An 18-year-old dentistry student from Lebanon paces outside the fortified compound on the outskirts of Bucharest where Andrew Tate was arrested last week. Omais Hilal has seen posts claiming the 36-year-old has been freed after being detained as part of an investigation into human trafficking, organised crime and rape.
The stories are false – typical, perhaps, of so much of the online chatter provoked by Tate. And Hilal, it appears, seems typical of the young men who have been taken in by his extreme brand of toxic masculinity, which has led domestic abuse charities to warn repeatedly about its radicalising effects, particularly on young boys.
“I came to tell him that I love him,” says the softly spoken teenager who is studying at Bucharest’s prestigious Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy.
Halil, like many of Tate’s millions of online followers, believes the British-American influencer and self-proclaimed misogynist has been arrested as part of a conspiracy for successfully “escaping the Matrix”.
“The police had no reason to arrest him,” says the aspiring bodybuilder. “I want to be muscular and rich like Andrew but that doesn’t mean I’m a monster.” He points to the fleet of luxury cars parked inside Tate’s high-security compound, which includes a £300,000 Aston Martin Vanquish and an £80,000 Porsche 911 with personalised UK number plates beginning “T8”, before setting off.
Tate, who was born in the US and grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire, after his British mother and American father divorced, has amassed a huge following among young men by presenting himself as a globetrotting, cigar-smoking, champagne-quaffing playboy. He flaunts his wealth in online posts and claims to be the world’s first trillionaire.
The former professional kickboxer has been banned from various social media platforms for posting poisonous diatribes about women, including claims that women should “bear some responsibility” for being raped. But, despite the deep offensiveness of these remarks, that has not stopped his posts from being shared on YouTube and TikTok, where videos with #AndrewTate have been viewed more than 12.7bn times.
And Tate has certainly not been arrested for attempting to escape “the Matrix”. He was taken into custody alongside his brother and business partner, Tristan, 34, and two Romanian women, Georgiana Naghel, 28, and Luana Radu, 32, on 29 December as part of an investigation into human trafficking, organised crime and rape. The maximum sentence for someone convicted of all three offences is 17 and a half years.
The Tates deny the allegations and are next week expected to appeal against the decision to hold them in custody for 30 days while Romania’s directorate for investigating organised crime and terrorism (Diicot) continues its inquiries. Their lawyer, Eugen Vidineac, said: “I’m quite sure about the innocence of my clients. We appreciate there is no direct evidence against them.”
Prosecutors have accused the brothers of employing the “loverboy method” to lure women from Europe and the US to Romania. They allege that the Tates duped women with declarations of love and promises of marriage before forcing them to produce pornographic videos for the adult subscription site OnlyFans and video-sharing site TikTok.
Ramona Bolla, a Diicot prosecutor and spokesperson, said they had identified six alleged victims. “The women were forced to produce material on a daily basis, over extensive hours, and they had a schedule to follow,” she told the Guardian. “They were producing pornographic material using different objects while engaging with someone in a different location. They were also doing videos showing different parts of their body.
“We don’t know how much the brothers earned, but the women didn’t get any of the money. We know a woman doing well can make €50,000 [£44,259] per month. The women who have been arrested were making sure the victims respected the programme. Every girl had to have material posted, they had targets, and had to follow the schedule. If not, they were sanctioned.”
On Thursday, a Romanian broadcaster published a transcript of a conversation believed to be between Tate and one of his alleged victims, which reportedly forms part of the prosecution’s case.
He is said to have seduced one alleged victim with messages saying: “You have to understand that once you’re mine, you’ll be mine for ever. A woman never leaves her man. I will be the last man in your life.”
He later reportedly added: “Can you be loving enough to be a wife? To always be by my side, wherever I go? Talk to zero men besides me? Ride or die? You have to move to Romania with me, to keep an eye on you. You’re mine. Do not forget that. And act like it. We will be together soon.”
In a ruling published on Thursday, the Romanian judge, who approved the 30-day detention of the four defendants, said the transcripts corroborates the alleged victims’ account. The judge noted that the woman claimed that Tate promised they would live together but when she arrived in Romania he was out of the country. She was said to have been picked up from the airport by one of the female defendants who had paid for her plane ticket.
“She [the defendant] told her that she would live with some girls who work for the defendant and his brother, who have accounts on [OnlyFans] and share the profits with the two,” the judge said.
