BEATEN AND DRUGED

In some U.S. cases, the trafficking went beyond the domestic exploitation of a single partner and involved more complex operations with multiple victims, according to allegations in court filings.

An August filing in a federal sex-trafficking lawsuit alleged that Brittanya Razavi, a 39-year-old former reality TV personality and porn star, manipulated and coerced financially desperate women into porn for OnlyFans and then stole most of the profits. Fenix ​​International, the British parent company of OnlyFans, is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit and accused of having a “business partnership” with Razavi that “facilitated her exploitation” of the two women.

One of the women was a Las Vegas showgirl when the pandemic hit and left her unemployed, according to the suit. The other was an immigrant who had been kicked out of her adopted home as a teenager.

Razavi “groomed” them both, finding them places to stay and making “extravagant promises of quick money and, ultimately, wealth and fame if they would create OnlyFans content under her direction,” the suit said. One of the women saw Razavi as “a mother figure.”

The lawsuit makes a series of allegations about Razavi: that she used the women’s ID cards and Social Security numbers to create OnlyFans accounts that only she could access, then spiked them with alcohol to get them to have sex in front of the camera, sometimes with others. When they objected, Razavi told them, “I will talk to you again when you are drunk.” The suit also alleges that one of the women was raped while intoxicated and the video was posted online. Reuters could not confirm if or where the video appeared.

The women’s OnlyFans accounts generated more than $1.3 million in revenue, of which OnlyFans took a customary 20 percent cut, the lawsuit states. The rest was funneled into bank accounts controlled by Razavi, who paid the women about 10 percent of their share rather than the 50 percent he had promised, the suit says.

Contacted by Reuters, Razavi’s lawyer “categorically” denied the allegations and declined to comment further. OnlyFans did not respond to a request for comment on the suit.

In another case, prosecutors say a former elementary school administrator and her husband ran a violent sex trafficking and prostitution ring involving multiple young women in six northeastern states.

Jonathan Ruiz and Charline Santiago were living with their two young children in a two-story home in a leafy neighborhood in Youngstown, Ohio, when sheriff’s deputies and federal agents arrived with an arrest warrant.

“Don’t look in my phone,” Ruiz, 32, told officers during the June 2022 arrest, according to previously undisclosed court records. “Please turn off my phone,” Santiago, 29, said.

Their devices are now part of a repository of evidence collected by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in New York. According to the indictment and other court filings, Ruiz forced women to perform porn for OnlyFans and used the platform to arrange sexual encounters with clients beginning in late 2020.

OnlyFans says it prohibits users from posting content that “shows, promotes, advertises, or refers to escort services, sex trafficking, or prostitution.”

Ruiz and Santiago jumped from state to state to evade detection, according to court records. Ruiz allegedly beat the women if they slept on the job or refused to obey orders, leaving them with cuts and bruises. He drugged them to keep them awake, withheld food if they didn’t work hard enough and confiscated their IDs to keep them from running away, records show.

Santiago pleaded guilty in November to charges of attempted sex trafficking and promoting prostitution. As part of the plea, she will be placed on probation and ordered to have no contact with anyone in the case and to lead a law-abiding life, said her attorney, Michael Vitaliano. Santiago “fully accepts responsibility for her actions” and is focused on “being a devoted and loving mother,” he said.

Ruiz has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex and labor trafficking, conspiracy and promoting prostitution. His lawyer declined to comment.

Ruiz created the OnlyFans accounts “without the victims’ consent or knowledge, despite OnlyFans requiring a government ID to register an account,” prosecutors said in a court filing. Multiple OnlyFans accounts were registered to the same IP addresses, they said, including those associated with Ruiz’s email account. The victims did not receive any profits, the records show.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment on details of the case. But Justin McNabney, head of the Special Victims Unit, said he had noticed traffickers opening OnlyFans accounts and forcing victims to create videos during the coronavirus pandemic, when the lockdown made it difficult to take advantage of in-person sex services.

“The idea from a trafficker’s perspective is to maximize profit at all times,” McNabney said.

Ruiz’s prostitution enterprise proved difficult to undo even after his arrest, according to previously undisclosed details in prosecutors’ filings.

Over the next year, they say, Ruiz used a contraband phone to manipulate witnesses and instruct an accomplice on how to use OnlyFans to arrange prostitution encounters.

During this time, he was incarcerated at Rikers Island, New York