Leanne later discovered it had been sold for less than $40 (£30).
“It just made me feel so disgusting and so degraded,” she says. She is no longer posting on OnlyFans.
OnlyFans has known about concerns regarding over-exploitative OFMs via media coverage, but we also know of at least one creator who has directly tried to make the company aware.
Riley alerted the platform to discussions in OFM Empire that suggested agents were buying and selling creators’ contracts without creators knowing.
“The tactics of these groups consistently grow more and more exploitative,” she wrote in an email to the OnlyFans support team in 2024, seen by the BBC.
She was asked to provide evidence, and sent links to OFM Empire and screengrabs of messages on the forum.
There was not enough evidence for OnlyFans to take action, she was later told.
If you are affected by any of the issues in this story, help and support is available at BBC Action Line
“Any bad actors exploiting creators” should be reported to OnlyFans, and where necessary the police, the platform told the BBC, so they “can be held accountable and appropriate action can be taken against them to protect our creator community”.
The UK’s anti-slavery commissioner, Eleanor Lyons, says OnlyFans has a legal duty to protect users from illegal content and to act swiftly to remove it when it becomes aware.
“It’s alarming that cases of exploitation are being reported but appear to be not properly acted on,” she says when we show her Riley’s emails. “That raises serious concerns about whether OnlyFans is meeting its legal duties to protect users.”
Lyons says she is “already engaging with” Ofcom – the UK watchdog for online safety – and policymakers, who “need to pay much closer attention”.
OFMs should face greater scrutiny and potentially be licensed, she adds.
Ofcom told us that testimony from victims featured in this investigation was “deeply concerning”.
“Regulated sites and apps, such as OnlyFans, must assess the risk of their services being used to facilitate the commission of offences,” it said in a statement. “Any offences which take place entirely offline, however, are not caught by the Online Safety Act.”
Lily Phillips, one of the highest earning UK creators on OnlyFans, says a lack of regulation around OFMs creates “a dangerous space where vulnerable people can be taken advantage of”.
“People realise how much money you can make from OnlyFans. So, you know, everyone wants a piece of the pie, especially men… they want their little piece,” she says.
Sophie Kemp, from Kingsley Napley law firm, says OnlyFans has a duty of care to its creators and, based on our evidence, she believes “it is only a matter of time before OnlyFans faces claims of negligence from creators who have suffered harm”.
Rebecca says she wanted to prove her old agency wrong by making a success of her work OnlyFans.
She is now signed with an agency where the content is handled by women, which she says makes her “feel a lot better”.
Being an OnlyFans creator “is not going to be a forever thing”, she says, and one day she hopes to have made enough money to perhaps own her own horse-riding school.