Romanian judge orders Andrew Tate to stay in jail for another month, ending his hopes of a quick release

• Andrew Tate will remain in custody in Romania until February 27, a judge ruled on Friday.
• Tate and his brother, Tristan, were arrested last month.

A Romania judge has ruled that Andrew Tate will remain in jail for another month, despite his attempts to get let out sooner, according to multiple reports.

Tate and his brother, Tristan, are to stay in Romanian custody until February 27, while police build their case, the judge ruled, according to the BBC and Sky News.

The brothers and two Romanian women were arrested last month in connection with a human trafficking and rape investigation.

Prosecutors have accused them of constructing an operation that exploited and forced women into making content for an online porn website.

Romania's DIICOT investigations agency cited the "loverboy method" — a known human trafficking technique where men seduce and manipulate women into sex work — when announcing the group's arrest.

They have all denied the allegations.

Tate, a 36-year-old British-US citizen, has more than 4 million followers on Twitter and was previously banned from various prominent social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech.

The brothers' lawyer, Eugen Vidineac, told local news outlet Gândul that there is no evidence to convict his clients.

But he stopped short of defending Tate's suggestions that the events are a dark conspiracy against him.

At the time of their arrest, on December 29, a court approved a request from authorities to jail the group for 30 days. An appeal to be released earlier this month was also denied.

Tate's own words may be among the strongest evidence against him, according to Romanian lawyer Stefan Loredan, who has followed Tate's case closely.

Loredan told Insider that some of Tate's public statements, such as referencing corruption in Romania as a reason to live there and his descriptions of manipulating women into working for him, may be "very hard for the lawyers to defend."

"It's mainly because they've been incriminating themselves through the social-media content that they've been creating in the last two to three years," he said.

Even so, Tate's fans and allies maintain his innocence.

Last week, two women came forward saying they worked with Tate without issue, and claimed prosecutors wrongly named them as victims in the case.

The women, known only by their first names Beatrice and Jasmin, showed tattoos they had gotten reading: "Property of Tate" and "Tate Girl."