OnlyFans Natalie Monroe Faces Prison After Earning $5.4M but Failing to Pay $1.5M in Taxes

An OnlyFans creator who earned more than $5.4M (£4M) from her online following is heading to federal prison after failing to pay $1.5M (£1.1M) of the tax she owed on it.

Kylie Perez, who performed under the stage name Natalie Monroe, was sentenced on 20 August by US District Judge Thomas P. Barber to a year behind bars, followed by a year of supervised release, for filing a false tax return. She had pleaded guilty three months earlier, on 20 May.

Court records set out how the money moved. Between 2019 and 2023, Perez earned upwards of $5.4M (£4M) from her social media accounts, most of it through OnlyFans. She filed a false return for the 2019 tax year, then failed to pay at least $1.5M (£1.1M) in tax owed across the four years that followed, according to the US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida.

The $5.4M OnlyFans Empire Behind Natalie Monroe

Perez, 31, from the Tampa area, made her money the way a growing number of creators now do. OnlyFans lets performers charge a monthly subscription, sell pay-per-view clips, and collect tips, and the totals can be substantial for anyone with a large and loyal audience.

The platform, launched in London in 2016, takes a cut of roughly 20% of what its creators bill, and its highest earners can clear seven figures in a single year.

Perez sat in that bracket. She was reported to have built a following of more than 2.8 million across various platforms, including Instagram, with much of her income coming from subscribers paying to watch her livestreams and exclusive content. All of it was documented, and that record became the backbone of the government's case.

Inside the Tax Case That Sent an OnlyFans Star to Prison

The investigation was run by IRS Criminal Investigation. Perez was indicted on one count of filing a false tax return in 2019 and four counts of failing to pay income tax, one for each year from 2020 through 2023.

Those charges carried real exposure. A false return can bring up to three years in prison, and each failure-to-pay count adds another 12 months, which is how prosecutors reached the seven-year maximum she faced. Her guilty plea to the false-return count brought the term down to a single year.

Merrilyn E. Hoenemeyer, an assistant US attorney, prosecuted the case. Prosecutors framed the sentence as a warning to others.

'Evading the payment of owed income tax is a violation of our federal tax laws,' said US Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe. 'We will continue to prosecute those who purposely commit these crimes.'

Ron Loecker, the special agent in charge of IRS Criminal Investigation's Florida field office, put it more plainly. 'When someone chooses personal luxury over meeting their tax obligations, the consequences are inevitable,' he said.

The government has been widening its pursuit of financial crime. On 7 April, the Department of Justice created a National Fraud Enforcement Division to investigate the theft and misuse of taxpayer money.

The division supports President Donald Trump's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, a government-wide effort chaired by Vice President JD Vance.

The rules that tripped Perez up apply across the creator economy.

OnlyFans reports what its creators earn, and those based in the United States are treated as self-employed, liable for income and self-employment tax on every subscription, tip, and pay-per-view sale.

For Perez, that liability now carries a custodial cost. A year in prison and a year of supervised release stand in place of the online career that generated the seven-figure income in the first place.