Mastercard and Visa failed to stop their payment networks from laundering proceeds from child sexual abuse material and sex trafficking on the popular website OnlyFans, according to allegations in a previously undisclosed whistleblower complaint filed with the U.S. Treasury’s financial crimes unit.
The whistleblower, a senior compliance expert in the credit card and banking industries, said the two giant card companies knew their networks were being used to pay for illegal content on the porn-driven site since at least 2021, and accused them of “turning a blind eye to flows of illicit revenue.”
The complaint was filed in January 2023 with the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the U.S. Justice and Homeland Security departments, the whistleblower said.
The complaint said that the whistleblower and other anti-trafficking experts, including U.S. federal agents, alerted Visa and Mastercard to unlawful content on OnlyFans in a series of calls in 2021 and 2022. The federal agents corroborated the presence of child sexual abuse material on OnlyFans, the complaint said.
It also drew heavily on a 2022 study by an anti-trafficking group that said it had found a “high volume” of OnlyFans accounts with “common indicators” of child sexual abuse material or sex trafficking. The whistleblower said he helped with the study, which was shared with the card companies.
When the content is child sexual abuse material, the card companies are “directly handling the proceeds of these illicit transactions,” said the complaint.
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By continuing to process payments on OnlyFans, Mastercard and Visa had “willfully failed” to maintain effective anti-money laundering programmes required by the Bank Secrecy Act, said the complaint, which urged FinCEN and the two other federal agencies to take action against the card companies.
Reuters reviewed an email confirming FinCEN had received the complaint. In response to questions, the agency said it doesn’t confirm or deny the existence of whistleblower complaints. The Justice and Homeland Security departments declined to comment.
Reuters could not determine what action, if any, the agencies took in response to the complaint, which was filed under FinCEN’s anti-money laundering whistleblower programme launched in 2021. Under that programme, complaints are confidential and the identity of whistleblowers is protected. However, Reuters reviewed the complaint, interviewed the whistleblower on condition of anonymity, and corroborated his identity and credentials. The complaint said he had extensive expertise in fighting money laundering.
In an interview, the whistleblower said the agencies never contacted him to discuss his complaint. The card companies had “the power to turn off the switch” to stop illicit material from being monetised, he added.
Mastercard and Visa said they hadn’t heard of the 2023 whistleblower complaint until Reuters contacted them. They disputed the complaint’s allegations and cited their efforts to keep their networks free of illegal activity.
A Visa spokesperson said financial institutions and merchants that don’t comply with Visa’s “robust compliance requirements” will be terminated from its network. The company uses “best-in-class controls to deter, detect and remediate illegal activity,” the spokesperson said.
Mastercard holds all users of its payments system to high standards and, “if illegal activity is identified, we work with partners to act,” its spokesperson said. The three government agencies hadn’t “referred any specific illegal activity for us to investigate or act on,” the spokesperson added. “No evidence of current illegal activity has been provided to us,” despite the whistleblower’s claim, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson denied that Mastercard had “failed” to maintain effective anti-money laundering programmes. The company has “strong governance standards through a comprehensive compliance program and strong internal controls,” he said.
Since the whistleblower complaint was filed, Reuters uncovered more allegations of child sexual abuse and sex trafficking on OnlyFans, a porn-driven site that generates money through subscriptions and pay-per-view content.
In July, the news organisation reported that hundreds of sexually explicit videos and images of minors, some as young as toddlers, have appeared on the site since 2019, according to allegations in police complaints. In December, a child exploitation investigator told Reuters that he reported 26 OnlyFans accounts to authorities that appeared to contain sexual content featuring underage teen girls. The accounts were quickly taken down, said the investigator.
Another story focused on women who said they had been sexually enslaved, sometimes by a fiancé or boyfriend, to make money on the platform.
The Mastercard spokesperson called Reuters’ findings on child sexual abuse on OnlyFans “alarming” but said law enforcement or certain child-protection groups would need to provide evidence of illegal activity for the company to act or investigate. Visa didn’t comment on whether the company was investigating Reuters’ findings.
UK-based OnlyFans didn’t respond to questions about the whistleblower complaint. On its website, the company says it enforces a “zero-tolerance policy” against any content related to child abuse or trafficking, and blocks or takes down material that violates its rules. It said it also reports illegal content to law enforcement and child-protection groups. In a previous statement, OnlyFans told Reuters it works to “aggressively target, report, and support the investigations and prosecutions” of anyone who abuses the platform.
OnlyFans is one of the world’s fastest-growing and most lucrative creator platforms. It relies heavily on payment cards to process subscriptions, tips and other transactions between its more than 300 million users and its four million content creators. Its surging profits have made it a leader in the creator economy. In September, OnlyFans reported $6.6 billion in gross payments to creators, up 20% from the year before. It made $1.3 billion in revenue.