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Andrew Tate and his ‘angels’ caged in prison van

Andrew Tate has been pictured caged in the back of a police van alongside his ‘angels’ after their arrest as part of a probe into alleged sex crimes.

The influencer, 36, was seen behind bars as he was escorted to the Romanian detention centre on Thursday evening after the surprise raid of his £600,000 concrete bolthole on the outskirts of Bucharest. 

Pictured alongside the millionaire in the van were Luana Radu and Georgiana Naghel, who are accused of luring women to the compound and then ‘coercing’ and ‘controlling’ them to create social media pornography. 

The images, taken by local news site Gandul, show Tate dressed in a black hoodie on one side of the van next to Naghel, his alleged girlfriend of one year,  who in turn was sat next to Radu, a former policewoman.

Radu, 32, was previously based at a police station in central Bucharest but quit the force eight years ago to pursue a career working in video chat rooms, which attract men from all over the world and have become a lucrative industry in Romania. 

Naghel, 28, who is a US citizen, is described as a businesswoman and influencer who is believed to have been dating Tate for almost a year.

The group, along with Tate’s brother Tristan, have been locked up since Thursday after a court agreed to extend their detention by 30 days.

That meant Tate’s New Year’s Eve celebrations were a far cry from his usual lavish parties surrounded by wads of cash, bikini clad models and his fleet of supercars. 

The brothers had been organising their own New Year’s Eve party at a 48-room mansion they own in the mountain village of Comarnic before their sudden arrest.

Tate bought the stunning century-old property 80 miles north of Bucharest, which features an underground car park and swimming pool, a year ago.

But when he was detained last week at his concrete compound on the outskirts of the capital, he was forced to abandon his festive plans and prepare for a slightly more meagre celebration to ring in 2023.

Instead of champagne and caviar, the former Big Brother star feasted on traditional Romanian cuisine, according to news site Cancan.

He was served a grilled pork chop steak with mashed potatoes, assorted pickles, an apple and a cake at the Rahova prison.

Blessed Father Daniel, the head of the Romanian Orthodox Church, also delivered a box of cookies to inmates.

Romanian prosecutors have been granted permission to detain the controversial star along with Tristan and the two Romanian women for 30 days.

It is alleged Tate and his brother Tristan recruited women on social media platforms and persuaded them to travel to their £600,000 bolthole by falsely professing love for them, before forcing them to perform on webcams. 

According to Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism, six alleged victims have been identified in relation to the investigation, one of whom is said to have been violently sexually assaulted in March.

Some of the suspects allegedly used the ‘loverboy’ method of trafficking, which involves a man luring a victim into a relationship in order to sexually exploit them later, DIICOT said.

The victims were transported and housed in buildings in Ilfov county, which surrounds Bucharest, where they were coerced into making pornographic content, it is alleged.

Daria Gusa – the daughter of political analyst, journalist and businessman Cozmin Gusa – said she received a message online from the influencer when she was just 16 years old.

Miss Gusa, now 19, said she turned down his direct offer to go out with him and said she is amazed it has taken so long for the authorities to crack down on his operation, with two of his ‘angels’ also arrested in the raid.

She told Romanian site Realitatea Plus: ‘I had just created an account on Instagram when I received a message, quite suggestive, in which Andrew Tate basically asked me to go out with him.

‘I then asked my other colleagues, who had received similar messages, because it seemed strange to me that someone with millions of followers would contact me, who had 200. 

‘Another colleague continued to chat with him and [he] invited her directly to go out with him. Basically it was the “loverboy” method, he applied it to girls from Ilfov or Prahova, from areas as close as possible to his home.’

Miss Gusa said she does not believe she was targeted because of her influential father but because she was a young girl in the area. 

She said Tate boasted to her friends in messages about his luxury cars, a private plane and the exclusive restaurants he would take them to. 

Miss Gusa added: ‘I find it incredible that these people who publicly brag about how much money they have, and especially how they got it – from girls who video chat for them, through pimping. Hopefully it’s not about drugs or of sexual violence but it seems strange to me that they were not detected by the authorities earlier.

