Enslaved on OnlyFans: Women recount torment

On an August morning in 2022, a young woman slipped out of a house in suburban Wisconsin and dashed to a waiting police car.

Her hands shaking, she told officers it was the “most brave thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

For nearly two years, her boyfriend had held her captive, prosecutors say. She feared he’d kill her if she tried to leave. But just days earlier, after a serious physical assault, she started plotting her escape, secretly messaging family and friends to alert police.

The young woman later explained her desperation to detectives: Almost every night, her boyfriend had forced her to record sexual acts on camera to sell online. Among his chosen outlets was OnlyFans, the hugely successful website famous for pornography.

OnlyFans says it empowers content creators, particularly women, to monetize sexually explicit images and videos in a safe online environment.

But a Reuters investigation found women who said they had been deceived, drugged, terrorized and sexually enslaved to make money from the site. The findings are based on redacted U.S. police complaints and international court files, lawsuits and interviews with prosecutors, sex trafficking investigators and women who say they’ve been trafficked.

In one prominent case, influencer Andrew Tate, with millions of followers worldwide on social media, is accused of forcing women in Romania to produce pornography for OnlyFans and pocketing the profits. He has denied the charges.

OnlyFans faces serious human trafficking scrutiny

Reuters identified 11 cases of women who told authorities or filed lawsuits saying they had been forced to perform sex acts on OnlyFans. But experts including Torres say the true prevalence of sex trafficking on the platform is nearly impossible for outsiders to assess. The accounts of most content creators are hidden behind a subscription-based paywall, “minimizing the likelihood that they are caught and prosecuted,” Torres said.

On its website, OnlyFans says it prohibits prostitution and “modern slavery,” which includes sex trafficking and forced labor. It says its moderators review all content on the site and are trained to identify and report suspected trafficking. OnlyFans has led “a focus on safety for people in the adult content space,” CEO Keily Blair said during a panel discussion in March.

Under company rules, creators must have written consent from everyone in their content. But until November 2022, they didn’t have to show that proof of consent to OnlyFans before the platform allowed their content to be posted, according to Blair’s recent statements to a UK parliamentary committee. The company now checks for proof of consent before allowing content to go live, she said.

In at least one case, Reuters found, a woman’s ordeal allegedly began after the new rule was adopted. The woman, from Arkansas, told police that beginning in 2023, her boyfriend terrorized her and forced her to film sexual content for OnlyFans for hours on end, and if she resisted he “would physically attack her,” according to an arrest affidavit filed by a police detective in the city of Van Buren. Reuters couldn’t determine if she’d signed a consent form.

The man, Michael Hall, has pleaded not guilty to trafficking and is awaiting trial. His lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Onlyfans's legal troubles

Websites accused of hosting human trafficking face legal risks. At least a dozen lawsuits have been filed under U.S. federal anti-trafficking statutes against social media companies and other sites since 2019, accusing them of profiting from sexually abusive content. The companies have said they’re shielded from civil and criminal liability by a federal law designed to safeguard free speech, but Congress has passed legislation in recent years to chip away at those protections.

Two pending sex-trafficking lawsuits name OnlyFans as a defendant. One accuses the company of profiting from the exploitation of two women in Nevada by a former reality TV personality. The other, detailed in a Reuters investigation in March, involved a Florida college student who claimed OnlyFans profited from video of her alleged rape posted on the site.

A judge has recommended that OnlyFans be dropped from the Florida case because of free speech protections – prompting pushback from the woman’s attorneys. In both cases, the company denies it violated sex-trafficking laws.

Prosecution can be difficult because fearful or traumatized victims are reluctant to speak up or testify in court.

OnlyFans was not the only platform cited in these cases. But its popularity and generous terms make it potentially lucrative. Creators on the site collect 80% of the revenue their accounts generate. OnlyFans gets the rest.

The Tate brothers

Andrew Tate, a hyper-macho social media phenomenon and self-professed misogynist, gained international attention after being implicated in a sex-trafficking scheme that allegedly used OnlyFans to rake in money.

Prosecutors in Romania say Tate and his brother Tristan, both former kickboxers with U.S. and British citizenship, lured seven women with promises of romance, forced them to perform sex acts on OnlyFans, and then pocketed the profits. Tate once described the platform as “the greatest hustle in the world.”

Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan are escorted outside the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT), in Bucharest, Romania, August 21, 2024. Reuters

The brothers were charged in June 2023 with human trafficking and forming a gang to sexually exploit women; Andrew Tate was also charged with rape. They deny the allegations and await trial in Bucharest. In November, an appeals court ordered that some evidence be removed from the case due to legal flaws. The Tates’ lawyer couldn’t be reached for comment.

The high-profile cases underscored concerns among online safety groups about the potential for exploiting women on OnlyFans. And, according to prosecutors, the Tates have spawned Romanian imitators.

Tate model 'carbon copy'

In June 2023, Vlad Obuzic and three other men were arrested in what a source at Romania’s anti-organized crime prosecuting unit, or DIICOT, told Reuters was “a carbon copy of the Tate model.”

Prosecutors said the men also used false romantic promises, threats and violence to make the women create pornography for an adult platform, which the DIICOT source identified as OnlyFans. Some women were forced to tattoo the suspects’ names or faces on their bodies, or words such as “toy” or “dog,” according to a filing by the judge summarizing the charges.

“The victims were gradually brought to a position of inferiority, mental dependence and obedience,” said the filing, which described Obuzic’s ability to “identify vulnerable people and exploit their need for affection, trust and stability.”

Obuzic has described the Tates in online videos as mentors and “very good friends.” He offered his own online “playboy” guide in which he boasted of having “more hoes in the trenches. Onlyfans, webcam. Numerous girls with my portrait tatted on their skin.”

Romanian Gendarmes from the Special Intervention Brigade escort Andrew Tate outside the Tate brothers residence in Pipera, Ilfov, near Bucharest, Romania, August 21, 2024.Reuters

Prosecutors said Obuzic’s 18-month operation began in 2021 and involved seven women. They said he and his “soldiers” made the equivalent of $2.6 million from posting the women’s content on OnlyFans and “kept almost all the money.”

The men were indicted in October 2023 on charges of human trafficking and forming an organized crime group. They have denied the charges. Their trial is pending. “Prosecutors must prove the accusations,” said Dumitru Badragan, Obuzic’s lawyer. Lawyers for his co-defendants could not be reached.

Prosecutors believe Tate and Obuzic made their millions exploiting dozens of women. The suspected trafficking operations Reuters identified in the U.S. feature fewer victims and less money. But they show how OnlyFans has given people new routes into trafficking, according to prosecutors, allowing men and women to hide sexual abuse while profiting from it.

OnlyFans did not respond to requests for comment.