A federal lawsuit that accuses OnlyFans of profiting from sex trafficking just cleared a major hurdle. According to Afterglow, U.S. District Judge Cristina D. Silva of the District of Nevada ruled on September 25 that three federal trafficking claims can proceed against Fenix International Ltd., the London-based company that runs OnlyFans. The ruling got little attention until October 9, when the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), whose law center co-represents the plaintiffs, made it public.

What the women allege

The two plaintiffs, identified by their initials L.C. and P.H., say reality TV and social media personality Brittanya Razavi recruited them in 2020 to make OnlyFans content under her “management” for a promised 50% cut. According to NCOSE‘s Lily Moric, Christen Price and Dani Pinter, the suit claims Razavi intended to keep almost all of the money, pressured both women into signing a one-page “model release” she wouldn’t give them a copy of, and coerced them into sex acts on camera.

The women also allege Razavi locked them out of their own accounts and attached her bank details so the earnings went straight to her. Afterglow reports that the suit says she set up the accounts in their names using their IDs. Razavi, her husband and two affiliated companies are also named as defendants.

Why OnlyFans is on the hook

The case against the platform rests on red flags the plaintiffs say it ignored. OnlyFans’ own rules ban third-party control of accounts, yet the suit claims one creator’s bank details were attached to several accounts. The plaintiffs also say OnlyFans had already received an abuse complaint about Razavi, and that it kept its standard 20% of the revenue from the accounts she controlled. Afterglow adds that the platform ran a referral program paying 5% of referred creators’ earnings.

NCOSE claims Razavi’s own page was earning about $1 million a month, and that when the earlier complainant was hit with copyright reports in retaliation, OnlyFans permanently banned that survivor instead.

What the judge actually decided

This is not a finding that anyone did anything wrong. At this stage, the court has to treat the allegations as true, and none of them has been proven. Afterglow breaks down the ruling into three parts:

  • Section 230, the law that usually shields platforms from liability for user content, did not block the federal trafficking claims.
  • The allegations were enough for a “beneficiary” claim, meaning OnlyFans allegedly got a specific financial benefit, its 20% share, from a venture it knew about or recklessly disregarded.
  • The case stays in Nevada. The judge refused to enforce OnlyFans’ UK forum-selection clause.

OnlyFans did win some ground. Its two U.S. subsidiaries, Fenix Internet LLC and Fenix US Inc., were dropped from the case, and six state-law claims, including fraud, conversion and unjust enrichment, were dismissed against all three Fenix companies. The judge’s order is a public court document.

One note on sources: NCOSE is an anti-pornography advocacy group and is also the plaintiffs’ legal team, so its framing of OnlyFans should be read with that in mind. Neither outlet included a response from OnlyFans or the Razavis.

The agency problem, again

The allegations line up with a pattern we’ve been tracking. We’ve covered how some OnlyFans managers take up to 70% of a creator’s earnings, and how OnlyFans just spelled out how creators should handle agencies. Afterglow argues that the red flags the court treated as legally relevant, like shared payout details across several accounts and an abuse report that went nowhere, turn things like re-verifying changed bank details from trust-and-safety best practice into potential evidence in court.

The takeaway

The case is a long way from a verdict, but it’s a warning shot for every fan platform. If a judge says a platform’s cut of a manager-controlled account can count as a benefit under federal trafficking law, expect OnlyFans and its rivals to get a lot stricter about who controls logins and where the money goes. For creators, the lesson is the same one we keep repeating: never hand over your account or your payout details.

Image: The Lloyd D. George U.S. Courthouse in Las Vegas, home of the federal court for the District of Nevada, photo by Daniel Lobo (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons.