8 ms·

NPR's Invisibilia did a really interesting show/podcast on one of the biggest short sellers of Wirecard and how he has been harassed for the past few years. I h

NPR's Invisibilia did a really interesting show/podcast on one of the biggest short sellers of Wirecard and how he has been harassed for the past few years. I highly recommend people listen to if if they are interested in this crazy Wirecard tale! It's titled "Trust Fall" https://www.npr.org/transcripts/868001948 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/868001948

MR4D 6y ago
Chilling! That would scare the heck out of me.
empath75 6y ago
“Never threaten to cost someone more than it would cost to have you killed.” is a reasonable rule to live by.
- dbuder 6y ago
  Coward.
- gspr 6y ago
  That seems like a rule that would have a terrifying chilling effect on a lot of legitimate lawsuits.
  - raducu 6y ago
    Luckily a lot of people live in the civilized world, where the high likelihood of being caught and prosecuted for murder and spending a lot of time in jail, make murder a not so reasonable option -- assuming we are talking about psychopaths willing to kill someone for financial gain. Murder is nowadays an option for few criminal organizations -- such as the USA government, the British Royal House (remember, Epstein didn't kill himself), the Russian Government or the mafia or some drug gangs.
    - tbonepickens 6y ago
      "remember, Epstein didn't kill himself" - citation needed I get that Epstein's death was fishy, I myself very much think so, but "Epstein didn't kill himself" isn't a factual statement because there still lies a possibility that he took his own life
    - a1369209993 6y ago
      Nitpick: a government technically isn't a criminal organization because they define "criminal" to not include themselves.
- raducu 6y ago
  You also have to factor in the feasibility of that someone being able to get away with murder, then you must factor in how valuable a couple decades in prison is worth to them, and how prone they are to taking such risks.
  - pstrateman 6y ago
    > You also have to factor in the feasibility of that someone being able to get away with murder How would it matter to the person in this example? They're already dead...
    - raducu 6y ago
      I was just pointing out it is not just a monetary issue and most of the successful criminals are intelligent actors.
- AtHeartEngineer 6y ago
  I disagree, this discounts the martyr
- basseq 6y ago
  With the important caveats of 1) the implicit costs of murder-for-hire are probably pretty high (risk of going to jail, e.g.) and 2) killing someone doesn't necessarily make the lawsuit go away—though that doesn't help the person being killed. So the utility formula is something like: (p[c] * c[f] + c[a]) ÷ p[l] > c[l] where: p[c] = probability of getting caught p[l] = probability of the lawsuit being dropped c[f] = value of your freedom c[a] = cost of an assassin c[l] = cost of losing the lawsuit You can layer in additional probabilities—like the probability of the assassination being successful, or the probability of winning the case. This is just fun to talk about the utility formula of assassinations on HN. But it's probably true that as c[l] increases, c[f] increases as well, and p[l] drops. So it's rarely (never?) worth this trade-off.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    You forgot 'probability that your opponent reasons matters like this out rationally', which is a big one I think.
    - basseq 6y ago
      Which, if you want to get pedantic—and yes! let's get pedantic!—probably correlates with a lower probability that the assassination isn't successful. Because if they're irrational, they're going to end up meeting an undercover cop in the parking lot of the local K-Mart or something. See also: Tiger King. Which is probably the best citation and the best thing I'll type all day.
      - fragmede 6y ago
