A Tampa-area OnlyFans creator who built a following online as Natalie Monroe has been sentenced to one year in federal prison after admitting she failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes on her earnings. U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Barber handed down the sentence to Kylie Perez on Thursday, along with one year of supervised release to follow her prison term.
Perez earned over $5.4 million through OnlyFans between 2019 and 2023, according to federal authorities, and failed to pay at least $1.5 million in taxes due between 2020 and 2023. As Tampa Free Press reports, Perez submitted a false return for the 2019 tax year and was ultimately sentenced for filing a false tax return, the single count she pleaded guilty to in a statement dated May 20. Federal authorities say she carried out a scheme to evade tax assessments on the platform income she generated through photos, videos, live streams, and direct viewer tips.
Perez was initially indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2025 and arrested that August on five counts, facing a statutory maximum of seven years in prison, according to the Business Observer. Her May 2026 guilty plea to a single count of filing a false tax return let her avoid trial on four additional counts of willful failure to pay income tax, dramatically narrowing her prison exposure. Under 26 U.S.C. § 7206, filing a false tax return carries a maximum statutory sentence of three years per count, while individual failure-to-pay counts carry up to one year each, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Prosecutors Detail a Widening Digital Income Gap
Federal court records from her initial indictment show Perez earned over $1.6 million in 2020 alone while failing to pay nearly $499,000 in taxes that year, with her taxable annual platform earnings ranging between $603,000 and over $2.1 million from 2021 through 2023, per the Business Observer's account of the original charging documents. The scale of that unreported income underscores why federal investigators zeroed in on her case as part of a broader push against digital creator tax evasion.
Gregory W. Kehoe, the U.S. Attorney overseeing the case, said federal prosecutors will continue prosecuting people who purposely commit tax crimes. “Evading the payment of owed income tax is a violation of our federal tax laws,” Kehoe said. Ron Loecker, Special Agent in Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation's Florida Field Office, said the consequences are inevitable when someone chooses personal luxury over meeting tax obligations, and added that investigators remain focused on unpaid tax liabilities. “IRS Criminal Investigation special agents will continue uncovering the truth and safeguarding the tax system's integrity,” Loecker said. Perez's case was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Merrilyn E. Hoenemeyer.
An Open Question on Repayment
Public statements from federal prosecutors following the Thursday sentencing did not clarify whether Judge Barber ordered Perez to pay formal financial restitution alongside her prison term and supervised release, the Business Observer notes. Federal criminal tax cases typically involve orders to repay back taxes, but it remains unresolved whether that happened here.
Perez's prosecution also lands amid a Justice Department reorganization: the department's National Fraud Enforcement Division, launched in April, targets waste, abuse, and unpaid financial obligations across government systems and works alongside the Federal Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which Vice President J.D. Vance chairs. The department integrated specialized criminal tax prosecutors into its Fraud Division as part of 2026 organizational changes meant to prioritize high-value tax evasion and protect public revenue, according to a summary published by Insights.
Why Creator Income Is So Easy to Trace
Platforms like OnlyFans issue Form 1099-NEC or 1099-K to creators and report those earnings directly to the IRS, subjecting self-employed creators to federal income tax plus a 15.3% self-employment tax, according to Arc & Ledger Accounting. That reporting requirement makes gross platform earnings straightforward for federal authorities to verify against what a creator actually files. IRS Criminal Investigation has designated digital economy content creators as an active enforcement focus, using automated 1099 matching alongside social media monitoring to uncover unreported income and extravagant spending, per the Law Office of Pietro Canestrelli.
Perez's case follows a pattern of aggressive federal tax enforcement across Florida. In June 2025, a Miami-Dade resident pleaded guilty to hiding $30 million in capital gains, a case Hoodline previously reported. Hoodline also first covered Perez's case in August 2025, when the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida announced her original five-count indictment under her online alias Natalie Monroe.
