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Salesmen for the End Times—This Week On VICE: Members Only

This week behind the paywall: a Miami pimp’s cult falls apart, and fighting in Ukraine provides a lucrative side-hustle for someone selling anti-conscription masks.

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To get past the paywall, sign up for VICE membership. A Digital Only subscription is just $2 a month (or $20 a year, if you prefer), while $70 a year also gets you 4 issues of VICE magazine, delivered straight to your door. (All three kill all the ads on this site.)

Things aren’t looking good, economically. Perhaps you have noticed, on account of how a single red pepper now costs the same as a can of Pepsi in most cities. In times of financial desperation, people—especially women—tend to be pushed into more precarious positions. That’s partly how a Miami pimp called William Foster was able to lure in a stream of vulnerable young women with promises of stability and set-for-life wealth. Instead, they were embroiled in a vast money-making scheme involving mind control, sexual punishments, antipsychotic drugs, plastic surgery, and drastic crash diets.

In the latest issue of VICE magazine, The Self-Destruction Issue, VICE reporter Mattha Busby digs deep into the story of Foster’s........

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