How the Vlog Squad's Jeff Wittek found fame through controversy, from his 'drug dealer' past to the David Dobrik accident

• Jeff Wittek has nearly three million subscribers on YouTube.

• A stunt gone awry while filming a David Dobrik vlog in 2020 nearly killed him.

• Wittek, who is now the highest-paid 18+ account on Patreon, says he started out selling marijuana.

• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Jeff Wittek has lived an action-filled life over the course of his 31 years.

The YouTuber with nearly three million subscribers has been arrested on charges of selling drugs in Miami, made a lucrative career as an influencer barber, joined the hugely popular Vlog Squad, and had his skull cracked open during an outlandish stunt.

Looking through Wittek's timeline, you get an idea of a thrill-seeker with a business-focused attitude that can sometimes get him into trouble.

Over the past couple of months, Wittek has evolved from a background character in David Dobrik's vlogs to a massive influencer in his own right. After releasing four parts of his documentary series on YouTube, he's shown a new side to fans, who are gobbling it up.

He has over 38,000 patrons on his Patreon, gaining 37,000 of them in the past 10 days and making him the top 18+ creator on the site.

Wittek says he sold drugs before becoming a content creator

In the first episode of his YouTube series "Don't Try This at Home," Wittek said that as a child growing up on New York's Staten Island, he "always wanted to be a baseball player" and that he "grew up dirt poor." As a teenager, he learned how to cut hair and by 16 was making "$1,500 a week" as a barber, he said.

"I didn't love school and loved the idea of making fast money," Wittek said in the April 18 video. "I would cut school and go hang out at the barbershop."

In the video, Wittek claims that he sold "anything he could get" his "hands on," and said he was arrested multiple times for selling marijuana. He eventually moved to Miami, where he said he met "bigger criminals."

In 2011, when he was 21, he was arrested on charges of possession of marijuana, illegal drug trafficking, possession of cocaine, and possession of a controlled substance, according to Florida arrest records reviewed by Insider. Those charges were later dropped.

Wittek said in the video he managed to get those charges dropped due to a "technicality" because the police officers who searched his penthouse to find the narcotics didn't have a warrant.

"15 years I was supposed to do was gone," Wittek said. "I would still be in jail to this day and now I was free to go."

He started to associate with Viners in LA in 2014

After his run-in with the law in Miami, Wittek decided to move to Los Angeles to buy marijuana in bulk and send it back to New York City, according to his account of events in the April 18 video.

At the same time, Wittek was also growing his brand as an influencer and a barber, starting his YouTube channel in 2011. In 2012, he started a Tumblr blog called "Behind The Cuts," where he posted images with celebrities like Pauly D, Mac Miller, and ASAP Rocky. That year, he started to post more frequently on Instagram, sharing photos of haircuts and lavish parties.

According to publicly available housing records, in 2014, Wittek moved into 1600 Vine, an apartment complex in Hollywood that was known at the time for housing stars of the now-defunct Vine app like Jake Paul, King Bach, and Lele Pons. There, he would appear in sketches with other Vine stars, becoming friends with influencers like Rudy Mancuso.

In 2015, he started dating actress Cierra Ramirez after meeting her at a club in Los Angeles (though their relationship ended in 2018). Wittek would also pursue his own small career in acting, appearing in two YouTube short films in 2016.

Wittek first met Toddy Smith, a Vlog Squad member, in 2017 in New York City at an American Express brand deal event. In a video on Smith's channel, Wittek says the pair were "drunk out of their minds" and that they "bonded instantly over alcohol."

With his influencer friends and hair-cutting prowess, Wittek would start his "Jeff's Barbershop" series to create long-form content for YouTube.

He made his first appearance in Dobrik's vlogs in November 2018 when the cops pulled over a car he was driving.

"On our first interaction, I didn't plan on vlogging with him, I was hanging out with Todd and David showed up," Wittek said in the first part of his YouTube video series.

Appearing in Dobrik's vlogs helped Wittek become famous

Wittek appeared in many of Dobrik's videos over the course of 2018 and 2019, though most of those vlogs have since been deleted.

"Jeff's Barbershop" would grow into a massive platform, bringing in some of the internet's top talent alongside other members of the Vlog Squad. Brand deals with Old Spice and appearances from Jason Nash, Rudy Mancuso, and Cody Ko would pull in millions of views. His October 2019 haircut with Dobrik is still the most popular on his channel, with over 12 million views.

According to SocialBlade, a social-media analytics website, in November of 2018, Wittek's YouTube channel was gaining under 5,000 subscribers a month. In February 2019, he gained over 220,000 subscribers.

When the pandemic essentially put a stop to Dobrik's vlogs, Wittek pushed the limits of himself and his brand. In the second part of his "Don't Try This at Home" series, he explained that Dobrik wanted to do a stunt that involved jumping out of an airplane 25 times for his vlog.

"When I'm the least comfortable, I'm the most happy," Wittek said in the video. "I like the chaos."

After conquering that challenge, Dobrik raised the stakes. He brought many of the members of the Vlog Squad to Utah and acquired an excavator, spinning it around with members attached. Wittek held on while Dobrik swung him around, eventually crashing into the metal arm and injuring him badly.

"I was in a lot of pain, I tore some ligaments in my leg, I broke my foot, I broke my hip, I shattered my skull in nine places, I shattered my eye socket and I almost died," Wittek said in the third part of his "Don't Try This at Home" YouTube series.

Over the course of that year, Wittek would continue making barbershop videos with his injury around his eye visible. Just five days after the accident, he filmed his video with TikTok star Dixie D'Amelio, joking that he "legally" can't say what happened because he has "a big lawsuit in the works." Wittek told viewers in an April 26 video that he started to feel more depressed about his situation as he wasn't able to work out or rely on his good looks.

Wittek tried to distance himself from the Vlog Squad after a former member was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a party in 2018

In March 2021, Insider published an article that included an allegation that one of the former members of Dobrik's Vlog Squad had sexually assaulted a woman at a party. In that article, Wittek denied buying alcohol for minors at the party. In a video on March 21 (that has since been deleted), Wittek continued to deny that he bought the liquor and attempted to discredit the Insider report.

In a subsequent interview on the "Frenemies" podcast with Trisha Paytas and Ethan Klein on March 21, Wittek said he did not read the entirety of the article before creating the video.

Five days after the podcast interview, Wittek released another response video, this time apologizing to the Insider reporter and acknowledging he may have handled the situation poorly.

Wittek continues to make content on his Patreon and YouTube

Wittek has published four parts of his YouTube documentary series, each one pulling in millions of views in under a week.

His Patreon has exploded in popularity as public sentiment around Wittek has shifted his popularity. In a Twitter post on April 27, Wittek wrote that it "feels great to share this stuff with y'all," and "you guys literally saved my life."

Read the original article on Insider