Romy Abragil Says Visa Probe, Health Ordeal, and Online Abuse Upended Her Life

Israeli social media personality Romi Abragil, who lives in Thailand, said she was detained about six weeks ago after police found her with a fake visa and suspected she was running an illegal OnlyFans account in the country. She stressed that she was not jailed, but was taken to a station politely, questioned for a few hours, and released on a relatively low bail. Abragil said a Chabad rabbi accompanied her and that the case is still ongoing, so she cannot return to Israel for now.

Abragil, 24, said she was also trapped in a severe medical crisis that began with a small wound in her nose and escalated into more than 10 reconstructive surgeries, travel between countries, months of isolation, depression, and fear for her life. She said the first operations, including three in Turkey, went badly, and that when she returned to Thailand her nose had become deformed and was oozing pus. After injections of steroids and antibiotics, she said she had to keep moving between Turkey and Vietnam until she finally underwent successful treatment in Israel with Dr. Yossi Fichman.

She said the treatments cost roughly 100,000 shekels for gender-affirming care and a similar amount for the nose surgeries, financed through savings, family help, and her OnlyFans income. Abragil said she opened the adult-content account during the pandemic because she had no other way to cover expenses and did not want to take loans. “It was either that or loans,” she said, adding that she does not recommend it to others and that it took a heavy mental toll.

Abragil also described hostility in Turkey during the war in Israel, saying she wore a hijab in public so she would not be identified as Israeli and that anti-Israel demonstrations made the situation frightening. Separately, she cited the 2025 LGBT-phobia report by the Aguda, which said 54% of complaints came from trans people, and said trans people face the highest levels of violence in many settings. She said she has rarely been attacked physically, but is routinely abused online and wants more policing, education, and LGBT groups in schools, while saying Israel is legally relatively good for trans people.