The fact that OnlyFans’ profits soared last year and the news that its owner earned more than $300 million in dividends raise new questions about the porn mogul.
Leonid Radvinsky is a 41-year-old Ukrainian-American businessman with an estimated net worth of $2.1 billion.
He bought the company in 2018 from the father and son team Guy and Tim Stokely, who had started it two years earlier with an investment of $12,500.
Radvinsky is believed to have paid millions of dollars for it.
But who is he and where does his money come from?
What is known about Leonid Radvinsky?
To put it clearly, very little. Despite the premise of the platform that he owns, Radvinsky chooses to keep his personal life private.
He has not given many interviews.
Yet despite an apparent aversion to publicity, there are clues to his life in a LinkedIn profile and on a personal website.
According to his LinkedIn, Radvinsky describes himself as a venture capitalist, philanthropist and tech entrepreneur who has “a special interest in emerging social media platforms.”
On his own website, Radvinsky says that he has spent the last two decades “building software companies and contributing to the open source movement.”
Born in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, Radvinsky’s company donated to relief efforts in Ukraine using cryptocurrency, with the real value of the donation in 2022 amounting to more than $1.3 million, according to CoinDesk.
Radvinsky says he donates “an enormous amount of time, effort and money to nonprofit causes” such as charities and tech projects.
Outside of programming and philanthropy, “he’s an avid reader who’s always up for a game of chess and an aspiring helicopter pilot,” his website says.
Where is it based?
His family moved to the United States when he was a child and settled in Chicago, the Daily Telegraph reported.
He now lives in “sunny Florida,” but exactly where is unknown.
Forbes describes the billionaire as a married man, but the BBC has been unable to verify the identity of his spouse.
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Onlyfans isn’t Radvinsky’s first business tied to the pornography industry.
He studied economics at Northwestern University, near Chicago, Illinois, graduating in 2002. Since then, the businessman has worked on various projects.
Before becoming the sole shareholder of OnlyFans’ parent company Fenix, he founded a website referral company called Cybertania.
According to Forbes, the company has been offering users links to passwords for content, including pornography, since the late 1990s.
Before buying Onlyfans, he also owned a successful adult webcam business.
Radvinsky did not respond to a BBC request for an interview.
What company is behind Onlyfans?
Fenix, the company that owns Onlyfans, is still registered in the UK even though Radvinsky is based in the US.
But the company’s chief financial officer, Lee Taylor, is based in the United Kingdom, according to British government company records.
Public records show that investor and founder Guy Stokely resigned from OnlyFans’ parent company in December 2021.
That same month, Tim Stokely, Guy’s son, resigned as CEO of OnlyFans to “undertake new endeavors.”
Under Radvinsky’s guidance, OnlyFans has flourished.
It is no longer associated solely with pornography, with some of its biggest creators only posting content that is “appropriate for viewing at work”.
How much money does Onlyfans make?
The London-registered company indicated in August 2023 that pre-tax profit for the period reached $525 million, up from $432 million a year earlier.
Just last year, the number of creators on Onlyfans increased 47% to nearly 3.2 million, while the number of users increased 27% to nearly 239 million.
But the platform has also faced criticism and renewed attention from regulators and governments.
BBC News reported in 2021 that Onlyfans had failed to prevent underage users from selling and appearing in explicit videos.
Onlyfans said at the time that its age verification systems went beyond regulatory requirements.
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OnlyFans owner gets $338 million in dividends