Background and career
Emory Andrew Tate III (born 1 December 1986) is an American and British social media personality and former professional kickboxer who built a webcam pornography business before gaining notoriety for promoting various highly controversial positions in the manosphere. His commentary has resulted in his expulsion from various social media platforms and concern that he promotes misogynistic views to his audience. A divisive influencer, Tate has amassed 9.9 million followers on Twitter as of August 2024 and was the third-most googled person in 2023. He has been dubbed the "king of toxic masculinity", has called himself a misogynist, and is politically described as right-wing or far-right. As of mid-2026, Andrew Tate has been arrested in Miami and is in US custody. Tate has faced numerous criminal and civil legal proceedings in Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States relating to allegations including rape, human trafficking, and tax evasion. The Romanian trafficking case remained unresolved but stalled by procedural delays, and Tate had been released from Romania's travel ban and all bail conditions; separate UK proceedings remained active, where the Crown Prosecution Service authorised 21 charges in May 2025 and police reopened an earlier investigation into 2015-era allegations following a misconduct inquiry into how it had originally been handled. Beginning in 2005, Tate competed as a professional kickboxer in England, winning several world titles; he retired from the sport in 2016. He and his brother, Tristan, also began a webcam pornography business in 2014, which expanded substantially after they relocated to Romania and grew to include dozens of women recruited through an agency called Model Stars. In 2016, Tate appeared on the British reality series Big Brother, but was removed after tabloids broadcast footage connected to the webcam operation; he was separately the suspect in an open rape investigation that closed without charges in 2019, though Hertfordshire Constabulary reopened the case in 2026 following a gross-misconduct inquiry into how officials had originally handled the case. As the webcam business wound down, Tate built an online education business, becoming prominent as an internet celebrity promoting a hyper-macho view of masculinity through courses including Hustler's University (later relaunched as The Real World) and the secretive group The War Room, which the BBC has accused of coercing women into sex work and teaching violence against women. In August 2023, it was estimated that Tate's online ventures generated US$5 million in revenue monthly. In December 2022, Tate and his brother were arrested in Romania, along with two women. In June 2023, all four were charged with rape, human trafficking, and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women. Soon after, accusers reportedly went into hiding after a campaign of online harassment, and the Tate brothers filed a defamation lawsuit, claiming $5 million in damages. In March 2024, British police obtained an arrest warrant for the Tate brothers. In July 2024, a civil case in the UK was brought against the brothers and a third person for alleged tax evasion. In August 2024, Romanian police raided four properties Tate owns and expanded its investigation to include trafficking of children, child sexual abuse, money laundering, and attempting to influence witnesses. Tate and his brother have denied all charges and allegations. In May 2025, the United Kingdom Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) brought multiple charges against Tate and his brother including rape, actual bodily harm, and human trafficking. In 2026 the CPS filed additional charges against Tate, accusing him of rape, human trafficking, assault, and possession of child pornography. Tate was subsequently arrested in Miami and faces extradition to the UK.
Emory Andrew Tate III was born on 1 December 1986 at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He is multiracial; his African American father, Emory Tate (1958–2015), was an Air Force staff sergeant who later became a chess international master, while his White English mother, Eileen Tate, worked as a catering assistant. He has a younger brother, Tristan, and a younger sister, Janine. He was raised in Germany, Elkhart, Indiana, and Goshen, Indiana. In 1997, after his parents divorced, his mother took him and his brother to Luton in Bedfordshire, England. They "lived on Marsh Farm, an infamously rough council estate which Tate has described as the 'worst area of the worst town'". He was educated at Halyard High School and Luton Sixth Form College.
Tate began kickboxing in 2005, competing as a full-contact fighter under the nickname "King Cobra" while working in television advertising to support himself. Between 2011 and 2014 he became a four-time world champion, winning three ISKA full-contact world titles (light heavyweight and light cruiserweight) and an Enfusion K-1 Rules world title at 90 kg, and reached the final of Enfusion's "Trial of the Gladiators" tournament twice. In December 2016, Tate lost to Ibrahim El Boustati by first-round TKO after a recurrence of a retinal injury that had first affected him at 23, and retired from professional kickboxing at 30 on medical advice. He returned briefly in 2020 to fight lower-ranked opponents in Romania before retiring a second time with a career record of 76 wins, 9 losses, and 1 draw in the K-1 Rules and full-contact styles. Tate's brother, Tristan, was also a professional kickboxer, twice winning the ISKA British light cruiserweight title before retiring early because of a shoulder injury, with a record of 43–9. In 2023, Enfusion introduced a new promotional label named after the brothers, T8KO, with both brothers as media partners. After Tate's arrest, the Dutch Fight Sports Authority required Enfusion to drop the brothers from the project and rename it 8TKO.
In early 2014, while still competing as a professional kickboxer, Tate began a webcam pornography business with several women he was then dating. Tate has said that in the business's first month he made more than $100,000; he and his brother subsequently bought an Aston Martin. One of the women, whom he had met in Košice, Slovakia, performed on the site MyFreeCams while Tate wrote to paying customers off-camera pretending to be her. The New Yorker reported that the woman turned fifteen in 2012, the year Tate has said their relationship began, and that footage of Tate whipping her with a belt—later broadcast by British tabloids during his 2016 appearance on Big Brother—was filmed that year. Tate went on to recruit other women in Luton and Hitchin, England, offering them a share of webcam earnings; some of these women later filed the rape and strangulation complaints with Hertfordshire Constabulary described in § Criminal investigations and civil cases. After relocating to Romania in 2015–17, Tate and his brother expanded the business substantially, engaging British businesswoman Naomi John to help run a recruitment agency, Model Stars, which was publicly described as an "all-female" business helping women "escape the 9-to-5." At its peak, the brothers reported having roughly seventy-five women working for them, more than thirty of whom Tate said had his name tattooed on their skin. The webcam operation was wound down by the early 2020s as Tate shifted his business toward online education products, Hustler's University and the affiliate-marketing program The War Room; Tate has said the webcam business had been closed for ten years by the time of his 2022 arrest.
Tate gained widespread attention in 2016 when he appeared on the British reality television series Big Brother's 17th series. In the series, Tate was a member of a secret second house, part of a group called "The Others." While appearing on the show, he came under scrutiny for previously having made homophobic and racist posts on Twitter. He was removed from the show after six days, with producers saying that it was because of events outside the house and Tate saying that it was about a video which appeared to show him striking a woman with a belt on the show. Producers also said that he was not let go because of the uncovered tweets. Tate and the woman said that they were friends and that the actions in the video were consensual. Vice later reported that Tate was removed because the show's producers became aware of an ongoing police investigation by Hertfordshire Constabulary into him for rape, which closed in 2019 with no charges filed.
Tate's website offers training courses on accumulating wealth and "male–female interactions". According to the site, he also operated a webcam studio using his girlfriends as employees. Tate and his brother, Tristan, started the webcam business, employing as many as 75 webcam models to sell "fake sob stories" to male callers, claiming to have made millions of dollars doing so. According to Mary McNamara, Tate has called himself "a pimp", and The Guardian wrote of his transition from a kickboxer to "a webcam pimp". Tate later acknowledged that the business model was a "total scam". In August 2023, it was estimated that The Real World and The War Room generated US$5 million monthly from subscriptions.
