National Post (National Edition)
DRUG MULE PROBE LAUNCHED
POLICE OPEN INQUIRY INTO ALLEGATIONS EX-VICE EDITOR SECRETLY RECRUITED COCAINE COURIERS FOR AUSTRALIA
THAT MAKES SEVEN PEOPLE ... ALLEGING THAT WHILE (YAROSLAV) PASTUKHOV WAS AN EDITOR AT VICE, HE OFFERED THEM MONEY TO TRAVEL FROM TORONTO TO LAS VEGAS, PICK UP SUITCASES WITH ILLICIT CARGO HIDDEN IN THE LINING, AND TAKE THEM TO SYDNEY. I WANT TO HEAR WHAT CRAZY KIND OF YARN THIS GUY IS SPINNING.
Aformer Vice Canada editor is now being investigated by Toronto police, after a National Post investigation led Vice to reopen an inquiry into allegations he tried to recruit journalists and artists into a transnational cocaine-smuggling ring while working at the company’s Toronto office.
The police probe into activities of Yaroslav Pastukhov, 26, Vice Canada’s former music editor who went by the names Slava Pastuk and Slava P, comes as the Post has learned three additional people — two journalists and an artist — claim Pastukhov approached them with solicitations like those reported last week.
That makes seven people, including four current or former Vice employees, alleging that while Pastukhov was an editor at Vice, he offered them money to travel from Toronto to Las Vegas, pick up suitcases with illicit cargo hidden in the lining, and take them to Sydney, Australia. Those making the allegations against Pastukhov include a Toronto musician now in prison in Australia after being caught, along with four others, at the Sydney airport with 37 kilograms of cocaine worth more than US$5 million.
In the wake of the Post’s investigation, Vice Canada this week made a formal report to police, almost a year after two employees first complained to management about Pastukhov, according to company officials. The Post was previously directly aware of only one internal complainant.
Toronto police confirmed Friday that a formal report on the matter has now been made and that an investigation is active, but would not comment on the case or the allegations.
Vice Canada has again retained Scott C. Hutchison, a partner in Toronto law firm Henein Hutchison who conducted the initial internal investigation, to continue its probe and has now offered Vice employees the opportunity to speak to him about any concerns, Vice said through a spokesperson.
“Because people have come forward and discussed some of these issues, through you,” Hutchison said of the Post’s investigation, “these issues have caused at least one person, I can indicate, who is prepared to speak with police.”
Vice Canada had not previously filed a report with police to respect the confidentiality of their employees, Hutchison said. Despite that, last week the company told the Post it “made contact” with police about the matter at the time of the firing.
This time, a report really has been filed, Hutchison said. “I will assure you the report has been made, I know that for a fact,” he said. “Not just contact with police, a formal report.”
When asked why Vice had not previously reached out to staff and contributors to determine the extent of the alleged problem, Hutchison said: “Hindsight is always perfect. At the time, it seemed that the issue had been addressed by dismissing the employee who was the source of concern.”
None of the allegations against Pastukhov have been proven in court. He declined to comment for the Post’s original story, and this week could not be reached for comment. A cellphone number he used last week is no longer in service, and he has not responded to the Post’s emails.
Vice staff have also received an offer of assistance from the Canadian Media Guild. “We understand that management at Vice is continuing their investigation into matters raised by the National Post article,” says a memo from CMG sent Feb. 7. Vice staff voted to unionize last year, but have yet to reach a collective agreement with the company.
It is more than just Vice employees who allege Pastukhov solicited them.
Aaron Matthews, 27, of Toronto, told the Post of a new — decidedly odd — recruitment appeal by Pastukhov.
Matthews was a hip-hop fan and fledgling writer when he met Pastukhov in 2012, before Pastukhov joined Vice. Matthews wrote and edited for Passion of the Weiss (PoW), a music blog based in Los Angeles. He read some of Pastukhov’s pieces in various online publications and contacted him about writing for PoW, Matthews said. Pastukhov’s articles started appearing on the website in June 2012.
“I always really liked him. He was a funny guy, very personable. Seemed quite ambitious,” said Matthews. (Jeffery Weiss, founder and editor of PoW, confirmed Matthews was an editor and Pastukhov a writer for his site at that time.)
After Vice hired Pastukhov in 2013 — becoming the Canadian editor of Vice’s music channel Noisey a year later — he and Matthews discussed Matthews writing for Noisey, Matthews said, but by then he had a job as an English as a Second Language teacher and didn’t want to take time off to do Vice assignments that he described as low-paying. He hadn’t heard from Pastukhov for more than a year when, on Dec. 8, 2015, he says Pastukhov sent him a private message through Twitter.
