A BBC investigation has found that OnlyFans “managers,” known online as “OFMs,” have threatened, controlled, and in some cases physically assaulted creators on the platform while taking as much as 70% of their earnings, raising questions about what responsibility OnlyFans bears for a third-party ecosystem it says it does not endorse.

The investigation, published by BBC News and tied to the documentary “OnlyFans: Inside the Machine,” drew on interviews with 60 UK creators and access to a 24,000-member Telegram group called “OFM Empire,” where members traded advice on signing creators, seizing control of their accounts and extracting profits, with one user describing the approach as the “pimp method.”

One creator, identified as Rebecca, told the BBC her managers turned controlling within weeks of signing her, insulting her appearance and restricting her social life. After she changed her account login details, she said she received messages threatening her and her daughter, and was later attacked at her home by two masked men, one of whom strangled her. She said she believes the incidents were connected to her agency. Other creators described managers locking them out of accounts, rerouting payouts to themselves, and pressuring one creator into filming explicit content she had said she would not make, which was then sold for a fraction of the price she had required.

The UK’s Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Eleanor Lyons, told the BBC that what Rebecca described matched “recognised signs of exploitation,” including control, coercion and financial pressure, and said the government needs to examine the issue more closely. Matt Jury of McCue Jury & Partners said OFM contracts contained unfair terms that placed creators in a form of servitude. Sophie Kemp of Kingsley Napley also questioned the fairness of the contracts and said she believes OnlyFans will eventually face negligence claims from creators harmed under the arrangements.

OnlyFans told the BBC it is “not connected with, and do not endorse, any third parties including management agencies,” and that it cannot review or influence contracts creators enter outside the platform. The company said it takes user safety “incredibly seriously,” meets its obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Act, and will restrict and investigate any account flagged for concern. One creator, Riley, told the BBC she reported OFM Empire’s activity to OnlyFans in 2024 but was told there was insufficient evidence to act. Ofcom said the testimony in the investigation was “deeply concerning” but noted that offenses occurring entirely offline fall outside the Online Safety Act’s scope.

The investigation landed months after Fenix International, OnlyFans’ UK-based parent company, sold a 16% stake to Architect Capital for $535 million at a $3.15 billion valuation, with Architect Capital citing creators’ limited access to traditional banking products as part of its rationale for the investment. 

OnlyFans reported $7.22 billion in gross payments for fiscal 2024, generating $1.41 billion in net revenue and $684 million in pre-tax profit, and says it has paid out more than $25 billion to creators since 2016. The scale of that payment infrastructure, and creators’ reliance on third parties to manage it, sits at the center of the BBC’s findings: agents who gained access to account logins and payout details were able to redirect earnings with little apparent recourse for the creator.

CEO Keily Blair has spent recent months pitching OnlyFans as a monetization platform for creators, entrepreneurs and executives well beyond its adult-content roots. The BBC’s findings concern a different part of the platform’s infrastructure: the unregulated agents operating around it.

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