FOI 257-2025 / Feb 2025 / OnlyFans
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 257-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 25th February 2025 as follows:
I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 regarding crimes reported to your officers where the platform OnlyFans was mentioned and or recorded in the reporting of the crime.
I would be grateful if you could provide the following information for the period 1st January 2020 to 31 December 2024.
- Fraud/Financial Crimes:
The number of reported crimes involving fraud, blackmail, or financial scams/crimes where OnlyFans was mentioned.
The number of reports specifically involving:
* Subscription fraud.
* Identity theft.
* Chargeback fraud.
Please provide any information held by your officers on:
* The total financial losses reported in fraud cases involving OnlyFans.
* The average financial loss per case.
* The number of cases resulting in arrests or prosecutions.
- Coercion & Exploitation
* The number of reports mentioning controlling or coercive behaviour (as defined under Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015) involving OnlyFans.
* The number of Modern Slavery Act offences recorded where victims were forced to create content on OnlyFans.
* The number of reports involving:
o Revenge porn.
o Stalking.
o Harassment.
o Threats against OnlyFans creators.
Please break down data (where available) into the following criteria:
* The demographics of victims (e.g., age, gender) where available.
* The number of cases involving organized crime groups.
* The number of cases resulting in safeguarding interventions.
- Underage Content & Exploitation
* The number of child exploitation or grooming-related crimes recorded where OnlyFans was mentioned.
* The number of reports where minors were found to be using or appearing on OnlyFans.
* The age range of minors involved.
* The number of cases involving parental or guardian coercion.
* The number of cases involving 3rd part coercion (other than a parent).
* The number of cases resulting in prosecutions under the Protection of Children Act 1978.
If possible, I would be grateful if you could also provide anonymised summaries of notable cases involving OnlyFans. I would also welcome any contextual information or trends (e.g., whether cases are increasing or decreasing over time) that could be shared from your records.
Response: Please be advised that the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. There is no specific identifier for ‘Onlyfans’, and no flag or marker to easily identify where this is relevant to an offence. Keyword searches are not carried out routinely as they are not reliable, they will only bring back records where the chosen keyword(s) is present within the MO Description / Incident Summary of an investigation, these are limited free text fields and do not contain all information in relation to an investigation. In order to provide an accurate response to your request it would be necessary to review the wider investigation papers in relation to each and every crime falling within the remit of your request. Such searches would take an inordinate amount of time and would undoubtedly exceed the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e., the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. For Police forces in the UK, the "appropriate limit" is up to 18 hours of work on one request.
In accordance with section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act, I have a duty to provide advice and assistance; however, due to the volume of records which would need to be individually reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to reduce your request into one which could be managed within the fees limit.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible.
Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint.
Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please write or email the Freedom of Information Unit quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information Officer
Freedom of Information Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB