Adult webcam platform paid $2.6m into controversial influencer Tristan Tate’s bank account, leaked documents show - ICIJ (2024)

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ICIJ found Paxum Bank, favored by the p*rn industry, processed Tate’s transactions until shortly before he and his brother Andrew Tate were charged with rape and human trafficking.

Tristan Tate, a social media influencer whose brother Andrew Tate is known for his misogynistic views, used Caribbean-based Paxum Bank to process payments from an adult webcam platform, documents leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show.

The brothers and business partners are currently awaiting trial in Romania on charges of rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to exploit women — all of which they have denied. The United Kingdom is also reportedly seeking their extradition due to allegations of “sexual aggression.”

The documents obtained by ICIJ include a statement for Tristan Tate’s Paxum Bank account covering 2017 to 2024. It shows about $2.6 million in payments “for services provided” by MFCXY Inc., a company that hosts an adult webcam service, as well as from other adult content platforms such as OnlyFans. The leaked records, which also contain 183 wire transfers, show that Tate transferred funds from his Paxum account into other bank accounts he owned in Romania and the U.K. over the same period.

It is unclear if there is any connection between Tate’s transactions analyzed by ICIJ and the Romanian case or British investigation. The leaked documents show Tate received income from the webcam hosting service until August 2022, four months before his arrest in December of that year.

Paxum, headquartered in the Caribbean island nation of Dominica, has developed a niche as a bank to the p*rnography and adult services industries, generally shunned by mainstream banks due to human trafficking and exploitation risks.

The leaked documents show that almost all of the deposits made to Tate’s Paxum account — about $2.6 million out of about $2.8 million total — were sent by MFCXY, the webcam platform. Transfers ranged between $15 and $50,000 over the period, according to the statement. The files are the first to reveal financial transactions between Tate and MFCXY.

Tate brothers accused of exploitation

Both Tate brothers have acknowledged operating a webcam business but claim that the women performing on camera voluntarily split earnings with them. Andrew Tate claimed he earned $600,000 a month “during the height of his webcam business which employed 75 women across four countries,” according to The Mirror. The retired kickboxing champion told the British publication he was inspired to launch the venture after seeing an online ad.

A now-deleted page from Andrew Tate’s website reportedly described how he would induce a woman “to fall in love with me to where she’d do anything I say, and then get her on webcam so we could become rich together.”

Romanian prosecutors allege the Tate brothers and their associates exploited seven victims using “acts of violence and psychological coercion” to force them into “p*rnographic acts” on camera — a form of human trafficking.

The brothers deny the allegations. Tristan Tate has said the Romanian charges are unrelated to a webcam business he said he previously operated, which he called “a perfectly legal streaming business.”

A few payments to Tate’s Paxum account came from OnlyFans, a website owned by the same person as MFCXY, which calls itself an “e-commerce solutions” company based in Boca Raton, Florida. Paxum had an MFCXY email address — paxum@mfcxy.com — according to the statement. Paxum’s representative didn’t answer questions about the purpose of the email address or the business relationship between the bank and MFCXY. MFCXY representatives did not reply to a detailed request for comment.

Andrew Tate has said he and his brother considered their webcam business to be legitimate, according to media reports. On a podcast in March, Tristan Tate described the operation as a “streaming studio.” “So I ran something like this which had a bunch of models on it, some of whom were sitting around in bikinis, some of whom got more naked, I won’t pretend that it’s not what it is, you know?” he said. “The people who worked for me were very, very happy,” he later added in the same interview.

He also told the host that he “was more involved in [the webcam business] than Andrew ever was” and that he exited it several years before the Romanian charges were brought.

A spokesperson for Tristan and Andrew Tate declined to answer detailed questions sent by ICIJ.

A ‘risky’ business

Paxum is owned by Anton Postolnikov, a Russian-American entrepreneur who emerged as a major investor in Digital World Acquisition Corp., the publicly traded investment vehicle that merged with Trump Media, former President Donald Trump’s media company. Postolnikov, who is reportedly the nephew of a former high-ranking Kremlin official, made the trades of DWAC stock around the same time that a trust with links to Postolnikov and an account at Paxum reportedly loaned Trump’s Truth Social $8 million. The arrangement came to light as part of a wider U.S. investigation into investors in Trump’s media company, according to The Guardian.

Banking experts told ICIJ that accounts involving the p*rnography industry are considered high risk and warrant additional scrutiny. “These transactions should have definitely raised a red flag and the account treated as higher risk with enhanced monitoring,” said Kathryn Westmore, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Financial Crime and Security at RUSI, a think tank in London. “The fact that the transactions are related to an adult webcam company should almost certainly have prompted further investigation into the source of the funds to ascertain whether any of the funds have been generated from illegal activities or illicit content.”

She added: “For many banks, an account like this will be far outside their risk appetite and I suspect they’d want to exit the account as quickly as possible.”

These transactions should have definitely raised a red flag and the account treated as higher risk with enhanced monitoring

— Kathryn Westmore, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Financial Crime and Security at think tank RUSI

Paxum declined to answer detailed questions from ICIJ. In an email, a spokesperson said: “Paxum Bank is prohibited by law from publicly disclosing any customer account information or communications that it may have had with outside authorities concerning such accounts.”

The spokesperson said that any suggestion Postolnikov “is currently under investigation for insider trading and money laundering regarding transactions related to Trump Media” would be “irresponsible and meritless.” “Neither the Bank nor Mr. Postolnikov are aware of any such current investigation,” the spokesperson said.

In a separate letter to ICIJ, a Dominica-based lawyer representing the bank warned that publication of confidential bank information could carry “severe legal consequences.”

While mainstream banks tend to avoid the risky p*rnography industry, the leak shows they do not avoid Paxum, despite its status as a p*rn industry bank. Paxum is a member of the SWIFT international payments system. The leaked files show wire transfers from Paxum to Tate’s accounts at Raiffeisen Bank Romania, HSBC and Santander UK. In a statement to ICIJ, Santander said data protection rules prevent it from discussing individual customer accounts. There’s no suggestion the other banks knew the ultimate source of the funds.

“I’m afraid we wouldn’t be able to comment on an individual, even to confirm if they were or were not a customer,” said an HSBC spokesman. Raiffeisen Bank, for its part, said: “Raiffeisen Bank Romania has a robust compliance framework and takes its regulatory and legal obligations very seriously. Transactions that may raise suspicions are analysed and if the case, reported. Moreover, if the bank has suspicions related to the way an account is operated by the holder, the bank will report this to authorities and can also decide to terminate the relationship.”