Internationally seen, WireCard is a scandal like many others. It is a story about greed, hubris, arrogance, vanity, self-enrichment and appetite for power. Like in many other cases, it is a story about fraudulent accounting, investment fraud, bogus companies, over complex and opaque organizational structures, round tripping transactions, money laundering and phony business partners. At the end of the story, it turned out that WireCard was not any more than a Potemkin village. However, the question is not whether WireCard was managed by a handful of avaricious psychopaths or what specific practices WireCard used in detail to fake business success. The more interesting question is why WireCard could become one of the most beloved shares for German investment funds, why red flags have been ignored for so many years and why state officials did react so late. Analysing the case from this perspective it appears that WireCard is a unique German case. As we will show in our contribution, the late reaction of governmental agencies and the long-time support of politicians might be explained by an attitude of ‘national pride’ and ignorance. In the German public WireCard was hyped by the media as the new German star in the FinTech market. This, at least partially, might explain why so many people for so long time turned a blind eye to the obviously dubious business practices at WireCard.