By Luc Cohen
Prosecutors have also pointed to Romanian authorities’ allegations that they sought to influence witnesses’ statements while released on judicial supervision there.
Romanian authorities say the Tates threatened to release private information about alleged victims and bribed an alleged victim, the U.S. prosecutors said. Thomas Maniotis, defense lawyer, said the witnesses the Tates were alleged to have bribed were women who wanted to speak on their behalf, and said the Tates helped coordinate their travel to Bucharest and hired lawyers for them.
Attorney’s office said in an August 10 court filing. The brothers face human trafficking charges in Romania.
On the witness stand, Andrew Tate said he stopped saying “stupid things” on the internet when he was first arrested in Romania about five years ago. “Top G is a caricature,” Tate said, referring to an online moniker that he called a “hyperbolic character. “I do this to shake men out of apathy,” Tate said. The arrests marked a new phase in their legal troubles. The Tates recruited dozens of women to work for a webcam pornography business starting in 2014, and later ran online courses called “Hustler’s University,” prosecutors with the Miami U.S.
“It’s a very different character between the person that you see online and the person I know,” said Sesay, who is expecting another one of Andrew Tate’s children next month. Earlier on Thursday, the mother of one of Andrew Tate’s children, Natasha Sesay, said his sometimes provocative comments online did not reflect who he truly was.
