Not many people make momentous career decisions at their grandfather’s funeral but in December 2022, Mateea Petrescu did exactly that. Petrescu, a publicist from Bacau, Romania, was asked by her cousin, a lawyer, if she would help to manage the publicity for one of his clients, who had just been arrested on charges of human trafficking, rape, and forming an organized crime group in Bucharest. That client’s name was Andrew Tate.
“I immediately said yes,” says Petrescu, 42. “I’m a girl from the butthole of Romania who does PR and I was asked to do the PR for the highest-profile legal case … You don’t say no to that, not where I come from.” Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, are certainly high-profile; former kickboxers whose social media rants about “hustle culture” and misogynistic views on women have earned them millions of followers on social media. The brothers have built an empire on the back of webcam girls and online subscription businesses from their sprawling compound in Romania, and are now facing dozens of criminal charges and civil lawsuits in Romania, the U.K. and America.
