Legal gray area and security forces: how working for OnlyFans turns into a danger
27 October 19:40
The police in Ivano-Frankivsk region have announced the dismissal of two employees who were accused of extorting bribes from the local model OnlyFans.
This was stated by MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak, who published the official response of the police, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
The decision was made after the publication of a journalistic investigation by Ekonomichna Pravda, which revealed a scheme of pressure on a woman by law enforcement officers who, according to her, demanded money to “close the case.”
The story of the model
A resident of Horodenka, Ivano-Frankivsk region, created a page on OnlyFans in 2022. At first, she worked through an agency that took up to 90% of her earnings, and later switched to managing the page herself with the help of a manager.
When the tax service began sending letters to Ukrainians who received income through OnlyFans in 2022-2024, the woman declared part of the income that actually went to her card. However, the tax authorities demanded payment of taxes on the full page turnover.
While the woman was appealing this decision in court, she was approached by local police officers, allegedly with an “offer to help.”
Details of the journalistic investigation
In an October article by Ekonomichna Pravda, journalists published audio recordings of conversations in which, according to them, police officers first hinted and then directly stated the amount of bribe needed to “resolve the issue.”
The model turned to MPs for help, including Yaroslav Zhelezniak, the author of the bill to decriminalize the production of adult content.
After that, officers from the K Department of the Security Service of Ukraine joined the case and tried to document the extortion.
However, the operation was unsuccessful – according to journalists, the police stopped contacting the woman after the first contacts with the SBU.
Police response
Following the publication of the investigation, the regional police leadership conducted an internal investigation.
As a result, two officers were dismissed from the National Police:
- lieutenantColonel Myroslav Rozhko, deputy head of the department, head of the investigation department of the police №2 (Horodenka);
- major Mykola Kalynchuk, head of the criminal police sector of the same department.
MP Zheleznyak published the dismissal letter, emphasizing that “this is an important signal that even localized abuses do not go unreacted to.”
The gray area of online content
The story went beyond one case. It raised two hot topics at the same time – the state’s attitude to online content producers and corruption risks in an area that remains legally unregulated.
Despite the fact that OnlyFans is a legal platform, Ukrainian law still criminalizes the creation of pornographic content.
As a result, bloggers, models, and producers are outlawed, making them easy targets for pressure or blackmail by law enforcement.
