Money Men: A Hot Startup, A Billion Dollar Fraud, A Fight for the Truth

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The payment processing architecture heavyweights (Visa and Mastercard) unquestionably process astronomical transaction volumes. Leo Perry of Ennismore Fund Management tells McCrum: “'Faking profits, you end up with a problem of fake cash. Only the main players, or all of those around them that 'legitimized them' by not looking deep enough, when their sponsorship works as a certificate of good standing for the rest of the world?

One of these courageous individuals is Pav Gill, a lawyer who worked inside Wirecard’s Asia headquarters and discovered that the company’s finance team faked contracts and forged invoices. What I will endeavour to do, is give you a flavour of a few of the many stories McCrum lifts the curtain on in his retelling. For someone outside the financial world, this is the biggest eye opener possible of how easy it can be to fool the world because Ernst and Young look terrible here as they never found a lick of criminality until someone else did all the dirty work for them. Once again, as we've seen happen with Elizabeth Holmes' case, money finds a way to bring power by gathering influential people, who are able to give the appearance of legitimacy to the most striking of frauds.As Wirecard’s money miracle glows brighter, McCrum wonders how a company is reporting both huge growth and record profits?

McCrum began publishing a series of blog posts outlining the results of his investigations at FT Alphville in 2015. The book cover has no visible wear, and the dust jacket (if applicable) is included for hard covers.

On this day of rest, we were receiving God into our homes, grateful for all that he had done for us. As I had no siblings, there was no one else to step in and take over dad’s business, and there was no money to hire someone. After finding out a bit more than he should have, alongside fellow newcomer Royston Ng, Gill quietly left Wirecard.

Named or unnamed, the true heroes of Money Men are the whistleblowers and short sellers who brought the scandal to light.

There was rarely much time to prepare for court appearances, given the volume of cases the firm represented. Money Men is the astonishing inside story of Wirecard's multi-billion-dollar fraud, Europe's biggest new tech darling revealed as a house of cards. McCrum (with backing from the Financial Times) admirably pursues his quarry until steadfast short-sellers are finally vindicated: the scales fall from investors’ eyes and agencies are shaken awake from their regulatory slumber. And so I would study a case at night and the following morning rush to court, put on my wig and gown and defend someone. And that he was devoted, not only to me and the family and our heritage, but to something – and to Someone — far greater than all of us.

Again and again I pushed these feelings and thoughts away, as my attention became more focused on what the files revealed. One aspect of the book I quite enjoyed, was that it challenges the stereo type of Germany as a clean, boring financial system. However, the writing was on the wall, and Wirecard needed a way to make G2Pay look like a profit machine.The mechanisms of fraud which McCrum details were difficult for me to follow due to their complexity. Dan McCrum, a journalist with the Financial Times, unspools a lurid tale of accounting fraud, corruption, money laundering, market manipulation, wire-tapping, and intimidation spread across two decades. And just now, grandpa had launched into the blessing, and everyone had remained quiet and still until the final word – Amen. But, for as many places as McCrum travels to, there are even more eccentric characters waiting for him there.