Young women who had just turned 18 were lured into creating erotic photos and videos before signing management contracts with the perpetrators, who promised to grow their careers.
Czech Police have charged four people and one company for human trafficking on OnlyFans, a site mainly used for adult content creation.
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Young girls who just turned 18 were lured into creating erotic photos and videos and then signed false work contracts with the perpetrator, who promised to boost their careers on various social networks, officials from the National Centre for Organised Crime said Tuesday.
In a statement to Euronews Next, OnlyFans said they are working closely with law enforcement "around the world to support their investigations and help keep our community of users safe."
"OnlyFans takes the safety of its users seriously and invests heavily in measures to protect them, including strict onboarding processes, payment controls and ongoing account moderation," the statement said.
The perpetrators used “psychological pressure” such as contract penalties or withholding their payments to pressure the girls into creating “more explicit, bolder, more attractive and more marketable erotic content,” the statement said.
Police said the perpetrators made 3.6 million koruna (€148,190) from selling the explicit content directly to subscribers on the platform, while exploiting dozens of girls in the scheme.
The accused could face prison sentences of between five and 12 years, police said.
There have been a handful of human trafficking cases linked to OnlyFans in Europe, including a case in Spain, where a minor was coerced by a trafficker into selling photos of her body.
Romanian prosecutors also allege that manosphere influencer Andrew Tate recruited at least one woman into a human-trafficking operation and forced her to make pornographic content for OnlyFans.
Tate and his brother Tristan were indicted in Romania in 2023 and charged with human trafficking, rape and the formation of a criminal gang in order to sexually exploit women. The UK authorised 21 charges against the brothers, who have since fled Romania and were last seen in Hong Kong in March.
A 2024 Reuters investigation found more than 120 complaints filed with US police by OnlyFans creators who alleged they had been featured in explicit content without their consent, with a further 17 complaints recorded in the UK.
