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Andrew Tate Detained for 24 Hours Over Alleged Human Trafficking in Romania
Andrew Tate, a controversial British-American online influencer, has been detained in Romania as part of a human trafficking and rape investigation. Tate and his brother Tristan Tate and two other men were to remain in custody for 24 hours.
After raiding Tate’s and others’ properties in Bucharest, prosecutors from the anti-organized-crime unit issued a statement.
“The four suspects… appear to have formed an organized crime group with the goal of recruiting, housing, and exploiting women by compelling them to create pornographic content for viewing on specialized websites for a fee,” prosecutors said. “They would have made significant profits.”
According to Reuters, the two brothers have been under investigation for criminal activity since April 2022.
The self-described “misogynist” rose to prominence after being kicked off the British reality show Big Brother in 2016 over a video that appeared to show him assaulting a woman.
He said at the time that the footage had been edited and was “a total lie trying to make me look bad”.
Andrew Tate a former kickboxer now has over 3.8 million Twitter followers and a global profile.
Emory Andrew Tate, Tate’s full name, was born in Chicago, Illinois.
He was named after his father, an American who worked for the United States Air Force in the United Kingdom and was also a chess master. Tate’s mother and father met in the United Kingdom before emigrating to America, where he was raised until his parents divorced.
Tate moved to Luton, England, with his mother after his divorce.
Tate and his younger brother Tristan both stated that they were poor in England. They recalled going to KFC to save other people’s leftover chicken and freezing it for future meals in interviews.
Tate was a four-time kickboxing world champion, but he rose to prominence online.
Videos with the hashtag #AndrewTate have been viewed over 12.7 billion times on TikTok. This figure includes videos made by people who are critical of the influencer.
He stated in an interview with another YouTuber that he was “”I’m a realist, and when you’re a realist, you’re sexist,” she said. It’s impossible to be grounded in reality and not be sexist.”
He called women “intrinsically lazy” and said there was “no such thing as an independent female” in the same video.
Numerous social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, have banned him – with the latter saying that “misogyny is a hateful ideology that is not tolerated”.
Tate has described himself as a “self-made multimillionaire” and said he earned money through “a little webcam business from my apartment”.
“I had 75 women working for me in four locations, and I was doing $600,000 a month from webcam,” he explained on a podcast.
He claimed to have brought women into the “adult entertainment industry” on a now-deleted page of his website.
“My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates with her, sleep with her, test if she’s quality, get her to fall in love with me to the point where she’d do anything I said, and then get her on webcam so we could become rich together,” he wrote on the page, which was later removed in February 2022.
Tate works with his brother, Tristan, who told the Daily Mirror that their company was “all a big scam” in which men paid to talk to women online.
“I’ve seen men sell cars and televisions… This guy’s grandmother died, and they were waiting for the house to be sold. He’d get £20,000 when the house sold and promised it to [a model] to pay for her bogus financial problem “Tristan revealed to the Mirror.
Tristan was also apprehended alongside his brother on Thursday evening at his home in a Bucharest suburb.
Tate’s spokesperson told the Daily Mirror that they couldn’t comment on the allegations of human trafficking and rape. “Andrew and Tristan Tate have the greatest respect for the Romanian authorities and will always assist and help in any way they can,” he said.
Tate has appeared in numerous videos, flaunting an ultra-luxurious lifestyle that includes fast cars, private jets, and yachts.
He had a Twitter spat with environmental activist Greta Thunberg earlier this week. He claimed to have 33 cars and said he would send her a list of their “respective enormous emissions”.
Tate was barred from Twitter for claiming that women should “bear responsibility” for sexual assault. He was later reinstated.