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@2024 The News Movement

Andrew Tate to Face Trial - What's He Actually Accused of?

John Simpson

Sat, Aug 5, 2023

The controversial influencer Andrew Tate faces a trial in Romania over allegations he trafficked women and forced them to work in the webcam porn industry.

Tate, who has bragged of being “the most famous misogynist on the internet”, has been charged with offences including human trafficking, forming an organised crime group and rape. 

He now faces trial accused alongside his brother Tristan, 34, and two women alleged to have worked for the brothers in the recruitment process. They all deny all of the charges.

The News Movement has obtained court documents including some of the evidence against him, which show the detail of his interactions with the alleged victims he is said to have used the “lover boy” method on.

Whatsapp messages between Tate, 36, and the alleged victim appear to show him demanding loyalty and asking if one woman - who has accused him of rape - is ready to be his wife. 

In the exchange of messages the woman, who travelled to Romania to see Tate, challenged him over his alleged efforts to get her to make porn. On March 3, 2022, she wrote: “I want to know why you brought me here to this house. If you respected me, you'd ask me first if I was ok with this. 

“I thought I would come here and live with you. It's a little weird for me to have you hang out with girls who work for you.

“I know you have a lot on your mind right now, but my sister is telling me to go back to London because she thinks I'm not safe here, and I'm very confused. 

“I want to know what your plan is.”

The influencer has made and profited from hours of online courses in which he teaches manipulative practices designed to get women to work in the webcam porn industry, one of which was called the PHD, or “Pimping Hoes Degree”.

In places, the message exchanges appear to mirror some of the advice Tate gives in his course on how to get women to work on camera, including approaching them on Instagram, making them love you and avoiding mentioning the webcam work in the early stages. 

According to a series of messages from February last year - before she flew to Romania so that he could “keep an eye” on her - he asked her: “Can you be loving enough to be a wife? To always be by my side, wherever I go? Talk to 0 men besides me? Ride or die?”

He added: “You are mine. Don’t forget that. And act like it. We will be together soon.” Just over a week later he wrote: “I want to know that you are determined serious about marriage.  She replied: “Yes. I am serious.”

She also came across some of his videos promoting a course in how to get women to work in the webcam industry and asked him about them, the case file says. 

In his reply he told her that the videos were a ruse to make money from “losers” online and that the whole webcam setup was front for laundering dirty cash.

“men started getting jealous and started asking me how to start a video chat business They will never do that because they are losers,” Tate wrote, according to the file. “So I started charging men to "teach" them,” he added.

In the messages, he said that he “used” the women “to do other things too. To move money or illegal things. Documents etc,” according to the file.

“Everything is a cover,” he added, telling her: “You don't need details about any of this, what I want is for you to trust me and do as I say.”

The case file alleges that the same woman was later held by the head and raped at his house in Bucharest and that Tate told her he would lock her in the house and get her pregnant. 

In one exchange, Tate appears to tell her not to leave the house unaccompanied and she responds: “Why are you so cold to me?”

Among the flurry of messages that come back is the line “this is your last warning”. 

The indictment filed with the court in Bucharest court alleges that the four defendants formed an organised criminal group in 2021 for the purposes of trafficking women in Romania, but also in other countries including the US and the UK.

It refers to seven alleged victims, all of whom are said to have been recruited by the Tate brothers through false promises of love and marriage, but that only three will be “civil participants in the criminal case”.

The trial will not start immediately and is expected to take several years.

A Romanian judge now has 60 days to inspect the case files before it can be sent to trial and make a new decision as to whether the Tates remain under house arrest or should be taken back into custody.

A spokesperson for Andrew Tate said: "We embrace the opportunity it presents to demonstrate their innocence."

Contributors


John Simpson
Senior Reporter, Investigations