No, Romanian Cops Did Not Find Andrew Tate Because of a Pizza Box

I seem to understand the guy has been live streaming on his private thing that subscribers pay for or whatever and has clearly been in Romania based on a bunch of clues such as the women who he had around him speaking the language between each other. You can see clips of that in this youtube rip of his final streaming days on &quot;tate confidential&quot; here, which is probably what got him busted. [1] Still insanely funny that this happened right in the midst of getting in a hugely ratio&#x27;d spate with Greta.<p>He got caught because he&#x27;s the most arrogant public figure on the internet and thinks of himself as a demigod immune to the vicissitudes of things like human trafficking laws.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=58Lc4cew7OE">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=58Lc4cew7OE</a>

Alejandra Caraballo&#x27;s tweet thread about her reasoning is here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Esqueer_&#x2F;status&#x2F;1608709173684105217" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Esqueer_&#x2F;status&#x2F;1608709173684105217</a><p>I think it&#x27;s worth reading it, although I am skeptical of her conclusions. However, he did Tweet from a Prague airport on December 26th so if the Gândul article is correct about Romanian authorities confirming his location via social media posts, it&#x27;s reasonable to think that the pizza box might be one of those.<p>Also, Dreyfuss is missing information -- the castle photo he references isn&#x27;t a castle, it&#x27;s a hotel in Italy.<p>However, I don&#x27;t have any strong reason to think that Gândul was correct or that the translation isn&#x27;t missing a nuance.<p>My fairly uninformed stance here is &quot;maybe, maybe not, no way to be sure.&quot;

I’m just happy I had no idea who this person was. Turning into my dad has been a blessing…

Are these contrarian&#x2F;scandalous&#x2F;unapologetically insulting figures a new phenomenon or have they always been a part of pop culture? Seems like Tate-like or Yiannopoulos-like personas are attracting a lot of media coverage.

the most important section is a quote of a romanian newspaper: &quot;After seeing, including on social networks, that they were together in Romania, the DIICOT prosecutors mobilized the special troops of the Gendarmerie and descended, by force, on their villa in Pipera, but also on other addresses.&quot;<p>the author does a convincing job of indicating there is no authoritative evidence that the pizza box played any role. the author does not convince me that the pizza box did not play any role.

So I am tempted to flag this submission because I don&#x27;t really think HN is the place but I want to make sure I am using the flag feature correctly. Can any more experienced HN user weigh in? Is flagging for articles you don&#x27;t want to see on HN or is it more reserved for spam&#x2F; inaccuracies?

Whenever the person&#x2F;website&#x2F;news org saying something REALLY wants it to be true I am very skeptical.

Lol how long can you publicly brag about being a gangster, not paying taxes, going to romania because rape charges dont exist, having multiple passports to avoid law and dealing all the time with the mafia, including &quot;taking care&quot; of someone who tried to kill you, and then be arrested.<p>Answer : a few months.

I was trying to skim this article, but it&#x27;s a very hard read.<p>I don&#x27;t know who he is, but Wikipedia say it&#x27;s an American-Brit. Is there any reason to assume that he didn&#x27;t just fly there? In which case of course they knew he was there. He used his passport to get in after all. Also what&#x27;s the cost of a police patrol checking out a house? I&#x27;ve seen people get harassed at home for not paying a 20 Euro ticket in Germany, surely the Romanian authorities can do the same.<p>How is this even a story? Completely absurd.

I was very confused as to why people had believed that passport control and property registrar records had less weight in an investigation compared to a pizza box.

&gt; Thunberg is not known for her sense of humor<p>As of today, the tweet about Tate is the fifth most &#x27;liked&#x27; tweet _ever_. Only one of the others above it in the list is a joke. So, er, some might disagree.

The connection to Greta Thunberg isn&#x27;t accurate really.<p>Andrew Tate said something like &quot;bring me pizza and don&#x27;t recycle the boxes&quot; (paraphrasing)<p>After he was arrested she replied &quot;this is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes&quot;<p>Her remark is because of what he said and later getting arrested. I can&#x27;t see how it&#x27;s because of the supposed use of the pizza box to locate him.

it suits law enforcement to have people thinking that they did, rather than having people being aware of the nature of surveillance.

Why is a pizza box a bigger story than, say, a likely sex trafficker given a major platform on social media (Tiktok and Twitter)?

I came to hackernews to run away from that staged noise to keep twitter engagement high but it has spilled over to this platform as well.

&gt; Thunberg is not known for her sense of humor<p>What? Guess you haven’t seen her responses to Donald Trumps attacks on her then.

I understand the clarification of this article but it seemed far too long.<p>TL;DR - They didn’t use the pizza box to find his location in Romania, they used it to confirm that he was currently in the country to detain him.<p>Edit: As called out below, this is also just speculation.

Most people know that, but the narrative is just too good that he got pwned because he tried to pwn Greta. People want to believe it.

Off-topic, but it feels like I&#x27;m the only person who thinks phrases like &quot;small dick energy&quot; are bad. When did it become acceptable to shame men for the size of their penis? Whenever I&#x27;ve mentioned it, people have defended its usage with arguments that didn&#x27;t sound convincing to me.<p>Why is it acceptable to say &quot;small dick energy&quot; in the age of body-shaming awareness?