strapped junior staff to make illegal drug runs that could land them with life prison terms.
The accusations emerged Thursday when an investigation into Pastukhov – aka Slava Pastuk – was published by Canada’s National Post.
It was prompted by another associate of Pastukhov – his former roommate – being arrested on drug charges at an airport in Australia.
According to several former Vice writer who spoke to the Post, Jordan Gardner was busted running the exact same scheme Pastukhov has offered them – though nobody accepted.
Here’s how one of their sources described the plan:
He said, basically: ‘All you got to do is you take this trip to Las Vegas and then Australia. You stay two weeks in Las Vegas, two weeks in Australia.’
‘The person you bring with you has to be a kind of pretty girl, white preferably, shorter than you. And you guys can’t drink or get high while you’re in these places’
‘And then you just come back and all you got to do is just carry a suitcase with you the entire time and I’ll give you $10,000 when you get back.’
Pastukhov allegedly refused to say what was in the suitcase, but the source says the implication that it was illegal drugs was obvious.
The Post said it repeatedly tried to put its allegations to Pastukhov, who only replied “no comment”. His Twitter account has also recently been deleted.
No police action appears to have been taken against him.
A Vice spokesman was quick to defend the company’s actions, saying that it fired Pastukhov as soon as it had any idea of the claims surrounding him.
However, it is impossible not to note that illegal, underworld activity like this is exactly the kind of thing Vice loves to glamorize in its reporting.
In the words of one former staffer: “We work at a place that we write about drugs a lot. Not just in a newsy way but in, like, a ‘Drugs-are-cool-let’s-get-fucked-up’ way”.
The Post asked Vice CEO Shane Smith about his own warm words for the cocaine trade, allegedly expressed in a 2013 interview with comedian Joe Rogan.
Asked about his comment: “I learned all my business acumen being a drug dealer because it’s pretty fucking simple” and the imperative to “mitigate risk”, Smith only responded: “WTF?! So stupid”