Husband wastes family’s $135k savings on ‘freakiest girl on OnlyFans’ while his wife battles cancer
A Colorado woman discovered her husband was depleting their $135,000 savings on an OnlyFans account while she was receiving cancer treatment. Melinda Lam, a 46-year-old pharmacist, discovered the financial drain after a credit card payment for her son’s karate lessons was declined.
She found that at least six credit cards were maxed out, and nearly $40,000 had been withdrawn from their savings. One card statement indicated that the money had been spent on an OnlyFans model, whose profile once described her as ‘the FREAKIEST Girl on OnlyFans‘.
Lam’s husband had spent a total of $135,000 on porn creators on OnlyFans. The financial strain and emotional distress led Lam to prepare for bankruptcy and finalize a divorce. Lam described her feelings as ‘not only shocking, but devastating’.
OnlyFans, a subscription-based website, has been promoted as a safe and empowering platform for sex workers, but it has also brought about unintended consequences. Reuters investigations have exposed child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual or ‘revenge porn’ on the site. Lam discovered that much of the money had been paid to an OnlyFans creator called Laura Shine, from Bogota, Colombia. Shine’s online profile once described her as ‘the FREAKIEST Girl on OnlyFans’.
Lam’s husband had withdrawn some of the money from his pension to fund these payments. The marriage became increasingly tumultuous, with Lam’s husband assaulting her on multiple occasions. Lam eventually left him, taking her son with her. She decided to pursue assault charges but later dropped them due to the side effects of her cancer treatment.
The OnlyFans creator, Shine, had promised Lam’s husband a future together and repeatedly asked him for large sums of money. Their interactions led to Lam’s husband spending increasingly larger amounts of money on the platform. Lam expressed her dismay at the situation, stating, ‘OnlyFans is making all this money at the expense of people like me. It’s just money in their pocket. They don’t think about the repercussions.’