A Romanian law enforcement agency has confirmed that misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate has been arrested on human trafficking charges, but said a widely reported detail is inaccurate.
Some people have speculated that officials were alerted to Tate’s whereabouts by a pizza box seen in a video he made of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg. But DIICOT, Romania’s organized crime agency, told the Associated Press that was not the case.
“Funny, but not,” DIICOT spokeswoman Ramona Bolla told the AP.
Tate and his brother Tristan Tate, both British-American citizens, were arrested on Thursday along with two other people. The four are accused of human trafficking, rape and being part of an organized criminal group.
Antena 1 Observer via Associated Press
“The four suspects … appear to have created an organized crime ring with the aim of recruiting, harboring and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content to be viewed on specialist paid websites,” they said prosecutors, according to a report. translated by Reuters.
Tate is a 36-year-old former professional kickboxer and social media personality known for his degrading and sexist comments about women, including saying that women “need to find each other.” [sic] some responsibility for being violated. It launched on several social media platforms, but returned to Twitter last month after the company’s new owner, Elon Musk, reinstated a number of previously suspended accounts.
Tate’s return to Twitter is where Greta Thunberg steps in. On Tuesday, the 19-year-old Swedish activist tweeted, boasting about his cars and asking for his email address “so I can send a full list of my car collection. and their huge emissions”.
answered Thunberg, “yes please enlighten me. email me at [email protected]”
In response to the teenager, Tate posted a video in which he wears a robe, smokes a cigar and is handed two pizza boxes, which he claims will not be recycled.
News of Tate’s arrest came shortly after he posted the video, and reports began circulating that the post and his arrest were linked. A viral theory emerged that the pizza boxes, which bore the name of the Romanian chain Jerry’s Pizza, alerted the authorities that they were in the country. This theory appears to stem from a story by Romanian news outlet Gândul, which cited anonymous sources that authorities learned through social media posts that the Tate brothers were together in Romania.
However, the history of thought did not specifically mention the pizza box video, which was anything but just the recent post indicating that Tate was in the country.
But even though their Twitter rant had nothing to do with Tate’s arrest, Thunberg still left an additional comment on Friday.
“This is what happens when you don’t recycle pizza boxes.” she wrote.
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