BUCHAREST – A Romanian court has ordered Internet star Andrew Tate to be placed under house arrest, his representative said Thursday. Tate is one of six people taken into custody as part of an investigation into human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
The former professional kickboxer and his brother Tristan were among six people detained on Wednesday for an initial 24 hours after Romania’s anti-organized crime law enforcement unit DIICOT carried out four house searches in Ilfov County and the city of Bucharest.
DIICOT had asked the Bucharest court to detain the Tate brothers for 30 days, but the judge decided to place Andrew Tate under house arrest and Tristan under judicial control for that period, said their representative Mateea Petrescu.
“The Tates welcome the decision and strongly deny all allegations made against them. They stress that the allegations are unfounded and not supported by any substantial evidence,” Petrescu wrote in a statement.
Tate was previously charged in mid-2023 along with his brother and two Romanian female suspects with human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang for the sexual exploitation of women; they denied these charges.
Before their recent detention, the brothers were subject to a travel ban that allowed them to travel within Romania but did not allow them to leave the country.
DIICOT said in a statement that it had ordered the detention of six people for crimes including forming an organized criminal group, human trafficking, trafficking in minors, sexual intercourse with minors and money laundering.
It said it had requested that three of the detained defendants be kept in custody and another be placed under house arrest.
According to DIICOT, two of the defendants used the “Loverboy” method, which involves convincing victims that they are in a romantic relationship, to coerce 34 victims into creating pornography, which they then sold online for over $2.8 million and 887,000 tokens.
DIICOT alleges that one of the defendants forced a 17-year-old minor to produce pornographic material in the UK and Romania, making a profit of $1.5 million. The court also alleges that the same defendant repeatedly had sexual relations with a 15-year-old victim.
