Creator of AI Fake-ID Site OnlyFake Speaks Out After US Sentence and Deportation

Nazarenko, 28, is free after a year in custody and now lives in Asia, according to 404 Media, which based its article on interviews with him and his lawyer, court records and its own reporting. He pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court earlier this year to conspiracy to commit fraud involving identification documents and agreed to forfeit $1.2 million, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said at the time. Prosecutors said OnlyFake sold more than 10,000 digital fake IDs to customers around the world, and that buyers used them to get around the know-your-customer checks run by banks and cryptocurrency exchanges. The Justice Department spells his first name Yurii.

The case matters to any business that signs up customers remotely. Many banks, payment companies and crypto platforms ask new users to upload a picture of an identity document. OnlyFake's selling point was that it produced not a flat scan but a photo of a card that appeared to be lying on a sofa, carpet or desk, as if someone had just taken it out of a wallet and photographed it with a phone. That removed the forging skill such documents once required and allowed customers to order in volume; prosecutors said bulk packages ran to 1,000 IDs. Undercover FBI agents bought fake New York state IDs, US passports and a Social Security card from the site in May and June 2024, according to the Justice Department.

Nazarenko told 404 Media he began by editing passport scans pixel by pixel in Photoshop, with a single high-quality document sometimes taking a week. To speed things up he built templates, hired programmers and designers, and set up a website that filled in whatever personal details a customer wanted. When generative AI became widely available, he added that too. "That gradually became OnlyFake," he said.

He told the outlet that he panicked when its first article on the site appeared, destroying his laptop and emails and getting a new phone in the belief that the authorities were about to arrive. He also said the pressure of running a growing fraud operation pushed him towards drugs.

According to 404 Media, a letter from a UN panel dated February 26, 2024 said North Korean IT workers had used OnlyFake to make fake passports and driving licences, which they then used to apply for remote jobs and to open accounts on freelance and payment platforms. Nazarenko refused a UN request for user data, the outlet reported.

Nazarenko was detained at the border in Bucharest on June 13, 2025, where a US warrant was waiting, and spent three months in a Romanian prison before being extradited to New York, according to 404 Media. The Justice Department said the extradition took place in September 2025. The charge carried a maximum sentence of 15 years. In June, a judge sentenced him to time served, 404 Media reported. He was then held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for about two months and deported to Ukraine on August 17.

"OnlyFake was the first time I saw how quickly a small internet project could turn into something global. Unfortunately, it also taught me, in a very painful way, what can happen when the scale of something grows faster than your understanding of its consequences," Nazarenko told the outlet.

The model he built has outlived the site. OnlyFake spawned copycat services, 404 Media reported, and while the FBI has gone after at least one of them and some have shut down, others continue to appear.