Andrew Tate once called his sexually explicit webcam business a “total scam” and boasted on his website that he lured women by making them 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”.
These 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.
According to Portal, Romanian authorities arrested him, his brother and two women on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organized criminal group. Tate has denied the claims, and all four have appealed their continued detention.
Tate remains in custody after a Romanian court last week dismissed his appeal against a judge’s decision to detain him for 30 days, citing the “possibility of them evading investigation,” according to the Associated Press.
The British-American internet personality, who has recently been known for making misogynist remarks to her millions of followers, has documented many details about the webcam sex business at the heart of the Romanian allegations.
He has publicly detailed how his business works and how he has involved women in it. Much of the material posted on several of his now-suspended social media accounts has been reposted online by fan accounts and critics alike.
Tate, a former kickboxer-turned-self-proclaimed “success coach,” garnered international attention last year for his polarizing rants about women and modern masculinity. His violent and often misogynist 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 have “some responsibility” for sexual assault, the site reinstated his account late last year. Tate has hit out at his critics in previous statements to NBC News, saying he’s simply playing an “online character.”
The story goes on
Tate moved to Romania in 2017, he said on an episode of The Fellas, a comedy podcast.
In April last year, Tate was arrested for the first time by Romanian authorities, who said the US embassy told them that a then 21-year-old US woman said she was being held captive by the Tate brothers. She declined to comment through a rep to NBC News. After entering Tate’s home earlier this month, authorities said they spotted another woman from Romania, who said she had also been held captive. Authorities said their investigations then widened to include suspected human trafficking and rape.
In late December, police arrested Tate and the other suspects after months of investigation. Romanian authorities said six people who had been “sexually exploited” by the group of defendants had been identified and that “an injured person was coerced into sexual relations on two separate occasions by a suspect through the use of physical violence and psychological pressure.” .” Authorities did not say who the suspect was.
According to Romanian authorities, the webcam business that Tate ran and spoke openly about is at the center of these charges.
In podcast appearances, news interviews, and social media posts since 2021, Tate has said he hired women to make money for him by appearing in webcam pornography, controlling their behavior, and evading law enforcement. He has also promoted content that has been sold to teach people how to emulate his business model.
Tate and his brother told the Mirror in a June 2022 interview that they ran a “totally fraudulent” business in Romania that used cam models to trick men into sending them money.
Some of the allegations by the 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 marriage/cohabitation and the existence of genuine feelings of love (the loverboy method)”.
In an interview with the Fresh&Fit podcast 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, asking them to live and work with him in Bedfordshire, England.
“I’ll take care of you and we’ll get rich,” Tate recalled.
On a now-deleted page on Tate’s website, which promotes what he called the “PhD program,” he openly described how he romantically manipulated women to further his business.
“My job was to make women fall in love with me. That was literally my job,” the website reads. “My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, test if she’s good, make her fall in love with me where she would do anything I say , and then get her on webcam so we could get rich together.”
“I’ve had over 75 girls working for me,” the deleted page reads. “Over 50% of my employees at the time were actually my girlfriend.”
On the Fresh&Fit podcast episode, Tate described how he withheld a month’s wages from his “biggest earner” as punishment for getting drunk and throwing up 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 the UK in 2015 on “suspicion of assault” the woman. Although he said the “case was dropped,” a police raid of his phones and laptops led to “new charges” against him. He did not reveal what the new charges were.
Earlier this month, Vice reported that Tate was arrested in the UK in 2015 on suspicion of sexual assault and physical abuse, citing testimonies from UK authorities and Tate himself. Vice also interviewed two unnamed women who said they had Tate was reported to police, one for rape and both for abuse. According to Vice, Tate denied these allegations through a representative. NBC News has not verified the claims made by these women.
Prosecutors declined to prosecute Tate after it took police four years to escalate the case, Vice reported. In a statement, police said they apologized to both women for the delays that led to the closure of the case in 2019.
In another archived YouTube video posted to his channel, Tate boasted about creating restrictions and rules for the women who worked for him.
“I’m everywhere so I’m just stuck in a house with all these chicks and I’m sitting bored and totally in love with myself,” Tate said in the clip, which surfaced online following his recent arrest. “And of course they don’t go out. You can’t go out… You stay in the house. you’re not going anywhere No restaurants, no clubs, nothing.”
Romanian authorities said women recruited by Tate’s organization were transported to Romania and housed there, where they were allegedly coerced into performing “through physical violence and emotional coercion (through intimidation, constant surveillance, control and appeal of alleged debts)” Tate’s webcam- sex shop.
Tate said he flew in women from other countries to join his webcam operations in the UK and Romania.
In a video Tate sold as part of his Hustlers University pay-to-watch series, which he promoted as an educational course for followers to replicate his webcam sex businesses, he said women from countries like Slovakia and France are keen flown to him.
“They all came from different parts of the world,” Tate said of the women he recruited. “I flew them all in and put them all together.”
As well as relocating to Romania from the UK to run his businesses, Tate has said he has dodged previous allegations of rape and physical abuse and has punished women for accusing him of wrongdoing.
Tate has said in several interviews that he was violent towards women. During another episode of The Pomp Podcast taped in 2021, he said he punched a woman and broke her jaw during a bar fight. Tate said he “ended up in court” after being charged with “assault” 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 to Romania from the UK because the country was less likely to make rape claims.
“I’m not a rapist, but I like the idea of just being able to do whatever I want,” Tate said in one since removed video.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com