‘It’s very likely that a lot of people are involved. These guys have trained their girls to record their customers and, of course, when it comes to intimate poses, it’s very easy to blackmail important people.’

Despite outrage at the many allegations surrounding Tate in the past week, his follower count on Twitter has soared.

Across his online platforms, the shock influencer has gained nearly a million followers since his row with climate activist Greta Thunberg thrust him into the headlines. 

Meanwhile, neighbours said ardent supporters of the arrested ‘Webcam King’ flew to the high-security concrete bolthole on the outskirts of Bucharest before he was arrested on Thursday for alleged sex crimes.

Neighbours said the young men aged 18 or 19 were seen regularly entering the compound since last summer, but it is not known what they were doing inside the secretive property where Tate stashed guns and cash.

At the site, the disgraced Big Brother star runs an online university to ‘free the modern man from socially induced incarceration’.

The £39-a-month get-rich-scheme claims to have more than 160,000 ‘students’ who learn from ‘experts’ on an online Discord server on a curriculum including ‘investment and real estate’, ‘finance and business’ and ‘affiliate marketing’.

It is not known why Tate’s disciples were physically travelling to Romania to meet with him.

But one neighbour told The Times: ‘There were groups arriving three or four times a week, sometimes there were three taxis a day. 

‘They were young men. They say they were attending the Hustler’s University.’

The ‘university’ serves as Tate’s home and the headquarters of his online porn webcam business, and it proved so popular it was added to Google Maps to help taxi drivers.

Neighbours said at least eight women were hosting online sex shows from the building at any time, although numbers fell after the first police raid at the site in April.

One said: ‘You could see the women inside working on the video cameras. There were women there 24 hours a day. 

‘Last summer these young English guys started to come. They would get lost and ask how they could find the Hustler’s University. I don’t know what they were doing inside.’

Women – including an American citizen – were allegedly held at the property with employees shadowing their every move before being forced to take part in online pornographic videos.

Romanian authorities said the alleged victims were forced to perform pornography through ‘physical violence and mental coercion’.

The suspects are accused of posting the pornographic material online, to sites such as the adult-only content platform OnlyFans or the video sharing app TikTok, which they then obtained ‘substantial financial benefits’.

Radu and Naghel are accused of being Tate’s closest lieutenants with police claiming that they helped to ‘coerce’ and ‘control’ at least six women to create social media porn content and helped to keep them under house arrest ‘like prisoners.’ 

Naghel was born in Bucharest and raised in the Tuhari district and is believed to have met Tate through friends soon after he moved to the country five years ago. 

After initially helping him with his business interests, the two eventually formed a romantic bond and have become a regular fixture at the city’s exclusive clubs and bars.

While working in video chat rooms, Radu, who also uses the name Ellie Dely on social media met Tate and eventually became his administrative assistant, helping him to manage his online business empire, which is worth an estimated £100million.

They are sharing the same cell at the decrepit Bucharest Police Detention Centre where they have been remanded in custody for 29 days, pending a further probe.

Investigators also claim one of the suspects raped a victim on two separate occasions in March last year.

‘We have information based on what they said on social media, that one of the girls brought in up to €50,000 a month,’ said a source close to the investigation told the Mail. 

‘They were given no money from what they earned.’

The victims were allegedly transported to buildings in Ilfov county on the outskirts of Bucharest, where they were ‘sexually exploited’ and forced to make these videos, a police statement said. 

Tate said in a now deleted post: ‘My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, test if she’s quality, get her to fall in love with me to where she’d do anything I say, and then get her on webcam so we could become rich together’. 

Tate’s initial period in custody was extended from 24 hours to 30 days, but his lawyer Eugen Constantin Vidineac is going to appeal this decision by the judge. 

He said: ‘From our perspective, there are no grounds for taking this most drastic preventive measure.’

The brothers are both dual-citizens off the US and UK, born to an American father and British mother.

They grew up in both countries. 

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