The judge also commented on the defendants’ ability “to identify vulnerable persons and exploit their emotional needs, their need for affection, trust, stability, creating the impression of a close relationship and thus removing any suspicion.”
The police investigation began last April after a 21-year-old American woman informed a relation in the US that she was being held against her will at a property close to Tate’s compound.
The American embassy tipped off the Romanian police who raided the house and identified two alleged victims. Four more women have since been identified as alleged victims. Tate’s compound was also raided and the brothers were taken in for questioning and released. They denied the allegations.
Both properties, and three others, were raided again last week. The day before the raid, Tate had made the headlines after becoming embroiled in a Twitter spat with the climate activist Greta Thunberg. Prosecutors said police seized 11 supercars, cash, weapons, luxury watches, cigars and booze during the searches.
Tate’s compound is on a pitted road next to a cemetery in the Bucharest suburb of Pipera. It is the headquarters of “Hustler’s University”, Tate’s £40 a month online “school” that promotes get-rich-quick schemes and previously offered courses such as the “pimpin’ hoe degree”. In October, the school had 221,000 users, generating an estimated income of £9m, BuzzFeed News reported. A Romanian judiciary source said it is believed the brothers have also previously made money through slot-machine businesses in Romania.
A neighbour opposite Tate’s converted warehouse said: “Before the raid in April, there were lots of people going in and out, especially women, and they were having parties. But they were good neighbours, very different from their characters on social media.”
Less than 500 metres away, in a gated community of identikit salmon-coloured semi-detached homes called the American Village, is where the 21-year-old American woman was claimed to have been held captive last April. Police claim it is here that Tate’s alleged online sex operation was being run from.
The house is reportedly currently occupied by a 22-year-old Ukrainian woman, Tate’s personal assistant, and two female Romanian TikTok performers. The Ukrainian woman told the Times that none of them were involved in pornography.
When the Guardian visited the property on Wednesday, a young Romanian woman in pink silk lingerie answered the door, saying: “I can’t talk to you. I’m not going to talk to you.”
A neighbour said: “We don’t know the girls or how many there. But there have been multiple girls over the last two to three years and they change a lot. One of the brothers, I’m not sure which one, has turned up in a Bentley and once in Lamborghini.
“The rent here is €1,700 a month so it’s not cheap. It’s a large house, around 240 sq metres with at least three bedrooms. All the girls seem to speak English because we hear them talking on their phones in the garden. One girl appeared to have an American accent. We saw police raid the property on an afternoon last April and then we didn’t see that girl again.
“It’s obvious to everyone the kind of work they’re doing. They seem to be working mostly at night as the house becomes really animated then. They are known as Tate’s girls by the kids in the neighbourhood because we know the kind of job they have.”
The Romanian judge ruled that the defendants should be detained for 30 days because the prosecution case showed there was an “attitude of disregard towards women in general” and that they were “only perceived as a means of obtaining large profits in an easy way”.
The judge also noted that both brothers had no previous conviction but had faced police investigations in the UK. In fact, it was revealed this week that Tate moved to Romania while being investigated in the UK for an alleged rape and assault in 2015.
Tate had found fame as a contestant on Channel 5’s Big Brother in 2016, but he was expelled from the show when producers were told by the police that they were investigating allegations of abuse against him, Vice World News reported.
Tate was arrested on 18 July 2015 in relation to an allegation of assault, Hertfordshire constabulary said. While in police custody, he was further arrested on the same day on a separate allegation of rape and assault, a spokesperson added.
The alleged victims told Vice that police took four years to pass their investigation to the Crown Prosecution Service, which declined to press charges after deciding in November 2019 there was no realistic prospect of a conviction.
The alleged victim told Vice News: “I have been very frustrated by the British police and court system for a long time.”
Tate denied the accusations via his lawyer, saying: “They [the alleged victims] wanted money because I fired them. The police understood after the investigation that I am innocent and the police found messages from the girls’ phones where they were talking between themselves and planning to lie about me.”
Vidineac said the brothers claimed that spurned lovers had orchestrated the accusations in Romania out of spite. “It is because [the women] had the belief that they would be wives of the brothers,” he said. “These are exactly the words of Andrew: ‘It’s about jealousy’.”
But he did have one point to add. “The number of followers is going up,” he remarked. “If it’s the attention from critics, it’s not a good feeling. But if we are talking about the supporters, it’s good for them.”
