Tommy Lee Jones
All Star
This shyt is wild.
As COVID-19 quarantines began around the globe, seasoned sex workers and amateurs alike were left floundering and looking for new ways to earn a living.
Many turned to a platform called OnlyFans, which allows content creators to sell nude pictures, videos, and homemade amateur pornographic films. Within months, OnlyFans exploded and became one of the most popular money-making platforms in the world.
Amazon Alexa’s internet ratings calculate that the OnlyFans website is the 222nd most visited site in the entire United States according to global internet traffic and engagement over the past 90 days.
As of April 2020, a researcher put the valuation of OnlyFans “between $810m and $936m.”
Behind this explosion of success, however, an analysis by Forensic News has revealed that OnlyFans is owned by a Ukrainian-American porn entrepreneur named Leonid Radvinsky with a history of lawsuits and allegations of spam, theft, fraud, and drug dealing.
In October 2018, Radvinsky acquired 100% of the shares of Fenix International Limited in London, the parent company of OnlyFans from Tim Stokely, a former Barclays banker, for an undisclosed sum.
OnlyFans is the trading name of Fenix International Limited
Since then, OnlyFans has exploded and become one of the most popular websites on the internet.
Interviews with over two dozen content creators and users of OnlyFans and another large camming website owned by Radvinsky, MyFreeCams, illustrate a decade long laundry list of complaints against Radvinsky, with many losing thousands of dollars.
Other concerns include the uber-popular OnlyFans’ seemingly lax safeguards against possible child exploitation.
Radvinsky
Leonid Radvinsky is a Ukrainian-American citizen who is well-known in the online pornography and camming world for nearly two decades. He has operated multiple websites before OnlyFans, the most successful of which appears to be MyFreeCams, which allows sex workers to live-stream pornographic content funded by “tokens” purchased by users of the service.
Radvinsky, based in the Chicago-area, was the defendant in many lawsuits against his companies in the 2000s alleging patent/copyright infringement. The most serious lawsuit he faced came in 2003 and 2004 when Microsoft and Amazon sued Radvinsky and multiple companies under his control for sending “millions of illegal and deceptive e-mail messages to Hotmail customers, including messages that were falsely labeled as coming from Amazon.com.”
Those cases, and numerous others that followed against Radvinsky’s network of companies, were settled outside of court. In most cases, Radvinsky agreed to a permanent injunction, effectively admitting that he will no longer engage in the alleged infringements.
Radvinsky, via his company Cybertania, holds active trademarks for two websites that allow him to provide “on-line electronic bulletin board featuring passwords for other websites and on-line images in the field of adult entertainment.”
Though the websites are currently inactive, archived versions (Warning: Not Safe For Work; Nudity) show that the company offered alleged hacked passwords to pornography websites. “We have the largest number of hacked xxx passwords!” the front page bragged.
Links on the websites directed visitors to both companies owned by Radvinsky, including MyFreeCams, and websites with no apparent connection to Radvinsky.
Radvinsky currently claims to operate a Chicago-based venture capital fund. “We provide funding in all stages and we will consider investments up to $1 million per company,” the website reads, while citing expertise in “web development, data managment [sic], payment services, and online advertising.”
Weeks before Radvinsky purchased the OnlyFans holding company in the United Kingdom, he received a $250,000 tax credit from the state of Illinois. “The purpose of the Angel Investment Tax Credit Program is to attract and encourage the placement of investment dollars into early-stage, innovative companies throughout Illinois.”
Radvinsky did not respond to a detailed list of questions regarding his various business ventures and the allegations contained in this article.
Theft allegations
One recurring complaint that Forensic News documented by talking to various users and content creators of both MyFreeCams and OnlyFans was the arbitrary freezing of accounts, which left many without thousands of dollars.
One model who spoke to Forensic News said that she lost thousands when her account was banned without notice.
“One day I had enough [of bad customer support] and told my fans not to tip for a day. Many models were going to join me. Then my account was banned in minutes,” the model who spoke on condition of anonymity said.
“I didn’t break any rules, I never did anything illegal. They also froze my payment and I got no response from them.”
Another issue arose with MyFreeCams when the site forced models to accept payments from a 3rd party bank – based in Belize.
Out of the blue, according to a high-earning model, MyFreeCams stopped making payments and forced the models to use Choice Bank in Belize to receive their earned money.
“One day [MyFreeCams] stopped my wire transfers to my bank without notice and then paid me there [Choice Bank] against my wish. Choice refused to wire the money to my bank after that and then they went bankrupt.”
The model says that she lost $30,000 when MyFreeCams forced her to use the Belize-based bank. “Hundreds of models lost a lot of money, and of course MyFreeCams didn’t care nor did they issue us an apology.”
In 2018, Choice Bank was placed into liquidation by the Central Bank of Belize because of liquidity issues. Many customers never received the money to which they were entitled.
One content creator on MyFreeCams tweeted in April, “@MyFreeCams deleted my account and has frozen over $10,000 USD. That’s outright theft! Boycott MFC!”
Numerous other complaints about MyFreeCams have poured into online consumer review websites such as TrustPilot. Many users levy the same complaints as the models who spoke to Forensic News: theft via the random closure of accounts with no customer service to explain why thousands of dollars were withheld.
