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

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When journalist Dan McCrum followed a tip to investigate the hot new tech company challenging Silicon Valley, everything about Wirecard looked a little too good to be true- offices were sprouting up around the world, it was reporting runaway growth and the CEO even wore a black turtleneck in tribute to Steve Jobs. Money Men hugely rewards the reader when you get to the scoop alongside McCrum — you are close to punching the air — and it has the novelty of the decent guys winning for a change in the bullish billionaires arena. McCrum was more responsible than anyone else for the exposure and eventual collapse of the hugely fraudulent payment company. Wirecard’s rise and fall has got to be one of the most shocking, ineffable yet fascinating contemporary stories of corporate fraud.

He is currently a member of the investigations team, and his reporting on Wirecard was recognised with more than a dozen awards and prizes, including journalist of the year at the 2020 British Press Awards. Also that this Friday night tradition was an event which confirmed our roots and our unity as family.as a short-cut into an excellent book on a great and successful corporate pursuit of a 'business' still 'valued' at €16bn in early 2020, just a few months before its demise.

Money Men hugely rewards the reader when you get the scoop alongside McCrum - you are close to punching the air. I picked up the book because I am interested in how cycles of hype and big promises get driven both by investors who wants entrepreneurs to dream big and entrepreneurs who need hype for cash to create new tech, and went in to it assuming that it there would be some grey-zones of unjustified tech hype which would eventually turn in to fraud to cover expenses, but was surprised to learn that it was one hundred percent pure gangsterism from day one. 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. It is also a reminder of how markets and society at large stand to benefit from whistleblowers and short sellers. As McCrum’s tour casts light into the shadowed recesses, he shows how paper moon shysters and brutish thuggery are by no means relegated to organised crime.I really wanted to be enamored with this book and enjoy it to the degree of Smartest Guys in the Room, Billion Dollar Whale, or Bad Blood. However, when he questions Allied Wallet the company denies any connection to Wirecard or to its Middle East partner Al Alam Solutions. The great Moses Maimonides said, grandfather intoned, quoting the 12th-Century teacher of the Torah, "‘If I am not for me, then who is for me? It's about the endless stream of bureaucratic agencies in many countries that take money from the people, to protect the people, only to react after a scandal in the press.

Wirecard might still be one of Europe's most feted tech firms, were it not for a small band of sceptics - including Dan McCrum.There were plenty of details brought up that didn't really seem to ever be followed through, or even brought to some resolution of the type "the trail went nowhere", while other, frankly uninteresting discoveries get pages-worth of attention. If Dad’s business folded, they’d be forced out onto the streets to show it around the district, struggling to find jobs. However, the author tends to focus more on his own personal experience and various hearsay/anecdotes without evidence (e. This behind-the-scenes look into the years of work and the persistence that was required to topple Wirecard is nothing short of incredible. In reality, though, many of their smaller collaborators either didn't exist at all, or were just mailboxes that received bills for millions, that were never actually paid.

As Wirecard’s money miracle glows brighter, McCrum wonders how a company is reporting both huge growth and record profits? g., HF manager being punched in NY without video evidence and loosely insinuating it might have come from Wirecard), and less on the crimes committed. You'd also think that the journalistic world would come together in the face of an attack on one of theirs, and not throw the victims to the wolves to be eaten. That book told the intimate stories of founder Elizabeth Holmes and a few senior staff members who risked their careers and their health to blow the whistle.The book follows in rather too much detail the internal bickering at Financial Times, anbd the doings of various short-sellers, rather than the murky dealings at Wirecard. We at Penguin Random House Australia acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the Traditional Custodians and the first storytellers of the lands on which we live and work. The tale is infamous: a hot start-up, a billion-dollar fraud and a fight for the truth, as Financial Times investigative journalist Dan McCrum so succinctly puts it in the subtitle of his new book, Money Men. And when McCrum started to peal back the layers, it involved porn and gambling rings across Europe, Russian spies and a smear campaign against anyone that spoke ill of Wirecard.