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

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And there was also no way to see that one heartfelt decision – to help people who needed help — would be all but swallowed up by the lure of something else, bringing me to the brink of a different kind of ruin, one that overtakes a man who follows the pull of greater and greater success and the promise of more and more wealth.

Dan McCrum is a proper reporter: there is no threat, con trick or hangover that will stand in his way. When I finished shaving him, he took my face in his hands, kissed me gently on the edge of my forehead above my right eye. Yet for a long time, the company was able to brush off allegations of audacious accounting fraud, shifting the blame instead onto Financial Times reporters, like McCrum, who were claimed to have facilitated market manipulation in collusion with short sellers.The German regulators and the German journalistic and finance community tried so hard to protect their unicorn, in a mix of arrogance with incompetence, that they failed to see the problem with it: it was indeed a mythical creature that doesn't exist.

The abrupt shift from an office full of trig and trim Barristers and clerks and polished mahogany and brass was surreal. One aspect of the book I quite enjoyed, was that it challenges the stereo type of Germany as a clean, boring financial system. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins. It’s the passages where we see McCrum sitting in his car scared, or lifting his daughter with glee as he tells her that the bad guys are going to jail, which are the most poignant — I only wished there were more of them.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. An important read and valuable investigative journalism, but could have been a more interesting book.