        Ah yes, Tiger King, a well balanced documentary that presents an in-depth look at the practices of murder for hire, and not a lurid tale of entertainment so Netflix can make more money. Popular media, especially shows like CSI and Law and Order, have an incentive to show the rich white folk how resolute the government is, and just how much no one could ever get away with murder. The reality's a bit different, and as recent events have shown, the police aren't above murder anyway. They protect their own and accept murderers in their ranks. So, an ex-cop or current cop is probably the best person to properly incentivize to commit murder. For them, `p[c] = probability of getting caught` expands to a[c] = probability of getting caught a[b] = probability of there being no repercussions despite getting caught. But if we're gonna base today's lesson on how to get away with murder on the show Tiger King, the two step lesson it teaches is: 1. own a tiger sanctuary. 2. feed your husband to the tigers for lunch.
- fragmede 6y ago
  Logical, and I host most of us are able to live a life of such privilege. In desperate times, however, there are those who are forced to stand up for what they believe is right, and not to simply roll over. The fight with my HOA on my right to put in a trampoline is not worth killing over, but people like President Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Alexander Litvinenko have faced problems that were.
EricRiese 6y ago
I had an idea for how to deal with that sort of harassment. There's no point in the harassment unless the harassee knows where it's coming from. But revealing that would allow Wirecard to be caught. So you have to play a game of "WHAT'S THAT? I'M HARD OF HEARING! YOU'LL HAVE TO SPEAK INTO THIS MICROPHONE!" And make public pronouncements that you don't know who's harassing you. Could make a good premise for a comedy. Willful ignorance.
- 6510 6y ago
  If what people say matters to me depends on who they are and what things they've accomplished (relevant to the context) Anything that doesn't follow that format just makes me laugh.
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
  > There's no point in the harassment unless the harassee knows where it's coming from. The harrasser doesn't have to say they're doing it, though. The victim probably knows who it's from even if it's completely anonymous.
  - ByteJockey 6y ago
    That's the point of the pronouncements. If the harasser thinks you haven't put two and two together yet, they have two options. 1. Quit 2. Be more obvious 1 is what you want, 2 is better evidence in court, win-win.
    - kmonsen 6y ago
      Or they can not play your game and keep doing what they are doing as it is working. Just because you say they only have two options doesn't mean it is true. There are almost always more options available to others than you can think of, and in this case it is fairly obvious.
      - ByteJockey 6y ago
        > Or they can not play your game and keep doing what they are doing as it is working. I was assuming a hypothetical where you can convince them you actually don't know who is doing it. Obviously if they think you do know, the whole thing changes.
ilikehurdles 6y ago
This was one of the groups hired to conduct some of his harassment: https://citizenlab.ca/2020/06/dark-basin-uncovering-a-massive-hack-for-hire-operation/ https://citizenlab.ca/2020/06/dark-basin-uncovering-a-massiv...
- sneeze-slayer 6y ago
  I wonder who hired them. Sure, it could be the CEO of Wirecard, but it could also be another large shareholder. Given how ridiculous this story is and how Germany's regulator BaFIN has done such a horrendous job looking over Wirecard, I would believe it if they were somehow complicit. I guess only time will tell, though.
  - rando444 6y ago
    Any shortseller with a lot of money would have an interest in bringing them down sooner rather than later. Their financial trickery was exposed in early 2019 and then was overwhelmingly confirmed by the end of 2019. If you were trying to make some money on their stock tanking, timing it would have been anywhere from extremely difficult to impossible.
    - hef19898 6y ago
      The KPMG report was a good moment. As was earlier this week when EY refused to attest the 2019 balance sheet. Maybe not perfect, but still enough profit potential if you ask me.
