Ben Taub has written a remarkable piece on the Wirecard case in The New Yorker. In contrast to many German-language articles, Taub also sheds light on the beginning and early background of the collapsed German fintech unicorn. He explains that Wirecard‘s growth was primarily fueled by payment services for gambling and porn. The Wirecard scheme as we know it began with the acquisition of Gateway Payment Solutions from Dietmar Knoechelmann.
In October 2006, the U. S. passed a law prohibiting taking bets online. This was an existential threat to Wirecard’s business. Most major payment processors cut off their U.S. clients from gambling. However, Wirecard exploited a loophole: the law allowed “games of skill,” which theoretically included poker. In 2007, the company acquired Gateway Payment Solutions Holdings from Dietmar Knoechelmann and John Carbone. That year, Wirecard reported a surge in revenue of 62%, and Knoechelmann became the company’s top executive as CEO of the Irish Wirecard Payment Solutions.
Dietmar Knoechelmann had already been active in the international gaming scene for a long time before the Wirecard takeover. A sister company of Gateway Payment Solutions was Bingoworkz, an online gambling company in Cyprus.
A 2015 J Capital Research report on Wirecard named Knoechelmann and his partner “Fishy People.” Knoechelmann left Wirecard at the end of 2009 to take charge of PowerCash21 and Inatec, along with former Wirecard board member Ruediger Trautmann. These operated as satellite companies in the Wirecard shadow organization.
From Inatec and PowerCash21, today’s Payabl was formed in 2021, a high-risk payment process in Cyprus which, like Wirecard in the past, has its customers in the porn and gambling business. If you analyze Payabl, you will get a good idea of who were the early designers of Wirecard.
Share Information
If you have information about Wirecard, Payabl, or other companies in the Wirecard environment, please let us know via our whistleblower system, Whistle42.
