AAndrew Tate used to drive these suburban streets, about 16 miles from downtown Bucharest, Romania. We pass a garbage dump, a sprawling cemetery, and a row of articulated trucks that didn't look out of place on the soap opera Brookside. He drives past in his Lamborghini, Bugatti or one of his fleets of supercars. He was smoking a cigar and adjusting Michael Corleone's sunglasses. He hit his tattooed chest at a red light.
Tate, who likes to call himself Top G (G for gangster in street slang), insists he's done nothing wrong. He can look and act like a gangster. He could brag about his criminal adventures and claim to have made billions. But now, as a current visitor to the Romanian penal system, he claims he is not a real gangster. He says he's a nice guy.
His arrest on December 29 by armed members of Romania's anti-corruption unit - those who arrest gangsters - was charged with human trafficking and rape. Police wearing balaclavas broke into the Tate complex in the middle of the night and said they found guns, knives and large sums of cash. Top G and his younger brother Tristan, 34, were taken away in handcuffs. Two Romanian women, Georgiana Naghel and former police officer Alexandra Luana Radu, were also arrested. All four are suspected of belonging to a human trafficking group, but maintain their innocence.
I'm going to Andrew Tate's house. I never heard of Tate until last summer. I mainly deal with wars, international crises and old-fashioned corruption. Tate looked like another person obsessed with attracting attention on social media. "He's not here," said the friend. “He is one of the most searched people on the Internet. She has more views on social media than Rihanna. Oh, and he said on a Twitch stream that he's the world's first billionaire."
But how can that be true? How does the former Luton-based kickboxer transform his social media fame into Musk's alleged wealth? And more importantly, at least for Tate, what will Romanian investigators discover about his lucrative business? If found guilty, he could spend almost 20 years in a Romanian prison.
Andrew Tate is a social media phenomenon. His content on TikTok has been viewed over 12.7 billion times. No one else on the platform is close. He claims to be a master of social media algorithms that spread posts across cyberspace like a plague. He is a master of catchphrases, hashtags, catchphrases and inflammatory language.
His career didn't start on the internet - he was a kickboxer. Success. In 2009, it took first place in Europe in its category. Commentators criticized his "multi-layered techniques" and "well-aimed punches to the body". But in 2016, Tate left the ring and entered another wrestling arena: Big Brother. He seemed like a natural provocateur: "I don't care if nobody likes me," he told the other participants. “I know I'm the smartest person in the house. The fact that!"
Days later, Tate was fired after footage was released of him beating an ex-girlfriend with a belt (although both Tate and the woman denied the harassment and stated that the clip depicted consensual sex). It has since emerged that Hertfordshire Police were also investigating allegations of rape against him. In 2019, the Crown Prosecution Service decideddo not succumb to accusations.
Tate continued. He set up a webcam company in the UK and broadcast live erotic shows with women he recruited. He expanded his brand on social media and became Tate's "alpha male" influencer. He criticized radical feminism, stating that young people needed to reclaim their masculinity. "Life is war," he said. “It's a war for the woman you want. It's a war for the car you want. It's a war for the money you want. It's a status war. Men's life is war!
Young, discouraged men followed him in droves. They wanted more. Tate responded by exacerbating the controversy. On social media, he talked about beating women and grabbing them by the neck. Then in 2017, he explained that the raped women were partly to blame. It's not news that it was himBlocked by all major social media platformsw 2022 r.
In recent years, it has been Tate's followers, rather than the man himself, who have helped increase his presence on TikTok. They come from different backgrounds, denominations and countries. After publicly converting to Islam last October, Tate has recently been noticedcarry a copy of the Koran with youbefore a court in Romania, which increased his popularity among young Muslims. UK schools are so concerned that Tate is radicalizing his studentsTeachers receive guidanceabout how to fight your misogynistic views.
The digital army of Tate's supporters claims that his arrest in Romania is an intrigue orchestrated by the so-called "Matrix" - a global conspiracy of mainstream media and politicians trying to silence and control him. I am part of the matrix. You probably too. Anyone who thinks Tate's brutal misogyny is a bad thing belongs in The Matrix. "The Matrix attacked me," Tate tweeted after his arrest, "but they got it wrong, an idea can't be killed."
The bizarrely self-incriminating tirades he has delivered over the years on social media undermine the protests of his vast worldwide fan base (Tate fans have taken to the streets in Athens to protest his innocence) and do little to increase support for Tate. Probably useful when trying to hone your gangster credentials in front of a naive online audience, but less useful when dealing with a real Romanian prosecutor looking to prove you're involved in organized crime.
When Tate first arrived in Romania six years ago at the age of 30, he was asked why he decided to move. "I like Eastern Europe as a whole," he said, "because corruption is much more accessible." In the UK, he thought, only high-status people get away with crime, meaning Romania is open to everyone.
