FOI 1150-2024/25 Only Fans Crimes
Request
I would be grateful if you could provide the following information for the period 1st January 2020 to 31 December 2024.
Q1. 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.
Q2. 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:
oRevenge porn.
oStalking.
oHarassment.
oThreats 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.
Q3. 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.
Extent of Searches to Locate Information
Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information.
Decision
I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.
Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Due to the nature of the recording methods for Fraud the information requested in relation at Question 1, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. The National Fraud Reporting Centre was created and given responsibility to record all Fraud centrally and provide these figures to the Home Office. Therefore, should a member of the public contact their local force to report fraud, they are given the contact details for Action Fraud (telephone and web address) and asked to redirect their report to them, unless one of 3 (call for service) criteria are met:
- A locally identified offender
- A crime in action
- A vulnerable victim making the report
Where this criteria is met, the force will record a crime and in the first 2 cases start to investigate. These cases are still notified to Action Fraud and state that the force is dealing with a matter, in order that it can be recorded.
Unlike all other crimes, fraud, is recorded in the force where the offender is located. When Action Fraud can establish the location of the offender the report will be sent to that force for them to deal with. North Yorkshire police receive between 250‐400 victim reports of fraud a month, of which only a small proportion are referred for further investigation.
Given the above, the data held on fraud crime is not entirely controlled or held by North Yorkshire Police. To answer your query accurately it would be necessary to interrogate numerous data sources held locally and nationally to establish the number of referrals made and also to extract data on those that have been investigated. As a result, it is anticipated that the length of time required to process your request would exceed that which is reasonable and proportionate.
Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.
Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). I may be able to provide some information in relation to Questions 2 and 3 if you revise and resubmit your request, omitting Question 1. However, this would involve a key word search, and you would be required to provide a list of the key words to be searched upon. If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.
Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.