This article was produced in collaboration, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records.Subscribe to them here.Two former OnlyFans subscribers are suing the platform in a class-action lawsuit, claiming that they were defrauded because creators allegedly werent interacting directly with them, but were instead employing agencies to impersonate the models they thought they were speaking to.The plaintiffs, M. Brunner and J. Fry, both from Illinois, claim that they thought the creators they subscribed tosome of whom have hundreds of thousands of subscriberswere talking to them in direct messages and video clips. Both also say that if theyd known they werent speaking directly to the creators themselves, they wouldnt have subscribed, or would have paid less to subscribe. If OnlyFans stopped creators from using agencies to talk to fans they would consider going back to spending money on the platform, they say.Do you have a tip about OnlyFans, as a creator or a subscriber? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at sam@404media.co.The complaint is brought against OnlyFanss parent companies Fenix Internet, LLC and Fenix International Limited.The plaintiffs dont provide proof in the complaint that they were talking to agency chatters and not the creators themselves, but say that they became suspicious after subscribing, including realizing that a single individual could not send the number of direct messages or videos that generating revenue from 700,000 fans, in one creators case, would require.Plaintiff Fry created an account primarily in order to engage in friendly conversations with models and share photographs of his cooking creations, the complaint says. Fry alleges that he began to become suspicious of who he was actually communicating when he started getting contradicting information and errors in messages.By exercising its discretion to enrich itself while participating in the deception of its customers, OnlyFans consciously and deliberately frustrates the agreed common purposes of the contract and disappoints the reasonable expectations of Plaintiffs and Class Members, thereby depriving them of the benefit of their bargain, the complaint states.OnlyFans agencies have been a well-documented industry for yearsespecially the chatting aspect, where people employed by an agency manage creators messages and in some cases, respond to fans. Not all OnlyFans creators use agencies or chatters, but there are dozens of agencies that advertise the service. A November 2021 lawsuit against Unruly Agency alleged that the company preyed on and defrauded fans into divulging their "deepest and innermost personal secrets including sexual fantasies and fetishes, marital troubles, suicidal ideations, and other private desires to account managers and senior account managers."Creators may choose to work with a wide range of third parties, including photographers, videographers, talent managers and agencies, to curate and monetise their content, an OnlyFans spokesperson told Cosmopolitan last year for a story about OnlyFans models who use agencies to be more productive. Any third party that a creator elects to work with does not work on behalf of OnlyFans and is not affiliated with the company in any way.In July 2024, five OnlyFans users also filed a class action complaint against OnlyFans parent company claiming that chatter scams defraud fans. Last month, a judge ordered that the case would go to trial in 2027.OnlyFans did not respond to 404 Medias requests for comment about the new class action complaint.Sam Cole is writing from the far reaches of the internet, about sexuality, the adult industry, online culture, and AI. She's the author of How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex.More from Samantha Cole