Andrew Tate once referred to his sexually explicit webcam business as a “total scam” and boasted on his website that he enticed women by making them fall in love with him. On a podcast, the 36-year-old influencer also boasted about breaking a woman’s jaw in a bar fight and “getting away with it.”
These are just a few of the details discovered during an NBC News investigation into Tate’s media appearances, website records, and archives of his Instagram and YouTube accounts following his December arrest in Bucharest, Romania, where he resides.
According to Reuters, Romanian authorities arrested him, his brother, and two women on suspicion of human trafficking, rape, and forming an organised crime group. Tate has denied the allegations, and all four have challenged their detention.
Tate remains in custody after a Romanian court denied his appeal of a judge’s decision to hold him for 30 days last week, citing the “possibility of them evading investigations,” according to the Associated Press.
The British-American internet personality, who is best known for making misogynistic statements to his millions of followers online, has documented numerous details about the webcam sex business at the centre of the Romanian allegations.
He has publicly described how his business worked and how he got women involved in it. Much of the content posted on his now-suspended social media accounts has been reposted online by both fans and critics.
Tate, a self-described “success coach” and former kickboxer, gained international attention last year for his divisive rants on women and modern masculinity. His violent and frequently misogynistic rhetoric drew widespread condemnation online, and Tate was banned from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube in August 2022 for violating the platforms’ community guidelines. Although his account was permanently suspended in 2017 after he tweeted that women should “bear some responsibility” for being sexually assaulted, it was reinstated late last year. Tate has previously told NBC News that he is simply portraying a “online character” in response to his critics.
Tate moved to Romania in 2017, he revealed on an episode of the comedy podcast The Fellas.
Tate was arrested for the first time in April of last year by Romanian authorities who claimed the US Embassy informed them that a 21-year-old American woman was being held captive by the Tate brothers. Through a representative, she declined to comment to NBC News. Authorities said they discovered another woman from Romania who said she was also being held captive after entering Tate’s home that month. The investigation was then expanded to include suspicions of human trafficking and rape, according to authorities.
After a months-long investigation, police arrested Tate and the other suspects in late December. According to Romanian authorities, six people were “sexually exploited” by the group of people charged, and “an injured person was forced to have sexual relations on two separate occasions by a suspect through the use of physical violence and psychological pressure.” Authorities did not identify the suspect in question.
According to Romanian authorities, the webcam business that Tate ran and openly discussed is central to these charges.
Tate has stated in podcast appearances, news interviews, and social media posts since 2021 that he hired women to make money for him by performing in webcam pornography, controlled their behaviour, and evaded law enforcement. He has also advertised content for sale that teaches people how to replicate his business model.
In a June 2022 interview, Tate and his brother told the Mirror that they ran a “total scam” business in Romania that used cam models to entice men to send them money.
Some of the allegations made by Romanian authorities are similar to what Andrew Tate has publicly stated about his webcam business.
The Tate brothers allegedly recruited women “by misrepresenting their intention to enter into a marriage/cohabitation relationship and the existence of genuine feelings of love (the loverboy method),” according to Romanian authorities.
Tate told the Fresh&Fit podcast in December that he started his webcam sex business seven years ago when he was “broke.” Tate claimed he texted his five girlfriends at the time, who he claimed were unaware of each other’s existence, and invited them to live and work with him in Bedfordshire, England.
“I’m going to take care of you, and we’re going to get rich,” Tate recalled saying.
On a since-deleted page on Tate’s website advertising what he called the “PhD Program,” he openly described romantically manipulating women to advance his business.
“It was my job to make women fall in love with me. “That was literally my job,” the website stated. “My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates with her, sleep with her, see if she’s good, 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.”
“I’ve had over 75 girls work for me,” according to the deleted page. “At the time, more than half of my employees were my girlfriend.”
Tate described withholding a month’s wages from his “biggest earning girl” as a punishment for getting drunk and vomiting in his bed in an episode of the Fresh&Fit podcast.
Tate claimed the woman “went to the police,” accusing him of assaulting her after he refused to pay her.
He claimed he was arrested in the United Kingdom in 2015 on “suspicion of assault” on the woman. Despite his claim that the “case was dropped,” a police raid on his phones and laptops resulted in “new charges” against him. He didn’t say anything about the new charges.
Vice reported earlier this month that Tate was arrested in the United Kingdom in 2015 on suspicion of sexual assault and physical abuse, citing statements from U.K. authorities and Tate himself. Vice also spoke with two unidentified women who said they reported Tate to police, one for rape and the other for abuse. According to Vice, Tate denied the allegations through a representative. NBC News has not independently verified the women’s claims.
According to Vice, the Crown Prosecution Service declined to prosecute Tate after the police took four years to close the case. The police said in a statement that they apologised to both women for the delays that led to the case being closed in 2019.
Tate boasted in another archived YouTube video posted to his channel that he imposed restrictions and rules on the women who worked for him.
“I’m all over the place, so I end up with all these chicks just sitting in a house, bored, completely in love with me,” Tate said in the video, which has since resurfaced online in the wake of his most recent arrest. “Of course, they do not go out. They are not permitted to leave… You remain at home. You’re not going anywhere. There are no restaurants, clubs, or anything else.”
Romanian authorities said that women recruited by Tate’s organisation 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 claimed that he flew women from other countries to join his webcam operations in the United Kingdom and Romania.
Tate claimed that women flew to him from countries such as Slovakia and France in a video sold as part of his “Hustlers University” pay-to-watch series, which he marketed as an educational course for followers to replicate his webcam sex businesses.
“They were all from different parts of the world,” Tate said of the women he brought on board. “I had them all fly in and sit down together.”
Tate has said that, in addition to moving his business from the United Kingdom to Romania, he has avoided past allegations of rape and physical abuse by punishing women who have accused him of misconduct.
Tate has admitted to being violent toward women in multiple interviews. During another episode of The Pomp Podcast from 2021, he admitted to hitting a woman and breaking her jaw during a bar fight. Tate stated that he “ended up in court” after being charged with causing “bodily harm,” but that he “got away with it in the end.” He claimed he was found not guilty. The details of the encounter have not been confirmed by NBC News.
He told Fresh&Fit that the incident inspired him to relocate to Romania. Tate stated in a YouTube video from his channel, which was banned in August 2022 for violating YouTube’s hate speech policy and community guidelines, that he relocated from the United Kingdom 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 video that has since been removed.