      - phatfish 6y ago
        Short sellers seem to be a much more reliable indicator of something corrupt going on in a company than the big auditors. You could be forgiven for thinking they are in on the scam and working to keep the director's bonuses rolling in right until the final months before a company collapses. I suppose governments couldn't ignore the obvious forever and they are being forced to actually doing their job now. In the UK Carrillion comes to mind as a big one, and more recently Thomas Cook. There have been many others. https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/business-energy-industrial-strategy/news-parliament-2017/carillion-tpr-17-191/ https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z...
AndrewBissell 6y ago
It wasn't just short sellers. Journalists at the Financial Times were also harassed and threatened, including by the German authorities, for their skeptical reporting on Wirecard. There were absolutely abysmal performances by German regulators, Ernst & Young auditors, and the vast majority of the financial media, who ran cover for the fraud long past the point where it became pretty obvious.
- hef19898 6y ago
  The fact that Wirecards claims against the FT weren't laughed out of court, well at the front door, is just stunning. I guess Germany was just happy to have a high profile, highly successful FinTech. And that resulted in some reluctance to look too closely. Not acceptable, either way.
marricks 6y ago
That was fun to listen to but NPR programming always seems to have a grating turn in the middle of "gosh isn't it crazy how people in society don't trust anyone any more??? Not professionals or the government or even police!" and it's like, yep, institutions have continued to epically fail people at large, please stop playing clueless NPR.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  If any story shows the utter untrustworthiness of (the vast majority of) the media and government authorities, it's Wirecard. This will probably be further reinforced by a relative lack of serious consequences for everyone involved.
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  At one time, I listened to NPR for hours every week. After 2016, something in them seemed to snap, and after listening to one of their anchors going after the 538 guy as if he and his industry were fully responsible for Trump's election, and demanding some sort of apology I resolved to give them a dew months to come back to their senses. I still listen to them regularly, they regularly put out good journalism. But when I came back to them they just sounded absurdly out of touch with the rest of the world. I'm still not entirely sure whether it's because my worlview expanded, or because theirs narrowed.
  - marricks 6y ago
    If all one has is CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and NPR then NPR feels like a (somehow calming) ocean of truth. I think starting circa 2013 there were a few huge stories which made people realize that the "hard-hitting" journalism they were reading wasn't all that hard-hitting. Snowden revelations, all that money in the cayman islands, then the whole lot of nothing being done about either. Below is a comment I made a year ago on HN about my favorite NPR story: ------ Growing up I though of NPR as a bastion of the left but the older I get the more cynical I become. Your take reminds me of the most infuriating story I heard on NPR about Amazon Seasonal workers. They spotlighted a retiree couple would supplements their income with it in the winter and drives south to gamble in the summer and it just sounded like a profile of a charmed life, somehow I imagine that isn’t the case for most people who work there... They have monthly fundraising drives where they ask listeners to pay up for fearless journalism but a lot of it sounds like it was written by and for entrenched industries. https://www.marketplace.org/2017/12/21/business/holiday-seas.. https://www.marketplace.org/2017/12/21/business/holiday-seas....
rv-de 6y ago
So much text and so little actual content ... they should provide a TL;DR for people who have stuff to do.

