There were signs of strangeness at Andrew Tate’s Romanian compound well before the the “king of toxic masculinity” was charged with rape and human trafficking late last month.
According to neighbors who spoke with British newspaper The Times, for months young men have been arriving en masse at the property, telling locals they were there to attend a so-called “Hustler University” apparently run by Tate. It isn’t clear what actually took place during the classes, but one person who lives nearby said “there were groups arriving three or four times a week, sometimes there were three taxis a day.”
Tate’s home was apparently so frequently visited that its location “was added to Google Maps to help taxi drivers find the building,” The Times reported.
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Meanwhile, locals told the outlet that they could see “women inside working on the video cameras”—referring to pornographic material they were uploading to the internet, allegedly at Tate’s behest.
“There were women there 24 hours a day,” one neighbor said—though fewer women have been spotted at the site since a police raid last spring.
Romanian authorities have alleged that women may have been lured into producing pornographic content under false pretenses, before they were subjected to “acts of physical violence and mental coercion.”
In addition to the odd goings-on at Tate’s compound, the 19-year-old daughter of a prominent Romanian politician claimed to a local outlet over the weekend that she was very nearly ensnared in his pornography scheme.
Tate reached out to her three years ago with a “suggestive” message on Instagram, said Daria Gusa—who happens to be the daughter of businessman and Romanian politician Cozmin Gusa. The note “basically asked me to go out with him,” she added.
Tate’s property was guarded by armed security, according to The Times—with personnel being able to carry weapons because the site was “registered as a shooting range.”
The Times tallied Tate’s earnings, estimating that he has raked in tens of millions of dollars in annual income by flogging “get-rich-quick-schemes” for nearly $50 in fees per month.
As the newspaper noted, the 36-year-old influencer—who has become hugely popular among swaths of adolescent boys—left the United Kingdom roughly five years ago amid rising scrutiny over his conduct.
“40 percent of the reason I moved to Romania was because rape laws are more lenient there,” he later said in a shockingly candid admission. “I’m not a f***ing rapist, but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want.”
The MAGA-loving former kickboxer has generated controversy before. He was ousted from the British reality TV show Big Brother in 2016 over a video showing him “hitting a woman with a belt.” (He claimed the video was edited and that the incident was consensual.)
And last summer, his Twitter account was banned after he reportedly declared that “women bear ‘some responsibility’ for being raped.”
Tate’s account was reinstated in November following Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform.
