The billionaire owner of adult-content platform OnlyFans has died after “a long battle with cancer” at the age of 43, the company has said.
Leonid Radvinsky, an American-Ukrainian entrepreneur, acquired the parent company of OnlyFans, Fenix International Ltd, in 2018.
He served as director and majority shareholder, and previously made headlines in 2023 for paying himself more than $1.3 million (about £969,100) a day in dividends when the company made pre-tax profits of $525 million (391.4 million).
“We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Leo Radvinsky,” OnlyFans said in a statement.
“Leo passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer.
“His family have requested privacy at this difficult time.”
OnlyFans was founded in 2016 by British entrepreneur Tim Stokely as an over-18s social media platform that can only be accessed by paying subscribers.
It became a lucrative income stream for sex workers, celebrities and influencers after its popularity spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Last year Radvinsky was reported to be in talks to sell OnlyFans at a valuation of around $8 billion (about £5.9 billion).
The entrepreneur was born in Ukraine and moved to Chicago with his family as a child, before attending Northwestern University to study economics, where he graduated top of his class, in 2002.
He started his career developing multiple websites, such as Working Passes and Password Universe, which provided users with “hacked” passwords to porn websites, according to Forbes.
In 2004, Radvinsky went on to found adult-streaming site MyFreeCams, where models could earn money in tips from viewers.
The site reached 30 million users each month.
Around this time Radvinsky was sued by Amazon and Microsoft, who accused him of sending millions of “illegal and deceptive email messages to MSN Hotmail customers”, including messages that were “falsely labelled as coming from Amazon.com”.
Radvinsky denied the allegations and the cases were settled out of court in 2005.
His business Cybertania, a website referral business, was also sued in 2005 by model Sheila Lussier for using her clothed image on a porn site, with the case settled outside of court as well.
Radvinsky, who rarely gave any interviews, also ran Leo, a venture capital fund he founded in 2009.
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