Tate tried to lure me to his lair, says ex-Playboy model
A FORMER Playboy model has told friends how the controversial influencer Andrew Tate tried to lure her to his Romanian hideaway.
Carla Howe, 32, said she believes she had a lucky escape after Tate, 36, was arrested with his brother and two others in connection with alleged human trafficking and rape.
Details have emerged of how Romanian prosecutors are investigating four suspects for allegedly keeping six women under ‘house arrest 24/7 like prisoners’.
The lawyers say Tate and brother Tristan allegedly recruited the women on social media platforms and persuaded them to travel to his £600,000 bolthole in Bucharest by falsely professing their love for them. The women, including an American citizen, were allegedly held at the property with staff shadowing their every move and forced to take part in online pornographic videos.
Ms Howe believes she may have been one of the intended victims – as the tactics Tate used with her bore a chilling similarity to the way prosecutors claim the brothers treated the alleged victims.
She told friends: ‘He wanted me to go to Romania and I was tempted. It makes me think now how it could have gone terribly. I’d probably have ended up not leaving the house ever.’
Ms Howe said Tate showered her with compliments and romantic messages after they began chatting online when he sent a private message to her Instagram account in February.
But she claimed she quickly learned of a darker side of his character when his messages became ‘controlling and aggressive’.
Ms Howe, who moved into Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion with her twin Melissa in 2011, told friends how Tate tried to stop her going on holiday to Spain with a girlfriend and insisted she had to ‘obey’ him.
Despite her concerns, they continued to speak online and then out of the blue, Tate told her he was in Romania and asked her to fly out to visit him.
At first she told him she could not ‘come to another country to meet someone I’ve never met’.
But she reconsidered and spoke to a friend who agreed to go with her in August. In the end she did not travel as communication with Tate stopped abruptly when he was banned from Instagram.
She told friends: ‘I had a lucky escape. I thought I would give him a chance and was tempted to have a relationship with him. Maybe God saved me from that happening.
‘Things could have turned out very differently if I had gone, I hate to think. I had so many people contacting me after he was arrested. I was like “Oh my God – it gets worse”.’ Romanian investigators began their probe when the US embassy in
Bucharest raised the alarm after diplomats discovered that an American woman was being held against her will in the city.
The 22-year- old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had managed to recover her mobile phone and call her boyfriend in the US who alerted the embassy. Police released a video showing officers in Romania’s organised crime and terrorism agency leading Tate and his brother away in handcuffs on December 29.
Guns, knives and money found at his property were also shown in the film.
‘He insisted she had to obey him’