He then complained that rape allegations were being prosecuted too harshly in the UK for his liking, perhaps a reference to his own experiences. "In Western legal systems," he said, "whether in England or America or anywhere else, if a girl says something, she doesn't need proof ... and they'll come and arrest you." I can't get in, I can't live in this system anymore, so I had to move somewhere where common sense applies.
These common sense principles prompted a Romanian prosecutor to keep Tate and his brother behind bars in so-called "preventive detention" to prevent them from escaping, tampering with witnesses, or causing Trump-style riots in Romanian courts. The couple lasts until the end of June. They must then be released or put on trial. Romania does not have a jury system. When they are judged, the judges decide their fate.
The Romanian legal system has never faced such global scrutiny, and the Tate brothers are already citing The Matrix as the cause of all this. When Tristan emerged from a botched appeals hearing in January, he shouted into the waiting room: "Ask the politicians, ask the judges, you're getting closer to the truth."
UEI drive up to Tate's block and listen to his recording in a post that has surfaced on Twitter. It's a kind of tutorial, intoned at a gallop in a distorted American accent from Luton: Tate was born in the USA, his parents emigrated to Great Britain when he was about five years old. His father, Emory, was an African American pioneerChess masterwho died suddenly during the 2015 tournament. His mother worked as a catering assistant in Luton and is now believed to be in Kentucky, where she lives with her sister Tate, who is a lawyer. Tate himself claims he was a chess genius. I listen to the recording because the situation is getting unpleasant. "There's no such thing," she says, "like having girls working for you that you haven't slept with." It is impossible. You have to fuck them and they have to love you. It's important for business, otherwise women won't be loyal."
Tate talks about treating young men's low self-esteem - an unmistakable problem - and encourages his online audience to get up early, go to the gym, strengthen their mind and body, and try to find self-actualization. He tells them they won't get anywhere sitting in front of screens all day (I know - that's where they watch it) and he's harsh about having to "suffer" to be successful, a nod to the years he's made passing the kickboxing ring, where he claims to have seen people die.
The tutorial continued. Tate wants to teach his followers how to recruit women into the webcam industry to appear in sexual content, for which viewers pay between $2 and $10 a minute. Some earn much more. Romania has Europe's largest webcam industry - reportedly employing around 200,000 women - probably another reason Tate chose Bucharest as his home.
Tate's voice fills my car. She explains how to recruit women who are reluctant to appear naked on camera. "When you're on a date and you try to mention [webcam], damn it doesn't work, it disables it. "You're acting as usual," she says. “No mention of a webcam. You fuck girl after girl... then you start saying things like, "You're always busy at work, you can come and work for me."
To close the deal, you should take her to dinner with a camerawoman who already works for you and who will help you tighten the screw. "Martini, martini, martini," he says, clinking imaginary glasses, "bang, ménage à trois." and they would be delighted. “That's how you recruit girls,” he says emphatically. "There is no other way to recruit girls."
You can imagine Tate's legal team hearing the recording for the first time. It sounds like textbook psychological coercion. Making a woman believe she's your friend and then pressuring her to get naked on camera. In Romania, the authorities accuse him of using the "lover" method. In the UK, this looks like what we would call grooming.
We drive up to a vacant lot next to Tate's house in Bucharest's Piper district, a mix of newly built new mansions and ugly post-communist apartment blocks. Stray dogs bark in the distance. The gate is appropriately masculine: heavy, black and sliding. The doors to the complex appear to be bombproof. Tate is not there, of course, but two of his heavyweights in black suits patrol the modest swimming pool where I have seen Tate shirtless in photos online.
Turn the page and you'll realize that Tate's house isn't so much a Hollywood shelter as more of a dingy meat factory. Faux brick, dripping gutters, tinted windows. Where you'd expect a garden is a pile of rubble and a broken Ikea lamp. Given the billionaire craze and his regular posts about his private jets, ocean-going yachts and fleet of supercars, the Tate mansion is a bit of a letdown.
There are many exclusive neighborhoods in Bucharest filled with beautiful villas. Equipped with tennis courts, pool houses and staff quarters, they cost millions. If Tate really has as much wealth as he claims, why doesn't he live in Primaveria (Ceaușescu's old quarter), Kiseleva or Dorobanti? His supporters claim that he has to "hide" in his strange hideout to maintain discretion. But there are many gangsters in Bucharest who live in posh neighborhoods and try to be discreet by not revealing their every online move and not acting like "gangsters".
