Did a pizza box lead to Andrew Tate’s Romania arrest? No. But here’s the rationale behind the theory.
Romania #Romania
Andrew Tate, a controversial British-American social media personality, was one of four people arrested in Romania on Thursday on charges related to human trafficking and forming an organized crime group.
Tate, his brother, and two other suspects were subjects of an ongoing investigation that began in April. But overnight Thursday, as the news of the arrests broke, another theory arose: Perhaps Tate’s arrest was actually linked to a pizza box that appeared in a viral tweet meant to mock 19-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg.
In an initial tweet, which by Friday afternoon had been viewed more than 74 million times, Harvard instructor Alejandra Caraballo began outlining her argument by pointing out that Tate had posted a video featuring a box from a Romanian pizza chain as part of an ongoing back-and-forth with Thunberg. Given authorities said they had combed Tate’s social media as part of the investigation, Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, theorized the pizza box may have been the smoking gun that led to his arrest.
While it was a nice theory, some things are too good to be true. Critics were quick to push back against Caraballo, and the Romanian anti-organized-crime unit leading the investigation denied the pizza box played a role in Tate’s detention or its timing.
“It was a hard job gathering all the evidence” in the months-long investigation, Ramona Bolla, a spokeswoman for the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism, told the Associated Press.
However, as with so much that happens on social media these days, the veracity of the theory didn’t stop it from catching fire and being circulated to millions of readers. Caraballo soon found herself publicly defending the rationale that led to the “pizza box” theory.
She followed up on Twitter on Friday, addressing “fair criticism” that she had jumped to conclusions, but she backed up her line of thinking.
“I’ve gotten quite a bit of pushback about my pizza box tweet. I want to explain my thought process and acknowledge the fair criticism. I had no idea this would go this insanely viral,” Caraballo said on Twitter.
Caraballo explained how she researched reports by the Romanian news outlet Gandul that said authorities mobilized after seeing social media posts from the Tate brothers. But the social media reports mentioned were in reference to Tate’s social media activity in the days and months prior.
On Christmas Day, for example, days before he first skirmished online with Thunberg, Tate tweeted a video of a picturesque mountainous landscape with the caption “Romania.”
Caraballo said she saw this, “However, there’s no indication that it was that day and not a reposted video. There’s nothing clarifying the date and time,” she said on Twitter.
“So that brings us to the pizza video response. The reason I settled on that is because it’s the only post with a confirmed time and place that puts Andrew Tate in Romania in his home that could not be reposted content,” Caraballo said. “I think it’s fair that people are criticizing me for jumping to conclusions. This is not confirmed by Romanian officials and I’m basing my assumption off a poorly Google translated article from Romanian reporting. However, I did the work and looked at his socials to check.”
Caraballo did not immediately respond to the Globe’s request for comment.
At the end of the day, it seems Thunberg had the last word.
“This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes,” she tweeted.