“Hey dude you still in towm,” it says. (All messages in this story are reproduced verbatim, including spelling errors. The Post has seen the messages sent from Pastukhov’s confirmed Twitter account but cannot verify Pastukhov sent them.)
Matthews said he replied that he was.
“That’s cool, do you have time for a phone call?” came the reply from Pastukhov’s account. On the phone, Pastukhov said he had an “opportunity” for him, Matthews said.
Like others who spoke to the Post, Matthews says he assumed Pastukhov was offering a freelance journalism assignment on behalf of Vice.
“He gave me a couple of warm-up questions, you know the sort of thing: ‘How you doing?’ ‘You still live in Toronto?’ And there was a weird question he asked which was ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’. … He also asked what her ethnicity was,” Matthews said.
“He explained the situation to me: ‘How would you like to go to Australia? How would you like to make some money?’”
Matthews was immediately wary, he said.
“You could smell some bullsh—t was in the air,” Matthews said. “I just thought, I’ll listen to this, I don’t think I’m going to say yes — in fact, I know I’m not going to — but I want to hear what crazy kind of yarn this guy is spinning.”
He said Pastukhov told him he was asking him because he looked a certain way — “because I’m a very innocuouslooking white guy,” Matthews said.
Matthews’ account mirrors other allegations made to the Post — an offer to pay $10,000 if Matthews took suitcases containing hidden cargo from Las Vegas to Australia. There was, however, a strange, new twist to the pitch not mentioned to the Post by others, according to Matthews.
“When he described the method of transport he talked about some kind of newfangled technology,” Matthews said.
Matthews recalled Pastukhov describing “some kind of space-age substance” that reacted at altitude, so that the contraband in the luggage changed form, making it easier and safer to smuggle through customs, Matthews alleges. Once back on the ground, it would eventually return to its original “sellable” form, he said he was told.
“He was saying there was some kind of odd chemical reaction. It didn’t sound like he had great knowledge of this himself. It didn’t sound like he was coming to it as an expert smuggler’s point of view.”
Pastukhov sounded like he was reading from a marketing script, Matthews said, noting marketing was Pastukhov’s day job before he was hired by Vice. (It is also a job to which Pastukhov returned after being fired from Vice. He was most recently working as a content marketing manager for a downtown Toronto firm that, following the Post’s first story on allegations against him, scrubbed references to him from its website. The company did not return several requests for comment.)
Matthews said he declined Pastukhov’s offer.
“I said ‘No, thank you’ very politely and ‘Good luck with your new opportunity.’”
A second Toronto artist also came forward publicly after the Post published the results of its investigation, claiming in a since-deleted social media post that Pastukhov tried to get them to participate in one of the alleged smuggling trips.
The artist told the Post that they would not comment and asked not to be identified “due to personal concern (for) my safety.”
Though the artist and Matthews say they rejected the alleged proposals, Toronto musician Jordan Gardner has alleged through his lawyer that Pastukhov, then Gardner’s roommate, badgered him to participate in such a trip. While in Las Vegas collecting the luggage containing the contraband, unknown men held a gun to Gardner’s head and threatened him and his family in Canada, his lawyer said. Gardner was later arrested in Sydney alongside three other Canadians and an American, all of whom have pleaded guilty and are in custody in Australia awaiting sentencing for importing a commercial quantity of a border-controlled substance. The maximum penalty is life in prison.
The timing of Pastukhov’s alleged offer to Matthews suggests he was being recruited for that same trip, or one like it.
“Yeah, that would have been me,” Matthews said. “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Solicitations to participate in international smuggling weren’t the only drug-related interactions current and former Vice employees allege they had with Pastukhov.
“I knew of Slava when I worked in Vice Canada’s office — though I never interacted with him,” said one former employee, who worked at the company in 2015 and asked that his name not be published.
“About a year after I completed my employment, I was swiping along my gay Tinder when I suddenly noticed his profile. I swiped ‘right’ mostly out of intrigue that he could be gay and that a match would solidify that it wasn’t appearing due to a glitch.
“We matched immediately. The thread was inactive for about a month until he messaged me, ‘I’m not gay but I sell weed,’” the man alleged was the response from the Pastukhov account.
The former employee says he did not respond to the message. The Post did not see the message and could not verify the Tinder response was sent by Pastukhov.
When told of the new accounts of Pastukhov’s alleged solicitation, Vice said the company “took immediate and swift action to address these claims through our human resources department,” and reiterated it had opened an investigation.