That was the title of a March 2019 post that began:
Yet, the reaction of the company (Wirecard) and the regulators (Germany's BaFin) was almost as if he had.
The summary of events:...
And ended:
Free Dan McCrum
But first, who is Dan McCrum?
Sometimes there's a man... I won't say a hero, 'cause, what's a hero? But sometimes, there's a man.
And I'm talkin' about the Dude here. Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.
Sometimes there's a man, sometimes, there's a man. Well, I lost my train of thought here.
But... aw, hell. I've done introduced it enough.
Where to begin?
Fagin, I mean Paul Murphy drops by Markets Live?
Cinema fans will recognize the Coen Brothers The Big Lebowski, to whom we gave heartfelt apologies for the blatant rip-off.
That 2019 story was updated in June 2020 as Wirecard Flashback: "Dan McCrum Did Not Call The Germans Jackbooted Thugs" Some of the additions:
March 2020
Dan's Back: "The case for massive corona-stimulus"
Achtung!
Mr. McCrum was Editor of FT Alphaville while Ms. Kaminska was away.
Then he fell under the dark spell of an investigative Svengali and got sued by WireCard.
He will prevail in the lawsuit.
Now he's back at FTAV.
How's that for a mini-bio?
And the latest, From Britain's Press Gazette, September 2:
Wirecard: How the FT proved the pen is mightier than a €24bn criminal gang
The FT Wirecard investigation began with a tip from a hedge fund manager to Dan McCrum, a reporter on the title’s Alphaville markets blog.
“Would you be interested in some German gangsters?”
This lead prompted a six-year investigation that culminated in the exposure of the world’s biggest financial fraud since Enron, the collapse of Germany’s €24bn fintech powerhouse Wirecard, the arrest of its chief executive, and the flight of COO Jan Marsalek (who remains at large).
Along the way McCrum was threatened with jail by the German state, subject to hacking and physical surveillance (along with FT colleagues) and smeared as a crooked journalist.
All in all, Wirecard has been a hell of a story and one that is soon to be retold in a documentary film and McCrum-authored book.
The story was named investigation of the year at last year’s British Journalism Awards and led to McCrum being named journalist of the year and the FT picking up news provider of the year for a record third consecutive time.
Rolling the clock back to that first Wirecard tip in 2014, McCrum says: “Back then it was this little-known German company worth four or five billion euros who pretty much no one had heard of. The first question was what is Wirecard? And its numbers didn’t add up.”
Based in a Munich suburb, Wirecard processed tens of billions of euros in credit and debit transactions each year as a member of the Visa and Mastercard networks.
McCrum’s first Alphaville post, in April 2015, headlined The House of Wirecard – ran a slide rule over the numbers and questioned its sky-high valuation....
....MUCH MORE
HT: FT Alphaville's Further Reading post.
And another recommendation from the 'Ville, this one dated July 2, 2020:
Elsewhere on Friday:
– Our very own Dan McCrum speaks to the German media.
Finally, I realize what McCrum, Murphy and the FT did appears to negate Mr. Mir's thinking on breaking news but the Wirecard story is actually the exception that proves the rule.
And besides, the FT is not "mass media" in the sense the WaPo or the NYT are.
Not. At. All.