MR4D 6y ago

Chilling! That would scare the heck out of me.

empath75 6y ago

“Never threaten to cost someone more than it would cost to have you killed.” is a reasonable rule to live by.

dbuder 6y ago
Coward.
gspr 6y ago
That seems like a rule that would have a terrifying chilling effect on a lot of legitimate lawsuits.
- raducu 6y ago
  Luckily a lot of people live in the civilized world, where the high likelihood of being caught and prosecuted for murder and spending a lot of time in jail, make murder a not so reasonable option -- assuming we are talking about psychopaths willing to kill someone for financial gain. Murder is nowadays an option for few criminal organizations -- such as the USA government, the British Royal House (remember, Epstein didn't kill himself), the Russian Government or the mafia or some drug gangs.
  - tbonepickens 6y ago
    "remember, Epstein didn't kill himself" - citation needed I get that Epstein's death was fishy, I myself very much think so, but "Epstein didn't kill himself" isn't a factual statement because there still lies a possibility that he took his own life
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    Nitpick: a government technically isn't a criminal organization because they define "criminal" to not include themselves.
raducu 6y ago
You also have to factor in the feasibility of that someone being able to get away with murder, then you must factor in how valuable a couple decades in prison is worth to them, and how prone they are to taking such risks.
- pstrateman 6y ago
  > You also have to factor in the feasibility of that someone being able to get away with murder How would it matter to the person in this example? They're already dead...
  - raducu 6y ago
    I was just pointing out it is not just a monetary issue and most of the successful criminals are intelligent actors.
AtHeartEngineer 6y ago
I disagree, this discounts the martyr
basseq 6y ago
With the important caveats of 1) the implicit costs of murder-for-hire are probably pretty high (risk of going to jail, e.g.) and 2) killing someone doesn't necessarily make the lawsuit go away—though that doesn't help the person being killed. So the utility formula is something like: (p[c] * c[f] + c[a]) ÷ p[l] > c[l] where: p[c] = probability of getting caught p[l] = probability of the lawsuit being dropped c[f] = value of your freedom c[a] = cost of an assassin c[l] = cost of losing the lawsuit You can layer in additional probabilities—like the probability of the assassination being successful, or the probability of winning the case. This is just fun to talk about the utility formula of assassinations on HN. But it's probably true that as c[l] increases, c[f] increases as well, and p[l] drops. So it's rarely (never?) worth this trade-off.
- catalogia 6y ago
  You forgot 'probability that your opponent reasons matters like this out rationally', which is a big one I think.
  - basseq 6y ago
    Which, if you want to get pedantic—and yes! let's get pedantic!—probably correlates with a lower probability that the assassination isn't successful. Because if they're irrational, they're going to end up meeting an undercover cop in the parking lot of the local K-Mart or something. See also: Tiger King. Which is probably the best citation and the best thing I'll type all day.
    - fragmede 6y ago
      Ah yes, Tiger King, a well balanced documentary that presents an in-depth look at the practices of murder for hire, and not a lurid tale of entertainment so Netflix can make more money. Popular media, especially shows like CSI and Law and Order, have an incentive to show the rich white folk how resolute the government is, and just how much no one could ever get away with murder. The reality's a bit different, and as recent events have shown, the police aren't above murder anyway. They protect their own and accept murderers in their ranks. So, an ex-cop or current cop is probably the best person to properly incentivize to commit murder. For them, `p[c] = probability of getting caught` expands to a[c] = probability of getting caught a[b] = probability of there being no repercussions despite getting caught. But if we're gonna base today's lesson on how to get away with murder on the show Tiger King, the two step lesson it teaches is: 1. own a tiger sanctuary. 2. feed your husband to the tigers for lunch.
fragmede 6y ago
Logical, and I host most of us are able to live a life of such privilege. In desperate times, however, there are those who are forced to stand up for what they believe is right, and not to simply roll over. The fight with my HOA on my right to put in a trampoline is not worth killing over, but people like President Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Alexander Litvinenko have faced problems that were.

EricRiese 6y ago

I had an idea for how to deal with that sort of harassment. There's no point in the harassment unless the harassee knows where it's coming from. But revealing that would allow Wirecard to be caught. So you have to play a game of "WHAT'S THAT? I'M HARD OF HEARING! YOU'LL HAVE TO SPEAK INTO THIS MICROPHONE!" And make public pronouncements that you don't know who's harassing you. Could make a good premise for a comedy. Willful ignorance.

6510 6y ago
If what people say matters to me depends on who they are and what things they've accomplished (relevant to the context) Anything that doesn't follow that format just makes me laugh.
TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
> There's no point in the harassment unless the harassee knows where it's coming from. The harrasser doesn't have to say they're doing it, though. The victim probably knows who it's from even if it's completely anonymous.
- ByteJockey 6y ago
  That's the point of the pronouncements. If the harasser thinks you haven't put two and two together yet, they have two options. 1. Quit 2. Be more obvious 1 is what you want, 2 is better evidence in court, win-win.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    Or they can not play your game and keep doing what they are doing as it is working. Just because you say they only have two options doesn't mean it is true. There are almost always more options available to others than you can think of, and in this case it is fairly obvious.
    - ByteJockey 6y ago
      > Or they can not play your game and keep doing what they are doing as it is working. I was assuming a hypothetical where you can convince them you actually don't know who is doing it. Obviously if they think you do know, the whole thing changes.

ilikehurdles 6y ago

This was one of the groups hired to conduct some of his harassment: https://citizenlab.ca/2020/06/dark-basin-uncovering-a-massive-hack-for-hire-operation/ https://citizenlab.ca/2020/06/dark-basin-uncovering-a-massiv...

