What does the managing partner of YouPorn have in common with Al Capone? Arrest for tax evasion.
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Fabian Thylmann is a head honcho at Manwin, one of the largest adult companies in the world. He has been touted as the king of porn, and now the king is in custody, reports Gawker.
The 34-year old is currently being investigated for tax evasion and he is awaiting potential extradition from Belgium to his home country, Germany.
He is not just any old porn king. Gawker says:
“Thylmann has aimed to be a different type of porn kingpin, playing up the high-tech aspect of Manwin instead of the sex parts. He’s earned an image as a sort of Mark Zuckerberg of porn, even convincing a Wall Street investment bank to give him a nine-figure loan in 2011.”
He is also a ruthless businessman and understands the importance of making money.
“On our website we have about 300 million monthly users,” Thylmann recently told the Financial Times Germany (translated). “About one thousand visitors draw on paid content. Which is not much. People still give out money, you have to show them just what they really want to have.”
Apparently the arrest has incited a gloating reaction from Mike South, the porn gossip blogger who supposedly made a career “out of needling Manwin”.
He wrote:
“Many is the time I told Fabian I would live to see him taken away in handcuffs… The good is I did, the bad is it isn’t for what he should have been arrested for, the good is it’s likely just the beginning. Whose [sic] laughing now Fabian?”
Manwin’s 35 properties include popular brands like YouPorn, PornHub and Brazzers. YouPorn and PornHub boasted 5.5-billion page views in July, compared to Wikipedia’s 6.3-billion, according to Germany’s Bild newspaper.
It was also reported that Manwin is spearheading an effort to stop the use of the new .XXX domain for porn sites, suing those administering the new domain, arguing that “they’re monopolistic and are attempting to extort existing porn businesses”.
