Internet personality Andrew Tate and his brother were detained in Romania on Thursday, CNN reported.
Their lawyer told the news outlet that the brothers will appear in court on Friday while emphasizing that neither of them are under arrest, only detained for 24 hours.
Tate took to Twitter to comment: “The Matrix sent their agents,” he wrote, referencing the “red pill” trope borrowed from the blockbuster film that is popularly used in misogynistic groups online, according to The Guardian.
Why was Andrew Tate detained?
The former professional kickboxer and his brother, Tristan Tate, were questioned along with two Romanian suspects.
“The four suspects ... appear to have created an organised crime group with the purpose of recruiting, housing and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be seen on specialised websites for a cost,” Romanian prosecutors from an anti-organized crime unit said in a statement obtained by Reuters on Thursday.
The prosecutors have asked the Bucharest court to extend the brothers’ stay at the detention center to 30 days.
According to The Guardian, authorities said that six victims have been identified, with one “separate allegation of rape dating to March this year.”
Who is Andrew Tate?
Tate was banned from Twitter in 2016 for saying that women bore the responsibility for being sexually assaulted, as Hanna Seariac reported for the Deseret News.
Around this time, he entered “Big Brother,” a reality show, but was kicked off when a video of him hitting a woman with a belt surfaced.
The 36-year-old moved to Romania in 2017. He became known as “the King of Toxic Masculinity” for controversial remarks on how to treat women. Tate was subsequently removed from Meta and TikTok, the report added.