sneeze-slayer 6y ago
I wonder who hired them. Sure, it could be the CEO of Wirecard, but it could also be another large shareholder. Given how ridiculous this story is and how Germany's regulator BaFIN has done such a horrendous job looking over Wirecard, I would believe it if they were somehow complicit. I guess only time will tell, though.
- rando444 6y ago
  Any shortseller with a lot of money would have an interest in bringing them down sooner rather than later. Their financial trickery was exposed in early 2019 and then was overwhelmingly confirmed by the end of 2019. If you were trying to make some money on their stock tanking, timing it would have been anywhere from extremely difficult to impossible.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    The KPMG report was a good moment. As was earlier this week when EY refused to attest the 2019 balance sheet. Maybe not perfect, but still enough profit potential if you ask me.
    - phatfish 6y ago
      Short sellers seem to be a much more reliable indicator of something corrupt going on in a company than the big auditors. You could be forgiven for thinking they are in on the scam and working to keep the director's bonuses rolling in right until the final months before a company collapses. I suppose governments couldn't ignore the obvious forever and they are being forced to actually doing their job now. In the UK Carrillion comes to mind as a big one, and more recently Thomas Cook. There have been many others. https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/business-energy-industrial-strategy/news-parliament-2017/carillion-tpr-17-191/ https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z...

AndrewBissell 6y ago

It wasn't just short sellers. Journalists at the Financial Times were also harassed and threatened, including by the German authorities, for their skeptical reporting on Wirecard. There were absolutely abysmal performances by German regulators, Ernst & Young auditors, and the vast majority of the financial media, who ran cover for the fraud long past the point where it became pretty obvious.

hef19898 6y ago
The fact that Wirecards claims against the FT weren't laughed out of court, well at the front door, is just stunning. I guess Germany was just happy to have a high profile, highly successful FinTech. And that resulted in some reluctance to look too closely. Not acceptable, either way.

marricks 6y ago

That was fun to listen to but NPR programming always seems to have a grating turn in the middle of "gosh isn't it crazy how people in society don't trust anyone any more??? Not professionals or the government or even police!" and it's like, yep, institutions have continued to epically fail people at large, please stop playing clueless NPR.

AndrewBissell 6y ago
If any story shows the utter untrustworthiness of (the vast majority of) the media and government authorities, it's Wirecard. This will probably be further reinforced by a relative lack of serious consequences for everyone involved.
crocodiletears 6y ago
At one time, I listened to NPR for hours every week. After 2016, something in them seemed to snap, and after listening to one of their anchors going after the 538 guy as if he and his industry were fully responsible for Trump's election, and demanding some sort of apology I resolved to give them a dew months to come back to their senses. I still listen to them regularly, they regularly put out good journalism. But when I came back to them they just sounded absurdly out of touch with the rest of the world. I'm still not entirely sure whether it's because my worlview expanded, or because theirs narrowed.
- marricks 6y ago
  If all one has is CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and NPR then NPR feels like a (somehow calming) ocean of truth. I think starting circa 2013 there were a few huge stories which made people realize that the "hard-hitting" journalism they were reading wasn't all that hard-hitting. Snowden revelations, all that money in the cayman islands, then the whole lot of nothing being done about either. Below is a comment I made a year ago on HN about my favorite NPR story: ------ Growing up I though of NPR as a bastion of the left but the older I get the more cynical I become. Your take reminds me of the most infuriating story I heard on NPR about Amazon Seasonal workers. They spotlighted a retiree couple would supplements their income with it in the winter and drives south to gamble in the summer and it just sounded like a profile of a charmed life, somehow I imagine that isn’t the case for most people who work there... They have monthly fundraising drives where they ask listeners to pay up for fearless journalism but a lot of it sounds like it was written by and for entrenched industries. https://www.marketplace.org/2017/12/21/business/holiday-seas.. https://www.marketplace.org/2017/12/21/business/holiday-seas....

rv-de 6y ago

So much text and so little actual content ... they should provide a TL;DR for people who have stuff to do.