Around the corner in the Brookside development, we learn that Tate is renting out a row house for some of his webcam artists. We were walking and stumbled on a waterlogged construction site. The house is clean, whitewashed, and in better shape than Tate's, even if it feels like a prison because of the disturbingly small windows. A young woman is standing on the porch.
Jasmina is a Romanian woman in her twenties, beautiful and charming. He has many tattoos. One on her arm has "Tate" written on it. Others have similar markings: "Tate's Girlfriend" or "Tate's Property". The next day, at the same address, we met another woman. She is also branded.
Tate's ex-girlfriend from UK claims he was manipulated by him. "Sophie" doesn't want her real name revealed as Tate followers can get very upset online. She says Tate first contacted her on Facebook. "There were no warning signs at first," he says. "He was just interested in my everyday life, what I like, what makes me happy." Sophie flew to Bucharest without even meeting Tate and was excited to see her new lover. She lived in this house with Tate and her brother. As he claims, after a while Tate raised the issue of the webcam. "You should do it, you'd make a fortune, but if you don't want to, you don't have to." Then he says the pressure has started. "If you love me, you would. If you care about me, you would.
Since Sophie had already worked as a model and practiced pole dancing, this world was not completely alien to her. That's probably why he approached her in the first place. But she went to Bucharest to become Tate's girlfriend and fell in love with him. She then claims he started teasing her.
She finally agreed to work in front of a webcam. He says he's influenced by Tate. She would do anything to gain his approval. Sophie had never seen her online guide to persuading women to introduce themselves via webcam.
As she claims, one day he pinned her against the wall and knocked her to the ground. On another occasion, during rough sex, he claims, he choked her until she lost consciousness. Sophie is currently supporting the Romanian prosecutor's office in their investigation. She is the UK's first complainant and understandably fears the backlash.
The two scarred women we met in Tate's rented house have been with him for years. Both are treated by the prosecutor as victims, although both claim that they are not victims at all. "I've never seen them aggressive or rude. "They always respected people," Jasmina told Romanian TV station Antena 1. She seemed oblivious to the possibility of psychological coercion, telling reporters: "The girls were never deprived of their freedom ... the door was always open."
According to Tate, his webcam business has been a huge success. In a podcast, he revealed that in his heyday he employed 75 women for him in four different locations, earning $600,000 a month. We found two of them in Bucharest. A source for the Romanian prosecutor's office said that the 75 webcams claimed by Tate had certainly not been found.
UEIn the center of Bucharest is an old shopping mall that has been converted into offices. On the sixth floor is Best Studios, one of the city's largest and most successful webcam studios, with approximately 200 female employees. One of its bosses, Maria Boroghina, shows me about 40 rooms with large beds waiting for the day's activities. She is elegantly dressed in an expensive silk blouse, and has her hair cut short and bleached blonde. She herself was previously a webcam model. In 2012, she was earning $20,000 a month. Now in his thirties, he is an operations manager and travels the world representing the Romanian webcam industry, attending conferences in Colombia and Portugal.
Maria knows everyone in the industry. Does she know Tate? Not until she saw his arrest on TV. Is it possible that he made tens of millions from the webcam industry? "Oh!" she says confused. "If he says that, I want him to train me because we're not ready for that." Then harder. "In this industry, it's unrealistic to make so much money with just a few models."
However, there are many more Tate companies. Perhaps he earned his trillion elsewhere. While reviewing company files, we stopped at a posh cafe in Bucharest. Wealthy teenagers from a prestigious local high school teamed up. Have you heard of Tate? There is excitement. "The Best G!" A 16-year-old boy with a literal expression takes over. "We love Andrew Tate," he says with a smile. "It teaches us important lessons about life and things we don't learn in school."
like what
"For example, how to behave when you want to start a business."
To be clear, Tate's teachings are about more than just threesomes and vodka. Some of the business advice on his website is relatively orthodox. But misogyny is hard to beat.
I ask if they think it's okay to abuse women. “It really depends on the girl,” someone shouts. There is laughter and some applause. "If you find a nice girl, he won't bully her... but if you talk to a whore..." The boy shrugs and gives me a sly smile.
ROmania is my spiritual home. I met my wife in Bucharest almost 30 years ago. At that time there was all kinds of fanaticism: homosexuality was punishable by imprisonment. Great strides have been made, especially since the country joined the EU in 2007. However, traditional views on gender roles remain valid. It is not unusual, and most people find it offensive, to say that it is a woman's job to raise children at home. women cook; Husbands are fed. Men are expected to be tough, caring and look like men. Long hair is not particularly popular.
Traditionally, sexual crimes have not been a priority in Romanian courts. Human trafficking also does not exist. Especially when the defendant has a high social status and the plaintiff does not. It changes. But would the Romanian authorities be as willing to launch an investigation if the Tate brothers' first complainant was a poor Romanian?
