American-British media personality and former professional kickboxer Andrew Tate and his brother were detained in Romania in a human trafficking investigation Thursday along with a former policewoman, according to reports.

Romanian authorities allegedly detained Tate and his brother at their luxury villa after armed police raided his residence searching for evidence related to the case in which the brothers are accused of abducting two women.

Local media reported that sources close to the investigation said the former policewoman allegedly formed a criminal group. Romanian prosecutors said the group explicitly aims to recruit and exploit girls to create and distribute pornographic clips on sites like OnlyFans.

The raid was conducted by the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT ), according to Romanian media outlet G4Media.

According to Daily Mail, DICCOT said in a news release that Romania’s police, crime, and investigation unit had raided five homes with search warrants issued in connection to an ongoing investigation into an organized criminal group, human trafficking, and rape.

The alleged victims were “recruited by two British citizens” who were later transported and housed in buildings in Ilfov county, police said.

Authorities did not name the suspects.

The women were then allegedly subjected to “physical violence and mental coercion’ and were ‘sexually exploited by group members by forcing them to perform pornographic demonstrations […] for the purpose of producing and disseminating through social media platforms,” Daily Mail reported.

Authorities reportedly detained the two brothers for 24 hours.

Tate’s reported apprehension comes a day after he filmed a video criticizing climate activist Greta Thunberg, which included a pizza box from a national chain in Romania.

BREAKING: Andrew Tate and brother Tristan arrested in Romania in human trafficking probe pic.twitter.com/b5eaZrErAb

— BNO News (@BNONews) December 29, 2022

Tate faced allegations of human trafficking in Romania in April 2022.

However, Tate reportedly said the accusations stemmed from a swatting incident where authorities accused him and his brother of obtaining large sums of money with which they bought houses, luxury cars, and cryptocurrencies, according to reports.

“I was not arrested,” Tate said. “What happened is I suffered from a case of swatting. It’s very popular with people who are large on the Internet.”

“[Police] turned up, they investigated, they realized nobody was in the house against their will, there was no crime committed […] we had to go to the police station for 45 minutes for pieces of paper, we filled them in, and we were let go,” Tate added.

Austin’s spiking homeless problem came to a head for the city over Christmas as temperatures dropped below freezing and many spent the night outside.

As an arctic blast hit the city over Christmas weekend, Austin opened cold weather shelters and welcomed hundreds of the city’s thousands of homeless people between Thursday evening and Tuesday morning. The low temperature for Christmas Eve in the area was 12 degrees, according to the National Weather Service, and a freeze warning was in effect through Christmas night.

Homelessness has plagued the state capital for years, but the problem has gotten significantly worse in the last year. Nearly 3,500 homeless people now reside in the Austin area, according to ECHO, an Austin homelessness nonprofit. That number has risen over 20% between last year and this year.

On Tuesday, the Texas Department of Transportation conducted a cleanup of a homeless encampment in south Austin in the South Lamar neighborhood. The department initially pointed to the city of Austin when asked about cleanups, but later confirmed Texas DOT was responsible for the cleanup.

Texas DOT said it “typically” conducts cleanups on Tuesdays and that when crews arrive, homeless people are given the opportunity to remove their belongings beforehand. Whatever is abandoned will be cleaned up, and there are signs warning people that state law prohibits camping on public property posted at all cleanup locations, the department noted.

This means that homeless people who went to a shelter during the freezing nights of Christmas weekend and Monday found their belongings gone when they returned on Tuesday. The cleanup also appears to have swept up the blankets, jackets, and other supplies that hundreds of volunteers provided to homeless people before the storm came.

The city of Austin was not involved in that cleanup or any other Christmas week cleanups of homeless encampments, a city spokesperson said. No cleanups are planned for the rest of the year either.

On Christmas Day, city shelters closed when temperatures rose above freezing, but they opened again that night when temperatures dropped again. The city said it also fed guests with breakfast and box lunches.

Now Austin and Texas DOT are being criticized not only by fed-up residents, but also by homeless advocates.

“We were horrified to realize that there were so many people that had no idea that cold weather was coming and no way to prepare for it,” said Sasha Rose of Austin Mutual Aid, a local grassroots group.

Meanwhile, residents complain that homeless people from nearby encampments cause a litany of problems for their neighbors.

“I’ve seen urinating and defecating into the street. We’ve seen needles. We’ve seen broken bottles and litter, stuff like that,” one South Austin resident told KVUE earlier this month.

Reports to 311, 911, and emails to the district’s council members yielded little fruit, residents say.

Last year, Austin voters banned homeless people from camping in public spaces. Since then, police and other city and state government agencies have enforced the ban.

At the same time, Austin has invested millions of dollars into providing housing for the city’s homeless, including renovating hotels to turn them into shelters.