A federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday as part of a larger investigation into pre-election Russian malfeasance in the United States tells a juicy tale of dirty money, deception, journalism, and propaganda. A US-based start-up, Tenet Media, launched last November as a self-described “network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues,” illegally received about $10 million in Russian money for production of English-language videos. The six commentators, who received as much as $400,000 a month or $100,000 per video—which is well above market value—include several stars of the online right: Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Lauren Southern (as well as more obscure podcasters Tayler Hansen and Matt Christiansen). The money was funnelled by two employees of the Kremlin propaganda network RT, formerly Russia Today, using the fake personas of European financiers. Tenet’s founders, right-wing pundit Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donovan, allegedly knew that it was Russian money and deceived their contributors.

Rubin, Pool and Johnson have all made statements depicting themselves as victims of this scheme—which may well be true, though at the very least they were startlingly incurious about the source of the funding. The two Laurens—Chen and Southern—have kept quiet since the news of the indictment broke.

The story has a lot of material that sounds like something straight of a quirky dark comedy: for instance, the time a Russian operative posed as a Paris-based businessman for a call with a pundit who was being recruited for the venture, and got the time zones mixed up. Also, one of the two Russians has the last name Kalashnikov. (Seriously, screenwriters? You’re getting a bit too obvious.) But real-life farce aside, this story tells us something not-so-funny about the current intellectual ecosystem that bills itself as “conservative” and “heterodox,” though “intellectual” is a bit too grand a word for the likes of Johnson, Rubin and Pool.