In fact, she was a US citizen. In April 2022, the police searched the brothers' property after a complaint was received at the US embassy about a 21-year-old American being held against her will. The police brought the brothers in for questioning. They were released shortly after, but the operation and the information gathered was the catalyst for the brothers' arrest shortly after Christmas.
In Bucharest, we're still tracking the money. And the casinos are in the game because Top G claims to own their network. Perfect for Tate. "The story is," he tells his followers in a video, "that there were three brothers, gangsters (obviously) who owned 400 casinos all over Eastern Europe." I went to them…” He claims to have interfered. I made a fortune, developed a business model.
Tate claims to own a network of 15 casinos that earn $1 million a month. Well, apparently not, according to company documents in Bucharest. We searched thoroughly and found no evidence that he owned a single casino. At least not the Bond and Martini variety. There is a tenuous historical link to the chain operating the arcade arcades located at the end of the pier. Yes, in Romania they are known as casinos. But it's not like that. This company is currently under investigation for alleged extortion and organized crime involving the Romanian mafia.
Tate had previously discussed owning several arcades in Romania as part of a business deal with a slot machine company. His tactic at the time was to skip the line at a nearby Starbucks. To entice people, he offered free coffee and they put money in the lunch machines. entrepreneur. But is it enough to earn a million dollars a month?
Shortly after the police knocked on Tate's door last April, it seemed odd that he would ditch the Romanian firm Groundbreaking Developments, a business and management consulting firm, and place it in the name of a woman who later she was arrested. case of human trafficking. The business was given back to another woman who turned out to be a porn star from Grimsby. He has now been transferred to Dubai and we don't know how much is left in his accounts.
It is difficult to calculate how much Romanian Tate companies are really worth. We can only find tax returns for one thing: Talisman Enterprises, listed as a web portal company. The company has a debt of £1.2m.
I recently tweeted about Tate's finances and hinted that he might not have as much money as advertised. It received 2.3 million views and colorful reactions from young people wearing Maga's baseball caps. They thought they would discover their mother's hand. I've been called an idiot, a parasite, a fake journalist and much worse.
Tate's business venture stands out as a likely source of income. (It's not like Tate lived below the poverty line; something must explain the €3.6 million worth of supercars, and the Romanians say they confiscated their homes.) In 2021, Tate founded an organization called "Hustlers University" which offers financial freedom through promised online tutorials. with professors who are "world-class experts on multi-millionaires." The site looks like a Vin Diesel movie. explosions. fireballs. A drifting Ferrari. But if you dig deeper, there seems to be some good investment advice out there. The speakers look like Bond villains. But they are at Hustlers University. What do you expect? One of them has a pixelated face.
Hustlers University had an unconventional recruitment method. Students received part of the premium for each new student they managed to recruit. As a result, Tate gained a highly motivated sales team overnight. If you think this sounds like a pyramid scheme, you wouldn't be the first. Tate says that's not the case.
Subscriptions cost $49.99 per month. The Tate claims to have had over 100,000 students. That seems a bit far-fetched - one student said it was closer to 30,000. But even that would make Tate rich. Hustlers University was effectively renamed and reopened as The Real World.
If Tate really has immense wealth, I'm having a hard time finding it. However, there is one place we haven't been able to look at yet: blockchain. Tate regularly appears on cryptocurrency social media, telling listeners on an October 2022 podcast that he turned a $600,000 Bitcoin investment into a $12 million profit in March 2020.
It looks like he has at least one digital wallet, but we can't look inside. Romanian law enforcement doesn't do that either, but they can track all incoming and outgoing transactions. At least there is a legal precedent that they can freeze whatever is inside.
BAt the Tate headquarters in Bucharest, the supercars have long since disappeared and have been seized by the authorities as part of an investigation into alleged human trafficking. A neighbor arrives laden with groceries. "They've never done anything wrong," he says, pointing to Andrew Tate's house. “Politicians are behind all this. They're trying to stop you from getting your money back." Tate will no doubt agree.
He and his brother are expected to be away from home for a while. The courts have until the end of June to start a trial or release them. A Romanian prosecutor's source said he expects the trial to start earlier and the Tate brothers will be transferred from custody to a prison where conditions are likely to be more severe. And the ambient music is not good. A judge extended his detention in January, citing the brothers' "ability and efforts to exercise lasting psychological control over the victims ... including through the use of continued violence."
If convicted, they face many years in prison in Romania. Tate, a man raised in cyberspace, would see his money reduced to binary code locked in a virtual wallet that no human can reach.
Andrew Tate did not respond to a request for comment on this article.
Added February 15, 2023 update: A spokesman for Andrew Tate contacted the Guardian after publication and said Tate denies all allegations against him.