Tag: WB21

German public-broadcaster reporting has linked financial entrepreneur Michael Gastauer—known for the WB21/Black Banx storyline—to a large-scale law-enforcement raid in Bavaria. While official details remain scarce, the case raises a hard compliance question: How can globally marketed “banking” narratives, cross-border payment claims, and opaque structures persist without transparent supervisory answers?

Self-proclaimed German FinTech billionaire Michael Gastauer has long suffered from an addiction to portraying himself as big and powerful. Over the past decades, he has built a payment scheme with a network of companies and brands through which funds from illegal transactions were also laundered. He is active with Black Banx, which reportedly has over 20 million customers and would be worth $50 billion. There is virtually nothing that can be verified.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) obtained a final judgment against Michael Gastauer, the German founder of the Black Banx scheme, for his role in an international scheme that generated more than $165 million of illegal sales of stock on the U.S. markets in at least 50 microcap companies. He is ordered to pay over $17 million. In 2018, the SEC charged Gastauer and six of his US-based entities with aiding and abetting a vast securities fraud scheme orchestrated by UK citizen Roger Knox.

German Michael Gastauer is a hustler on the gray and black side of the financial market. Not coincidentally, his latest company is called Black Banx (previously WB21) and promises to get bank accounts for individuals and merchants accounts in over 180 countries in minutes. On LinkedIn and its website, Black Banx claims to have 8 million customers and $10 billion in monthly transaction volume. We doubt the figures of this high-risk and dark side payment processor. The UK FCA has issued a warning against Black Banx.

German prosecutors have not yet brought charges against the crypto-fraud scheme OneCoin and its principals, but are now taking action against the German payment processors involved. This is a somewhat strange approach and legally contestable. The public prosecutor's office in Bielefeld has brought charges against three people for money laundering for the OneCoin scam. which is not yet legally binding. German payment processors processed more than €360 million for the OneCoin Ponzi scheme.

Until recently, Germany had a good reputation in the financial sector although its banking industry has significant structural problems. All the more reason to be proud of Wirecard. The DAX-listed German fintech managed by the two Austrians Markus Braun and Jan Marsalek seemed to be the superstar in the booming market of next-generation payment processors. Until it collapsed. But there are several dubious German fintechs and payment processors that are active in the worldwide cybercrime scene. Michael Gastauer and his group of companies should be mentioned here.

The German investor, philanthropist and FinTech entrepreneur Michael Gastauer is certainly not a humble person. On the contrary! He is a man of superlatives in every respect. As was the famous (fictitious) Baron Münchhausen also known as the German "Baron of lies". We are not claiming now that Gastauer would definitely be a "lie baron" but there are indications that could lead to this conclusion. Here his story.