Tristan Tate may not be as well known as his controversial older brother Andrew now, but he was once a reality television star alongside Stephen Bear on Channel 4‘s Shipwrecked.
Tristan, 34, was arrested with his older brother at their Romanian bolthole as part of a months-long investigation into allegations of human trafficking and rape.
The pair are famously inseparable, and now stand accused of exploiting up to six women and pressuring them into sex work.
Andrew and Tristan have been locked up since Thursday after a court agreed to extend their detention by 30 days.
The middle of three children, Tristan followed his older brother into a career in kickboxing and idolised Andrew.
Tristan Tate may not be as well known now as his controversial older brother Andrew, but he was once a reality television star alongside Stephen Bear on Channel 4’s Shipwrecked
As Andrew’s internet fame grew he left Britain with Tristan (pictured together as young boys) to set up in Romania where they continued to build an online audience
He had a professional record of 43-9, including two European World Championship titles. But he was hampered by injuries and, in his late 20s, retired from the sport to go into business with his older brother.
Speaking on the Playing With Fire podcast, Tristan expressed his admiration for Andrew, saying it’s a ‘blessing to have a guy like that on your team’. He also noted he doesn’t get on well with his younger sister, due to their opposing views.
Tristan first had a taste of fame in 2011, when he appeared on Channel 4’s Shipwrecked alongside Stephen Bear.
Footage shows the duo ganging up on fellow contestant Kitten as he quit the island, following several disputes with Tristan during the length of the show.
In the old clips, Tristan tells Kitten: ‘The reason you’ve done nothing in the real world is the same reason you’re leaving now. You’re really lazy, you’re incompetent, you can’t handle a free holiday… you’re never going to get anywhere in life.’
Bear then cheers and says: ‘Get outta here. Good riddance,’ as a boat transports Kitten off the island.
Bear was last month found guilty of sharing a sex tape of his ex girlfriend Georgia Harrison to OnlyFans, which left her feeling ‘hurt and humiliated’. He is awaiting sentencing on the matter.
Tristan refers to himself as ‘The Talisman’ and boasts of his luxury lifestyle to his 2.3 million followers on Instagram
Footage shows the Bear and Tristan (pictured together) ganging up on fellow contestant Kitten as he quit the island, following several disputes with Tristan during the length of the show
Pictured: Tristan with his arm around Stephen Bear in an episode of Shipwrecked
The pair (Andrew and Tristan pictured together) are famously inseparable, and now stand accused of exploiting up to six women and pressuring them into sex work
After his stint on the show, Tristan went into business with Andrew, who also tried his hand at reality television but was kicked off Big Brother in 2016 after a video emerged of him appearing to hit a former girlfriend with a belt. She later stated it was consensual and that he remained a friend.
In the years that followed, Tristan followed his older brother to Romania and the pair live together in the £600,000 compound where they were both arrested on December 29.
Tristan is a multi-millionaire in his own right, while Andrew claims to be the world’s first trillionaire.
On social media the Tate brothers regularly showcase a lavish lifestyle at the concrete fortress, with a coterie of 33 supercars and expensively furnished rooms where they play with piles of Romanian Leu notes and art made from dollar bills.
But the property itself, close to Aurel Vlaicu International Airport in Pipera, Voluntari, on the outskirts of Bucharest, is at the end of a shabby road with cars abandoned on its verges.
Tristan first had a taste of fame in 2011, when he appeared on Channel 4’s Shipwrecked alongside Stephen Bear
Andrew Tate was pictured caged in the back of a police van alongside his ‘angels’ after their arrest as part of a probe into alleged sex crimes. (Centre: Georgiana Naghel, Tate’s alleged girlfriend and right: Luana Radu, a former cop who left the force to work in webcams)
The influencer, 36, was seen behind bars as he was escorted to the Romanian detention centre on Thursday evening
The compound, which Andrew claims contains his own armed security, is surrounded by wasteland scrub and abandoned building projects.
Tristan, meanwhile, refers to himself as ‘The Talisman’ and boasts of his luxury lifestyle to his 2.3 million followers on Instagram.
But he’s tried to keep at least some elements of his life away from the public eye. He’s occasionally made reference to being a father, but refuses to go into any detail about his child or children.
He was also publicly linked to famous Romanian TV presenter and model, Bianca Dragusanu in 2018.
Ms Dragusanu was dropped from her network after word of the affair broke.
In boasting about his brother being a womaniser, Andrew said: ”There was a girl called Bianca Dragusanu, she was a newscaster for the No.1 TV channel in Romania and she was married with a kid. She got caught having an affair with my brother.
‘Since then Tristan became like the ”playboy of Romania” running around being a f***ing little f***er, he’s tearing through all these celebrities.’
Andrew has gained notoriety for his own misogynistic rants online, racking up more than 11.6billion views on TikTok and influencing impressionable youth who equate his perceived wealth to his divisive rhetoric.
Sexist diatribes from Tate are being parroted by male pupils in classrooms, according to Michael Conroy, founder of Men At Work.
‘The teachers talk about how his influence is palpable and there are very few young men that are not aware of his work… They tend to be raised with female teachers, like some kind of power play or provocative act. Almost as if he is like a Pied Piper.’
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.
The ‘Hustlers University’ run by Andrew is on the grounds of the Tate brother’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
Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate are escorted by police officers outside the headquarters of the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism in Bucharest on Thursday
Romanian prosecutors have been granted permission to detain them and the two Romanian women they were arrested with 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 by one suspect 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.
Ms Naghel was born in Bucharest and raised in the Tuhari district and is believed to have met Tate (pictured together) through friends soon after he moved to the country five years ago
Tate’s lifestyle today is a far cry from his humble beginnings where his mother Eileen raised him and his brother Tristan and his sister Janice (all pictured together) from her humble £275,000 council house in Luton, Bedfordshire
Women were allegedly held at the property with employees shadowing their every move before being forced to take part in online pornographic videos.
Romanian authorities claim 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’.
Luana Radu and Georgiana Naghel are accused of being Tate’s closest lieutenants. Police claim they helped to ‘coerce’ and ‘control’ 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 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.
The brothers’ father Emory Tate, who died in 2015, was a high level chess player, who earned the nickname ‘extraterrestrial’ because his play was said to be out of this world. He won 80 games against grandmasters over his career and was six times champion of Nevada and five time US Armed Forces champion.
Tristan Tate may not be as well known as his controversial older brother Andrew now, but he was once a reality television star alongside Stephen Bear on Channel 4’s Shipwrecked
Like his sons would grow up to be, Emory was a prolific and controversial social media user, posting outspoken content on Facebook which was highly critical of American foreign policy, before he died suddenly from a heart attack seven years ago.
Mrs Tate brought her children up in relative poverty after moving to the Bedfordshire town when Tristan was nine. They lived in a £275,000 council house in Luton, north of London.
Andrew was pictured alongside Radu and Naghel as he was escorted to his detention centre.
And the Tate brothers still have hordes of supporters on the outside. A young Ukrainian refugee found in the police raid has defended Andrew and Tristan amid their ongoing detention.
‘Everything the police have said is not true, I know them [Tate and his brother, Tristan] and they could not do this,’ she told The Times.
‘The girls who live here do not have to do anything. They are good girls.’
