Things are once again not looking good for Jeffree Star. 

Back in October, US publication Insider published a bombshell report investigating allegations of sexual assault and violence made against the controversial beauty YouTuber as well as alleged hush-money offers to victims. While Star himself still has yet to address the story, at the time of its publishing his attorney denied any reports of misconduct, even going as far as to call them "false and defamatory". 

Last week, online gossip blog, StickyDrama.com, seemingly backed up those claims, publishing what it's saying are leaked documents that show sexual-assault accuser Gage Arthur being paid $45,000 USD via a cashier's check by a Jeffree Star Cosmetics exec just four days after Arthur retracted his story.

The site also published what it's saying is a section of the settlement agreement that outlines what the money was for: $25,000 was for Arthur taking back his statement while $20,000 was for Arthur contacting two of Insider's other sources and getting them to do the same. 

If the court docs are legit, it's an interesting move paying someone to keep quiet about allegations that are "false and defamatory", anyway. 

Insider looked into the leaked documents further and found that it did appear to add up. More deets on that here.

Of course, all this has caused us to think more about Jeffree Star's future: is his, er, star slowly fading? Even by influencer standards, Jeffree's year has been filled with next-level drama, including the aforementioned serious allegations of sexual and physical assault, the fallout from Dramageddon 3, Tati Westbrook's accusations that he manipulated her and, of course, his friendship with fellow former YouTuber Shane Dawson, known for donning blackface and his disturbing jokes about pedophilia.

It's been… a lot. And, though, we only have a few more weeks left of 2020, we're almost certain there's still more to come this year. As always, you can rest assured we'll keep you up to date.

Written by Sangeeta Kocharekar, an American-born, Sydney-based writer at MTV. Photos from her pre-COVID-19 days as a travel writer are here.