By Kanishka Singh
(Reuters) – A woman in the U.S. accused internet personalities Tristan and Andrew Tate of conspiring to coerce her into sex work, luring her to Romania and defaming her after her testimony to Romanian authorities, according to a lawsuit filed on Monday.
The civil complaint in Florida was reported earlier by the New York Times, which said it marked the first suit against the brothers to be filed in the United States.
The Tate brothers have been fighting civil and criminal cases in Romania and Britain. The accusations against them include forming an organized criminal group, human trafficking, trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor, and money laundering. They have denied wrongdoing.
The woman is identified in the court filing as Jane Doe. The Tate brothers had previously sued her for defamation in 2023. The suit by her on Monday alleged that the brothers attempted to “bully and harass” her through the defamation case.
The New York Times reported that Doe, 23, and her parents were granted anonymity by the court because of safety concerns.
Representatives for the Tate brothers could not immediately be reached. Joseph D. McBride, a lawyer representing them, was quoted by the Times as saying there was no evidence that his clients had engaged in human trafficking and that the truth was on their side.
Last month, a Romanian court lifted a house arrest order against Andrew Tate, replacing it with a lighter preventative measure pending the outcome of a criminal investigation. He was under house arrest after August when prosecutors started a second criminal investigation against him, his brother Tristan, and four other suspects.
A first criminal case had failed in December when the Bucharest Court of Appeals ruled against Andrew Tate on trial and sent the case back to prosecutors.
The Tate brothers, both former kickboxers with dual U.S. and British citizenship, were the highest-profile suspects facing trial for human trafficking in Romania.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Rod Nickel)
