Florida attorney general launches criminal investigation into Andrew Tate and his brother after they return to U.S.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said Tuesday his office launched a criminal investigation into the self-proclaimed misogynist influencer Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, after they returned to the U.S. last week.

In a statement on X, Uthmeier said, “based on a thorough review of the evidence” collected by his office and law enforcement, he decided to execute search warrants and issue subpoenas to investigate the Tate brothers.

After receiving their U.S. passports, the Tate brothers took a private jet from Romania to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida on Feb. 27.

“These guys have themselves publicly admitted to participating in what very much appears to be soliciting, trafficking, preying upon women around the world,” Uthmeier told a reporter. “We’re not going to accept it. They chose to come here and set their feet down in this state, and we’re going to pursue every tool we have within our legal authority to hold them accountable.”

The brothers, who are dual U.S.-U.K. citizens, were arrested in Romania in 2022 and formally indicted in 2024 on human trafficking charges; Andrew was also charged with rape. Both deny the allegations, but were banned from leaving the country until their U.S. passports were returned to them last week.

“I think my brother and I are largely misunderstood. There’s a lot of opinions about us — all the things that go around about us on the internet,” Andrew told reporters after landing. “It’s supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, as my brother and I are.”

Who are Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate?

The Tate brothers are former kickboxing champions who gained wider fame after joining the casts of reality TV shows. Since 2012, the two have claimed they work together to run a webcam business that features lingerie-clad models available to chat with men online.

But Andrew, 38, has built a media empire by advertising himself as the go-to source for men seeking self-help, especially on dating women. Andrew is banned on numerous social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok for his “hateful ideology.”

He was initially banned from X in 2017 for saying that women should “bear responsibility” for being sexually assaulted but was reinstated on the platform after Elon Musk bought the company in 2022. Tate has over 10 million followers.

In 2019, Andrew advertised “War Room,” a “global network” that offers to teach men “physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and financial development” for an annual fee of $8,000. A BBC investigation found that messages exchanged in the War Room group between March 2019 and April 2020 “appear to detail techniques on how to groom women into sex work.”

In 2022, Andrew also founded Hustlers University. He advertised it as “an online educational platform that teaches you skills and strategies and encourages you to achieve financial freedom and live your dream life” for a monthly fee of $49. It was later rebranded as “The Real World.”

Why were the Tate brothers in Romania?

The brothers reportedly moved to Romania in 2017 because they assumed they would have more freedom in the country.

In a now-deleted 2022 podcast interview, Andrew specified that he liked Eastern Europe “as a whole because corruption is far more accessible.”

“I find it offensive that a police officer in England will stop me and refuse to take a bribe,” he said.

What are the Tate brothers charged with?

In late December 2022, the brothers were arrested in Romania, along with two other women, on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organized crime group. The crimes are alleged to have taken place in the U.S., the U.K. and Romania. In June 2023, the brothers were indicted on those charges in Romania.

In January 2023, Andrew appeared in a Bucharest court to appeal his detention, but the judge ruled against him. In March of that year, Andrew won an appeal that allowed him to be put under house arrest instead of detention.

In June 2023, both brothers were formally charged with human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. A month later, the brothers launched a lawsuit against a woman in Florida who they claim falsely accused them of imprisoning her in Romania, seeking at least $5 million.

In January 2024, Andrew regained access to his assets after the court overturned the decision to seize his cars, designer watches and properties.

A conviction in Romania on charges of human trafficking can result in imprisonment for three to 10 years; for rape, the penalty is between five and 10 years.

In March 2024, it was revealed the brothers were also facing similar charges in England on allegations of sexual aggression from 2012 to 2015. They deny the British charges as well.

Tate brothers seek restraining order against woman in Florida

The brothers arrived in a private jet in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday morning after Romanian officials ruled they could leave the country. It has not been made clear how long the Tates will stay there.

It's unclear why they're in Florida, as the brothers filed a defamation lawsuit in 2023 against a woman who claims they imprisoned her in Romania, a hearing for which was held in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday. The brothers, who claimed in the court filing that they feared “imminent harm” from the unnamed defendant, asked a judge that day for a temporary restraining order against her, the Associated Press reported.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he learned through the news media that the Tate brothers would be traveling to the state, and added they “were not welcome” there. “I don’t know how it came to this,” he told reporters. “We were not involved.”

In a podcast interview Monday, Andrew speculated that DeSantis was under pressure to react in this way when the brothers landed in Florida.

“I don’t know why Ron’s answer wasn’t, ‘He has an American passport. The judicial system in Romania, which I know absolutely nothing about, decided to let him fly, and he’s flown to his home country. As far as we’re concerned, he’s broken no laws,’” Andrew said in the interview. “Instead, what he did was say: ‘We’re going to get our attorney general to try and find some laws he’s broken and wreck this man who’s done nothing inside of the United States ever.’”

Departure from Romania

The Financial Times reported on Feb. 17 that members of the Trump administration had pressed Romanian authorities to lift travel restrictions on the Tate brothers. A source told Reuters that the U.S. did not pressure Romania to drop the case against the former kickboxers, “but acknowledged that Washington had pressed Bucharest to give the brothers their passports and allow them to travel.” The Financial Times noted that Romania's Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu had a conversation with a Trump administration official during the Munich Security Conference in mid-February.

When it was reported that the Tate brothers were returning to the U.S., Romania’s foreign ministry also denied that the U.S. had intervened, saying that the Romanian judiciary was the sole authority behind decisions of this kind, the Washington Post reported.

Trump was asked by reporters on Thursday whether his administration pressured officials to release the Tates. “I know nothing about that,” Trump said. White House officials on Thursday also said there had been no direct U.S. government role in the Tates' coming to Florida, according to CNN.

The Tates’ lawyer, Joseph McBride, posted on X when the brothers landed, “Romania rightly decided it didn’t have the evidence needed to hold them any longer.”

Romania’s anti-organized-crime agency said in a press release that prosecutors approved the “request to modify the obligation preventing the defendants from leaving Romania,” but did not specify who made this request.

The agency said that as part of their release measures, the Tate brothers must return to Romania for court appearances when summoned. The charges filed against the brothers in Romania have not been dropped, and they were told that violations of any obligations to return to Romania “may result in judicial control being replaced with a stricter deprivation of liberty measure.”