In summer 2014, McCrum received a tip from hedge fund manager John Hempton on potential fraud at Wirecard, a German financial services firm. Following an investigation, McCrum noticed a number of acquisitions of obscure Asian firms by Wirecard. After a trip to Manama, Bahrain found an apparent local client of Wirecard to be bogus, McCrum brought his findings back to Alphaville. His initial findings were published in 2015. In response to the publication, Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek arranged several meetings with Alphaville founder Paul Murphy, attempting to persuade Murphy to prevent further investigation into Wirecard.
