Andrew Tate Detained in Romania

Emory Andrew Tate III is an American-British social media personality, businessman, and former professional kickboxer. He is 36 years old and recently has stirred up a lot of controversy in the media from his views and morals. Tate is a self-described misogynist, and makes content for his large online following, including around 4.5 million followers on Twitter. Andrew and his 34 year old brother Tristan Tate were living in Romania, when they were detained on December 26, 2022. A court in Romania's capital Bucharest has upheld the 30-day arrest of Tate on charges of organized crime, human trafficking and rape. Ramona Bolla, a spokesperson for Romanian anti-organized crime agency DIICOT, said the court rejected an appeal by Tate against a judge's earlier decision to extend his arrest from 24 hours to 30 days. DIICOT said it had identified six victims in the trafficking case who were subjected to "acts of physical violence and mental coercion" and were sexually exploited by the members of the alleged crime group. The agency said victims were lured by pretenses of love, and later intimidated, kept under surveillance and subjected to other control tactics while being coerced into performing pornographic acts that were intended to make money for their alleged persecutors. Bolla said that if prosecutors can prove the Tates gained money through human trafficking, the assets "will be taken by the state and cover the expenses of the investigation and damages to the victims." In contrast, several fighters have reacted to this situation. While some show support for the influencer, others find amusement in the arrest. Andrew Tate is one of the most-popular personalities on the internet and has found himself in hot waters very often. Through his detention, Tate has posted several tweets speaking about the topic of “the Matrix.” On January 9th, Tate tweeted “The Matrix does not play fair, the play to win.” Following this on January 10th, Tate tweeted “You are the Matrix. You are an Agent. But the Matrix is cracking. And now you will pay the price.” “The Matrix” is referring to the Romanian government in Tate’s tweets. In fact, Andrew has been very active on Twitter, not only posting comments about the arrest himself but retweeting those of fans protesting his arrest. Alex Feinburg, a professional baseball player for the Colorado Rockies, tweeted, “Say what you want about Tate, but if you spend your whole day digging up dirt on some dude you’ve never met and will never meet, it's probably because you're jealous.” Andrew Tate lost an appeal for his release in a sex trafficking case and will remain in a Romanian jail through January.