Andrew Tate once called his sexually explicit webcam business a “total scam” and boasted on his website that he lured women in by getting them to fall in love with him. The 36-year-old influencer also boasted on a podcast that he broke a woman’s jaw in a bar fight and “got away with it.”
Those are just some of the details found in an NBC News review of Tate’s media appearances, website records and archives of his Instagram and YouTube accounts following his December arrest in Bucharest, Romania where he lives.
Romanian authorities arrested him, his brother and two women on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organized crime group, according to Reuters. Tate has denied the claims, and all four have contested their continued detention.
Tate remains in custody after a Romanian court last week denied his appeal of a judge’s decision to hold him for 30 days, citing the “possibility of them evading investigations,” according to the Associated Press.
The British-American internet personality, most recently known for making misogynistic statements online to his millions of followers, has documented many details about the webcam sex business at the center of the Romanian allegations.
He has detailed in public how his business functioned and how he got women involved in it. Much of the material posted to several of his now-suspended social media accounts has been reposted online by fan accounts and critics alike.
Tate, a former kickboxer turned self-described “success coach,” gained international attention last year for his polarizing rants on women and modern masculinity. His violent and often misogynistic rhetoric drew widespread criticism online, and in August 2022 Tate was banned from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube for violating the platforms’ community guidelines. Although Twitter permanently suspended his account in 2017 after he tweeted that women should “bare some responsibility” for being sexually assaulted, the site reinstated his account late last year. Tate pushed back against his critics in previous statements to NBC News, saying he’s simply playing an “online character.”
Tate relocated to Romania in 2017, he said in an episode of The Fellas, a comedy podcast.
In April of last year, Tate was arrested a first time by Romanian authorities who said the U.S. Embassy notified them that a U.S. woman, who was 21 at the time, said she was being held captive by the Tate brothers. She declined to comment to NBC News through a representative. After entering Tate’s residence that month, authorities said they discovered another woman from Romania who said she was also being held captive. Authorities said their investigation then expanded to include suspicion of human trafficking and rape.
In late December, police arrested Tate and the others accused after a monthslong investigation. Romanian authorities said six people have been identified who were “sexually exploited” by the group of people charged, and that, “an injured person was forced, on two different occasions, by a suspect through the exercise of physical violence and psychological pressure to have sexual relations.” Authorities did not specify which suspect they were referring to.
The webcam business that Tate ran and openly spoke about is central to these charges, according to Romanian Authorities.
In podcast appearances, news interviews and social media posts since 2021, Tate said that he employed women to make money for him by performing in webcam pornography, controlled their behavior and evaded law enforcement. He has also advertised content sold to teach people about how they can replicate his business model.
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Tate and his brother told the Mirror in a June 2022 interview that they ran a “total scam” business in Romania that used cam models to lure men into sending them money.
Some of the allegations by Romanian authorities echo what Andrew Tate has said publicly about his webcam business.
According to Romanian authorities, the Tate brothers recruited women “by misrepresenting their intention to enter into a marriage/cohabitation relationship and the existence of genuine feelings of love (the loverboy method).”
In an interview with the podcast Fresh&Fit in December, Tate said he started his webcam sex business seven years ago when he was “broke.” Tate said he texted his five girlfriends at the time, who he said didn’t know about each other, and asked them to come live and work with him in Bedfordshire, England.
“I’m going to look after you, and we’re going to get rich,’” Tate remembered saying.
On a since-deleted page on Tate’s website advertising what he called the “PhD Program,” he openly described manipulating women romantically to further his business.
“My job was to get women to fall in love with me. Literally, that was my job,” the website said. “My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, test if she’s quality, get her to fall in love with me to where she’d do anything I say, and then get her on webcam so we could become rich together.”
“I’ve had over 75 girls work for me,” the deleted page said. “Over 50% of my employees were actually my girlfriend at the time.”
In the Fresh&Fit podcast episode, Tate described withholding a month’s wages from his “biggest earning girl” as a punishment for getting drunk and vomiting in his bed.
Tate said the woman “went to the police” and accused Tate of assaulting her after he refused to pay her.
He said he was arrested in 2015 in the U.K. for “suspicion of assault” of the woman. Although he said the “case got dropped,” a police raid of his phones and laptops led to “new charges” against him. He did not disclose what the new charges were.
Earlier this month, Vice reported that Tate was arrested in 2015 in the U.K. on suspicion of sexual assault and physical abuse, citing statements from U.K. authorities and Tate himself. Vice also interviewed two unnamed women who said they reported Tate to the police, one for rape and both for abuse. Tate denied those allegations through a representative, according to Vice. NBC News has not verified the claims of those women.
The Crown Prosecution Service declined to prosecute Tate after the police took four years to pass on the case, Vice reported. In a statement, the police said apologies were made to both women for the delays that led to the case’s closure in 2019.
In another archived YouTube video that was posted to his channel, Tate bragged that he created restrictions and rules for the women who worked for him.
“I’m all over the place so I end up with all these chicks just stuck in a house sitting there, bored, completely in love with me,” Tate said in the clip, which has resurfaced online in wake of his most recent arrest. “And of course they don’t go out. They’re not allowed out … You stay in the house. You don’t go nowhere. No restaurants, no clubs, nothing.”
Romanian authorities said that women recruited by Tate’s organization were transported to and housed in Romania, where “by exercising acts of physical violence and mental coercion (through intimidation, constant surveillance, control and invoking alleged debts),” they were allegedly forced to perform for Tate’s webcam sex business.
Tate said he flew women in from other countries to join his webcam operations in the U.K. and Romania.
In a video Tate sold as part of his “Hustlers University” pay-to-watch series, which he advertised as an educational course for followers to replicate his webcam sex businesses, he said women flew to him from countries like Slovakia and France.
“They were all from different places in the world,” Tate said about the women he recruited. “I had them all fly in, sat them all down together.”
In addition to moving from the U.K. to Romania to conduct his business, Tate has said he evaded past accusations of rape and physical abuse and punishing women for accusing him of misconduct.
Tate has said in multiple interviews that he’s been violent toward women. During another episode of The Pomp Podcast recorded in 2021, he said that he hit a woman and broke her jaw during a bar fight. Tate said he “ended up in court” after he was charged with causing “bodily harm,” but “got away with it in the end.” He said he was found innocent. NBC News has not verified the details of the encounter.
He told Fresh&Fit that this incident motivated him to move to Romania. In a YouTube video from Tate’s channel, which was banned in August 2022 for violating YouTube’s hate speech policy and community guidelines, Tate said he moved from the U.K. to Romania because the country was less likely to pursue rape claims.
“I’m not a rapist but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want,” Tate said in a since-removed video.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
