MindGeek | FinTelegram News

Tag: MindGeek

November 23, 2023

The Misogenic And Exploiting ChampLife Scheme And Its Payment Facilitators!

Research by STRG_F and Y-Kollektiv comprehensively unveils the unsettling realities of the German-run ChampLife scheme. This scheme sinisterly capitalizes on pushing women onto OnlyFans, exploiting them in a disturbingly orchestrated manner. Touted to offer self-discipline and success coaching, ChampLife insidiously entangles its male members in practices of female domination and exploitation, echoing the notorious ideologies of the globally infamous misogynist Andrew Tate.

April 21, 2023

Interesting: The Wirecard Porn Merchants Are Part Of The Defense Strategy In Wirecard Trial!

In the last days of the Wirecard trial, former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun footed his defense on merchants still considered "big players" in the porn sector. However, their business was not handled by third-party partners in Asia but by Wirecard itself or so-called "white label acquirers" from Europe with whom it had business ties. This is shown by several internal merchant lists with more than 8,000 (!) porn websites listed.

Child porn

April 16, 2023

The Pornhub Deal Scam! The Unknown Owners Behind the World’s Largest Porn Site!

MindGeek S.A.R.L., a company registered in Luxembourg, is one of the world's most important website operators. The company is in porn business, with websites attracting 115+ million daily users. Its PornHub attracts 100+ million users daily. The company and its officers have been accused of facilitating rape, child abuse, and sex trafficking. Multiple lawsuits have been filed in the U.S. Most recently, MindGeed was sold in a strange transaction that financial analyst Evan Armstrong called a scam.

April 5, 2023

Impressive! Petition To Shut Down PornHub Signed By More Than 2.3 Million Supporters.

Porn is a wild business. Indeed, the industry satisfies the deep evolutionary needs of humans (predominantly men), but it is doing so with criminal approaches. Activist Leila Mickelwait (@LeilaMickelwait) has been taking action against PornHub and its operator MindGeek for years for facilitating rape, child abuse, and sex trafficking. Her petition to shut down PornHub and hold Its executives accountable for facilitating sex trafficking already has more than 2.3 million supporters.

March 19, 2023

The Pornhub Acquisition: Just A Fake Transaction To Escape Public Scrutiny?

MindGeek, the Luxembourg-based operator of several porn sites, including Pornhub, Brazzers, and Redtube, was acquired by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners (ECP). The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. MindGeek has been a giant in the online porn industry since. In June 2022, Visa stopped working with the company after lawsuits and public criticism. On Twitter, it is claimed that the purchase of MindGeek was just a fake. Here is a short report.

November 7, 2022

Interesting: German-Cyprus Payabl Seems To Be The Leading Porn Payment Processor!

Recently, the online financial magazine FinanceFWD brought a report about the porn customers of the collapsed German high-risk payment processor Wirecard. For years, Wirecard happily processed payments for the porn empire around MindGeek, for example, for their websites PornHub or YouPorn. Today, the former Wirecard top executives Dietmar Knoechelmann and Ruediger Trautmann and their German-Cyprus Payabl Group are among the leading porn payment processors, Similarweb data suggest.

High-risk payment processors

November 6, 2022

New Reports About Wirecard’s Porn Business!

In 2021, when Commerzbank terminated the account of the porn company Manwin, Wirecard was on the spot. The German fintech did business with the porn industry for longer than ex-CEO Markus Braun portrayed it to the outside world. Wirecard grew to prominence with customers in the gambling and porn industries. Over the years, however, Braun tried to shed the smut image of the early years as best he could. German FinanceFWD recently published an interesting report.

FinTelegram

August 10, 2022

Mastercard And Discoer May Also Be Sued In The PornHub Court Battle [Video]

In a recent interview by attorney Lauren Tabaksblat, one of the two Brown Rudnick partners leading the case against Visa and the Pornhub operator MindGeek warned Mastercard and Discover that they would be sued as well. In a landslide ruling last week, a U.S. judge said that Visa may have helped Pornhub “monetize child porn.” Since then, Visa and the credit card companies have not been able to escape criticism. They would knowingly and willingly support illegal activities like child porn with their payment services.

August 8, 2022

Cold Case Review: Disgraced Israeli Payment Processor Bruc Bond And Its Binary Options Legacy!

It is a cold case now but still not resolved! Between 2018 and 2020, FinTelegram exposed that a group of Israeli payment processors controlled by Eyal Nachum and his partner Tamir Zoltovsky facilitated binary options and broker scams big style. They worked with entities in Montenegro or the Marshall Islands and with the regulated e-Money Institutions Bruc Bond (previously Moneta International) and International FinTech. In April 2020, the Bank of Lithuania revoked Bruc Bond's EMI license; consequently, the group vanished from Europe, but their scam-facilitating activities remain to be investigated.

July 31, 2022

Groundbreaking Ruling: U.S. Judges Sees Visa As A Facilitator Of Child Porn And Sex Trafficking!

FinTelegram has always argued that payment processors are liable for their clients' crimes if they knowingly and wilfully facilitate them. A U.S.judge ruled Friday that Visa helped Pornhub “monetize child porn” a decision that could have long-lasting implications for credit card networks and payment processors. The court denied Visa’s motion to be dismissed from a lawsuit against Pornhub operator MindGeek. The ruling states that there was enough evidence to show Visa knowingly facilitated the crime by providing tools to complete the crime” of distributing child pornography.

Despite New Crypto Friendlyness: No Settlement Between U.S. CFTC And KuCoin?

A planned settlement between the U.S.CFTC and crypto exchange KuCoin is now in limbo due to a reported policy shift within the CFTC. This change is attributed to the Trump administration’s new approach, which deprioritizes enforcement actions against crypto companies. As a result, a CFTC attorney said that it is "unlikely that such authorization will be granted in the near term" regarding the settlement approval.

SEC’s New Era: Paul Atkins Sworn In—Will Crypto Finally Get the Regulatory Clarity It Deserves?

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has entered a new chapter with the swearing-in of Paul S. Atkins as its 34th Chairman, a move widely anticipated to mark a dramatic pivot in how the agency approaches crypto and DeFi regulation. For years, the financial industry—especially the burgeoning digital asset sector—has bristled under the SEC’s “Regulation by Enforcement” strategy.

Crypto Mogul Changpeng Zhao – Fallen, Rich, and Rising Again?

As spring 2025 blooms and Easter’s themes of rebirth fill the air, Changpeng Zhao emerges as one of the most controversial figures of startup mythology: a man who fell spectacularly, paid a price—then rose again, wealthier and louder than ever. Once the almighty architect of Binance, CZ now resides in Dubai with a net worth that Forbes estimates at $63 billion.

Prison Update: Sam Bankman-Fried Transferred to Low-Security Federal Prison in Los Angeles!

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terminal Island in Los Angeles, California. This low-security facility is known for housing non-violent offenders and has previously held notable inmates such as Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, former COO of Theranos.

Startup on Trial: Celsius Network and Alex Mashinsky – When Deception Dressed Up as DeFi Innovation!

Celsius Network promised financial freedom through crypto, only to collapse into one of the most catastrophic failures in the DeFi sector. Founder Alex Mashinsky portrayed himself as the champion of the unbanked—yet behind the scenes, Celsius engaged in reckless trading strategies, misled customers, and operated more like a hedge fund than a lending platform.