Wiretaps suggest Tate brothers used offshore account to conceal webcam profits as fresh allegations emerge involving minors

Documents obtained as part of a new case against social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who have been charged with human trafficking, money laundering and organized crime, deepen questions over their opaque webcam finances.

On Aug. 21, Romanian police raided the homes of the brothers and some of their associates and arrested the pair. The recent allegations list 35 victims and accuse Andrew Tate of trafficking a minor for sexual exploitation and having sexual relations with another minor.

The brothers are also accused of seeking to intimidate and corrupt witnesses to stop them from giving evidence to prosecutors or to pressure them to give false evidence. Two other accomplices are also accused of interfering with the investigation. The prosecutors seized 16 cars and a motorcycle from the Tates, according to a press release.

• Recommended reading

EUROPE

Adult webcam platform paid $2.6m into controversial influencer Tristan Tate’s bank account, leaked documents show

May 07, 2024

PARTNER STORIES

Sex-trafficking survivors are increasingly suing to hold hotel chains liable for abuse on their properties, new investigation finds

Aug 01, 2023

Africa

How torture, deception and inaction underpin the UAE’s thriving sex trafficking industry

Jun 12, 2023

The day after the raid, a judge placed Tristan Tate on bail and Andrew Tate on house arrest pending further pre-trial hearings. The same judge also warned that the evidence of money laundering was insufficient in the prosecutors’ case, according to local media. A spokesperson for DIICOT, Romania’s law enforcement unit dedicated to investigating organized crime, declined to comment.

The Tate brothers and two of their associates are currently awaiting trial on separate  charges of human trafficking from 2023; in that case, Andrew Tate was also charged with rape.

The brothers and their alleged accomplices have denied wrongdoing in both cases. A spokesperson for the Tates declined to comment for this article.

EVERY ACCUSATION AGAINST ME IS A LIE.

EVERY SINGLE ONE IS FABRICATED.

ENOUGH OF THE CORRUPTION. pic.twitter.com/3nlGxDJHbV

— Andrew Tate (@Cobratate) August 22, 2024

ICIJ and Romanian partner Context previously reported on Tristan Tate’s account with Paxum, a Canadian company that catered to the adult entertainment industry later purchased by Paxum Bank, a small Caribbean financial institution. The firms shared the name Paxum and similar website branding.  The mother of Paxum Bank’s owner, Anton Postolnikov, was also one of the owners of Paxum Inc., according to Romanian media reports.

Using Tristan Tate’s leaked banking records, ICIJ found that an adult webcam platform deposited a total of $2.6 million into Tate’s Paxum account until shortly before he and his brother were charged with human trafficking. Andrew was also charged with raping one of the women he allegedly trafficked.

As part of the most recent investigation, prosecutors obtained transcripts of text messages and phone conversations that shed further light on the pair’s use of their Paxum account in what was allegedly a complex online webcam business running since at least 2015. Due to stringent anonymity rules, ICIJ could not establish if the women mentioned in the prosecutors’ transcripts are also among the 35 victims in the new set of allegations.

According to the transcripts, on Oct. 23, 2019, Andrew Tate texted his brother to ask about a “missing payment. Paxum? The October 15 payment.” Tristan Tate replied: “it could be a large payment. A double payment is coming up.” (ICIJ translated the relevant exchanges from the transcripts from Romanian to English, based on the prosecutors’ own translation of the Tates’ original English conversation. ICIJ’s translation may not exactly match the original conversation, which was not presented in court.)

On the same day — in an exchange found elsewhere in the wiretap transcripts — Tristan told his brother that one of the women who worked for them “asked to see what is in the bank account. It all goes in at the same time through Paxum. 15,000 went in from all three girls,” he added, without specifying the currency.

We’ll open accounts at all the banks. We’ll spread the money.

— Andrew Tate in wiretap transcripts

An ICIJ review of Tristan Tate’s Paxum account statements shows that multiple payments from webcam platform MFCXY were made to the Paxum account in the weeks leading up to the conversation. On Oct. 1, 2019, three payments of $5,180.95, $9,634.20 and $5,407 were deposited, followed by one payment of $7,034.15 on Oct. 21, 2019.

On Nov. 11 the same year, according to one transcript, Andrew asked Tristan: “Has the video cam money arrived? Paxum? Has it arrived at Paxum only a few days ago? How much was the money from video cam?” A payment of $18,785.15 from MFCXY hit Tristan Tate’s account on Nov 4., 2019, the leaked files show.

The wiretap transcripts circulated by the prosecution, coupled with the account activity reviewed by ICIJ, suggest that Tristan Tate may have been using the Paxum account to collect webcam income from multiple women in his employ. The transcripts appear to show the brothers agreeing to keep a portion of the income the women earned in the Tates’ webcam business.

When Tristan complains that one of the women is demanding a 40% share of her earnings from webcam shows, Andrew tells him to “shoot her” or “falsify” the account statements for their crypto holdings, or “give her 30 and tell her it’s 40, blame the currency exchange rate” — implying that the women did not have access to the bank account where their own earnings were sent.

According to other evidence submitted by prosecutors in court and obtained by ICIJ partner Context, the Tate brothers offered online classes to their followers on how to profit from OnlyFans — an online adult entertainment subscription website — including social media marketing strategies and convincing men to subscribe to paid adult content.OnlyFans’s owner also owns MFCXY Inc., the company that initiated the money transfers to Tristan Tate’s Paxum account. The company did not reply to ICIJ’s request to comment in May.

Ahead of the May article, Paxum Bank denied any impropriety and sent a letter through a lawyer warning that publication of confidential bank information could lead to legal action against ICIJ.

On Sept. 4, a spokesperson for Paxum issued a new explanation.

“Notwithstanding what you purportedly believe to be factual, Paxum Bank has never opened or maintained accounts for either of the Tate brothers. Perhaps you and others are confusing the bank with an unrelated entity called Paxum Inc., which was a Canadian company with a different owner and unrelated management and which no longer operates.”

ICIJ has found multiple transfers out of Tate’s accounts which arrived at his other accounts with banks in Europe such as Santander and Raiffeisen and were marked with the address of Paxum Bank in Dominica, while also bearing the “customer name” of “paxumbank ltd” on the wire transfer document. Tate’s account statements are headed with Paxum Bank’s address in Dominica, rather than the Canadian address of the now-defunct Paxum Inc.

Paxum Bank said in a later statement that after it purchased the assets of Paxum Inc. in late 2022, the bank’s IT system auto-generated a change from Paxum Inc. to Paxum Bank in previous electronic records, which meant that transactions that were made by Paxum Inc. would erroneously appear to have been made by Paxum Bank.

The wiretap transcripts also contain discussions between the brothers about opening multiple bank accounts and keeping relatively low balances, seemingly to avoid attention from compliance departments — a tactic sometimes used by those seeking to evade anti-money laundering checks at banks. “We’ll open accounts at all the banks. We’ll spread the money,” Andrew said, according to the transcripts. “We’ll keep the balance low. We can buy another house. We don’t need large balances in bank accounts.”

In one instance, Andrew says he ignored a request from a bank to update his personal details, and the account remained open despite this.

“Following the rules never works,” Andrew told Tristan, according to the transcript.