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 “sex cult,” speaking to multiple women who left after he was arrested and sentenced to 60 years in prison.“‘His plan for me was to work out, do the lemon diet and become a better version of myself,’ Vicky says. ‘But I was always in trouble for drinking and partying.’ Such pleasures weren’t permitted while they were supposed to be focusing on earnings. After the lemon diet left her in hospital with a stomach ulcer, another, more intense form of abuse followed. ‘He’d always joke that other pimps would punish their girls by having anal sex with them, and joked about doing it himself,’ she says. Eventually, Foster got tired of Vicky’s failure to abide by his every word, so he moved himself into her room for a couple of months and followed through on his threats. ‘He used that as a punishment against me multiple times,’ she recalls, her voice cracking. ‘It was extremely painful. But it was anything to make him happy, in my head.’ Eventually, she had to go to hospital.”Read the full story in The Self-Destruction Issue (we’re sold out, but copies are available at our beloved stockists) or behind the paywall below:‘Welcome to the Family’: Inside the Sex Cult of Miami’s Most Diabolical PimpElsewhere in financial opportunism news, war in Ukraine provides a lucrative side-hustle for people selling anti-conscription masks.Since 2022, full wartime mobilization has been in place in Ukraine. Men aged between 18 and 60 are required to maintain military registration and are restricted from leaving the country. In terms of atmospheric panic, footage of masked gangs of agents from the Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support (often referred to as the TCC, or TЦK in Ukrainian) strong-arming members of the public into vans hasn’t exactly helped. In response to people, quite understandably, not wanting to be kidnapped and sent to war, cunning entrepreneurs are selling “hyper-realistic” silicone masks that supposedly enable the wearer to pass as a woman or an old man (both of whom are exempt from mobilization). They don’t look very good. The effect is sort of like Tim Robinson in that one I Think You Should Leave sketch. Still, their popularity speaks to the human urge to a) exploit a crisis for personal financial gain and b) not get blown up by a drone.“For me, it just shows the sheer inventiveness of what people are willing to do to hide their identity,” Ukrainian photographer Julie Poly tells VICE. Finding herself with a box of spare anti-conscription masks, she put them to good use for a photo story in The Self-Destruction Issue, turning the bizarro masks into a fashion editorial for the End Times.See the full story behind the paywall below:Catch Me if You CanEmma GarlandDeputy Editor, VICE MagazineTo 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.)The post Salesmen for the End Times—This Week On VICE: Members Only appeared first on VICE.