Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea via REUTERS
Just a day after being roasted by teen activist Greta Thunberg, Misogynist MAGA influencer Andrew Tate was arrested Thursday in Romania on human trafficking and rape allegations.
Romania’s Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) confirmed in a statement that cops raided five homes tied to four suspects as part of an investigation into organized crime, human trafficking and rape. It did not name the four suspects but said two were Romanian citizens and two were British citizens, who allegedly kept at least six women captive in houses surrounding Bucharest, where they were sexually assaulted and forced to produce pornography for social media under threats of violence.
Romanian newspaper Gândul was among several local outlets to identify the two British citizens as Tate, a British-American kickboxer better known for his grossly misogynistic online persona and for flaunting his 33 cars, as well as his brother, Tristan. Reuters also obtained photos of Tate’s arrest, showing the online personality in a black leather jacket and hoodie being perp-walked by police in tactical gear.
Gândul and Romania TV obtained footage showing the handcuffed Tate being led away by cops—and Tristan in police custody wearing the same outfit as one of the blurred suspects seen in official footage of the raids released by DIICOT.
The official footage showed heavily armed cops storming luxury homes and compiling cash, guns, bars of gold and expensive cars.
Romania TV reported that one of the Romanian suspects was a former Bucharest policewoman who is dating one of the Tates.
The brothers are accused of luring women to lavish villas using what DIICOT called the “loverboy method,” in which they stuck up a relationship over social media before convincing the women to come to Romania to pursue a romantic relationship.
Instead, they would supposedly keep women in a small studio where they were forced to work as pornographic models for OnlyFans and other websites, according to local news site G4.
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But the scheme unraveled when one American woman managed to send her location to her boyfriend, who then alerted the US Embassy that she was being held at the brothers’ home without her consent, Romania TV and Gândul reported.
When cops raided the five homes on Thursday, they found “several” women, Gândul reported, “including the woman with American citizenship, but also a young woman from the Republic of Moldova.”
DIICOT said in its statement that the victims were threatened with “physical violence and mental coercion (through intimidation, constant surveillance, control and invoking alleged debts).”
Adding insult to injury, Tate’s sad attempt to clap back at Thunberg on Thursday may have actually led police to his front door.
In a video rant he uploaded to Twitter, in which he smoked a cigar and tried to brush off the online spat, he unwittingly displayed a pizza box from a local pizza chain—alerting authorities looking for him to his presence in the country.
The four suspects were arrested and ordered detained for 24 hours for questioning, DIICOT said.
The arrest caps a rough year for the former reality TV star. In April of this year, his home in Romania was raided in connection with a human-trafficking investigation. (Tate previously said “40 percent” of the reason he moved to the Eastern European country was because Romanian police were less likely to pursue sexual-assault allegations.)
Then in August, he was kicked off Facebook and Instagram, and shut down a money-making program for his followers: Hustler’s University.
After the April raid, Tristan Tate insisted to The Daily Beast that “no girls were found in my house, and nobody was arrested.”
Andrew Tate later posted a photo on Instagram of himself smoking a cigar in a staged interrogation room with the caption, “Officer…l think we can all agree that bitches love to lie.”
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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