http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...cards-headline
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Awwwwwwwwwwww lol. Doesn't surprise meeeee. BTW, youporn crapped out in my opinion when they deleted all of the user uploads. Man, I used to love the jerk off vids lol.
actually, this goes a bit farther than just YouPorn and PornHub .... from
(snip)"You've probably never heard of Manwin or Fabian Thylmann, but chances are good you've spent some quality time with their products. Manwin is a multimillion-dollar, international porn giant that owns more than 35 properties, including popular brands like YouPorn, PornHub and Brazzers. Now its owner, who has built a reputation as a skilled, ruthless businessman has been arrested in Belgium under suspicion of tax evasion.
The man CNBC has called "The new king of porn," Manwin's 34-year-old German managing partner Fabian Thylmann, was arrested at the Brussels airport today, according to trade magazine Xbiz. Manwin has slowly amassed an unprecedented holding of companies by taking a technology- driven approach to the porn industry, especially through its empire of free "tube" sites, like YouPorn.
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. Manwin's YouPorn and PornHub boasted 5.5 billion page views in July, compared to Wikipedia's 6.3 billion, according to Germany's Bild newspaper. More recently, Manwin has spearheaded an effort to stop the the new .XXX domain for porn sites. Manwin sued those administrating the new domain, arguing they're monopolistic and are attempting to extort existing porn businesses.
But today's arrest suggests there's more to Manwin than its technological innovation and industry leadership. The news of Thylmann's arrest shook insiders among southern California's porn industry this morning, where Manwin wields huge influence but has also been viewed with increasing suspicion as its dominance has grown. Manwin keeps its operations under tight wraps, and some in Porn Valley see the arrest as the start of a long unravelling."(snip)
some possible take-away points from this bust ...
- gov'ts are increasing their tax enforcement efforts against the adult entertainment industry in general
- a specific tax investigation of Manwin at the corporate level is likely to trickle down to all of Manwin's holdings ... including such companies as StreaMates, certain webcam studios, certain SoCal porn production companies etc.
Quote:
What's up with all the porn kings and tax evasion?
On the 'porn king' side, adult entertainment businesses typically result in high cash flows versus little in the way of 'brick and mortar' investment. Plus, those cash flows are typically fairly free of detailed 'paper trails'. So where corporate profit accounting is concerned, it's very easy to accidentally ( cough, cough ) 'drop a zero'.
On the tax side, a gov't tax agency going after adult entertainment related businesses usually results in a very high 'bang for the buck' ... i.e. the costs of the investigation wind up being small compared to the amount of additional tax revenues that can eventually be collected. Or put another way, adult entertainment related industries in general have a well known record of 'poor tax compliance'.
In the way of speculation, prior to Manwin becoming a worldwide multi-billion dollar corporation ( they now own 35 different adult entertainment related companies I think ), the largest single adult entertainment related companies for gov'ts to go after were typically valued in the 10's of millions at best. Thus Manwin now represents a single adult entertainment industry related 'target' that could potentially yield HUGE amounts of additional tax revenues for the gov'ts of those countries in which Manwin owned subsidiaries operate.