the sun had barely risen over one of London's most exclusive streets when investigator Alexi mastros takes his position 20 M away from a mansion worth tens of millions of pounds he's hunting for a ghost a man who controls one of the internet's most visited websites but it was also managed to leave almost no trace of his existence online while Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress and ELO musks every to he makes headlines the king of Internet adult content has stayed completely invisible if you Googled his name you'd find virtually nothing as the first hints of daylight
touch the mansion's windows Alexi notices movement inside after months of searching he's about to come face to face with one of the internet's most powerful and secretive figures the king of adult content but just finding him is one part of this Twisted Story the real questions are why has this man gone to such extraordinary lengths to keep his identity hidden what unethical if not evil activities had afforded him such a luxurious lifestyle while staying under the radar well the answer to all of these questions would reveal a tale of exploitation corporate Intrigue and a reckoning
that would eventually bring down an Empire starting with this moment on a quiet London streets you see the hunt for this man began in December 2020 when something unprecedented happened in the mky world of online adult content visa and MasterCard two of the world's largest payment processes suddenly cut tied with one of the internet's most visited websites phob behind this dramatic move lay a New York Times investigation by Nicholas Kristoff that revealed how this platform had become infested with videos of assault and abuse Kristoff's investigations into phob reported videos of unconscious woman being assaulted explicit
acts filmed without consent and content featuring blatantly underrage victims the article even alleged that men were seen touching gs's eyeballs to prove they were incapacitated later that same month the financial times dropped a bombshell of its own as its reporters dug deep into p elusive paring company mindgeek they stumbled upon traces of an enigmatic figure lurking in the footnotes this mysterious individual seemed to pull the strings from the shadows and yet nobody knew who this person actually was who was the Puppet Master orchestrating M geek's vast adult content Kingdom while his name as far as
the financial times could determine was Bernard bergar beyond that they found almost nothing it was as if the person controlling one of the internet's most powerful companies had been deliberately erased back in 2020 searching for the adult content king's name on Google would have resulted in what's known as a Google whack a rare early internet phenomenon where a search query returns only a single result now for someone controlling one of the most powerful companies in online media this level of invisibility was almost unheard of you wouldn't believe the Empire this guy had built without anyone
ever knowing his name you see phop wasn't just another website we're talking about 3.5 billion views a month more popular than Amazon more visited than even Netflix and mindgeek the company behind pH hob wasn't running just one Sid pH hob was the crown of a vast digital Empire covering up red tube Reality Kings brz's every single adult content site was under its control they were managing everything from Playboy digital content to multiple P Production Studios together mindgeek received 15 terab of video uploads every day that's equivalent to half of Netflix entire Content Library as you
might imagine content moderation was wly inadequate for a network of this scale until late 2020 uploading anything only required an email address a small team of moderators were expected to review between 82,000 videos per session clicking through to find elicit content and what some reports called playing Russian roulette with people's lives when these scandals broke mindgeek was forced to purge its platform deleting 10 million videos and over 30 million images and what the financial times called probably the biggest takeown of content in Internet history this is an organization that deals with legit imate porn but
that wasn't enough they knew they weren't verifying ID or age this was a guessing game they put an intentional download button so that that child's trauma could then be immortalized was one thing when I was raped but to have that filmed and then uploaded monetized for profit and pleasure the company had been exposed but somewhere in the background the man who really controlled M geek was watching it all unfold if you're hiding having major newspapers call out your name is far from ideal which which is why the hunt for Bernard became a holy grail for
journalists everywhere and try to put yourself in his shoes for a minute you're this mysterious guy and you're face with a tough choice option one you're obsessed over every detail always looking over your shoulder do I need an escape plan should I go to B is there a reporter at my door what's going to happen to my family and reputation if my cover breaks option two you bury your head in the sand and pretend none of this is happening and I mean what would you do in this situation it's not like you can just snap
your fingers and make all of this go away The Daily Grind might help you keep sane wake up drink coffee get the kids to school hop on conference school routines but now there's a crucial difference you just can't resist looking over your shoulder at all times but luckily for Bernard things went quiet until February 2021 when the Canadian parliament's Ethics Committee investigated continued allegations of child exploitation on phub they called on the company's Chief Executives to give evidence under intense questioning about the platform's practices one of the executives finally cracked just pornh adult content was
a huge issue adult entertainment websites he confirmed the majority owners his existence and his name Bernard bugar known by his friend simply as bent as the plot surrounding M geek's Shady ownership thickened Canada's globe and maale newspaper began digging through corporate records and they discovered that Bernard was born in Austria in 1968 near the city of Lind more intriguingly they found he attended the University un of Chicago's business school where a single photo of him appeared in a 2002 alumni publication this photo eventually landed on the desk of investigators at tortoise a British news organization
known for deep dive investigations into hidden power it was heavily pixelated a crowd of faces where the more you zoomed in blurrier it became they thought he might be the guy in the blue top and glasses or perhaps the one in the nice suit but nothing was certain by now the pressure to identify this man was intensifying sources describe peob as being s saturated with abuse of content including videos of sexual assaults and underrage victims the details surrounding some of these cases were terrifying one alleged victim Serena flates was a straight A student who had
never kissed a boy forced into making a video she had no idea this would end up on peob with the title 13-year-old brunette shows off for the camera before she even knew it existed over 400,000 people have watched this including her classmates desperate and scared Serena posed as her mother to beg peob to remove the video but even comments piled up identifying it as child abuse the company lets it remain online for weeks each time it was finally taken down it would eventually reappear one reupload alone gathered 2.7 million views and you see mindgeek wasn't
just hosting these videos reports described how was actively profiting from them maximizing Revenue by sharing them across its network of sites with published annual revenue figures approaching half a billion a year and then came the next breakthrough during a lavish party in the Hollywood Hills filled with actors celebrities and the la elite amidst the Sea of designer outfits and perfect Smiles one man stood out not because of his Fame but because of his familiar face there he is dressed in elaborate costume living in up with the elites without a care in the world but little
did the party go and know that this single digital breadcrumb captured by the actor Michael Tay would be the key to unraveling his hidden identity and the hunt for the adult content King had just taken a wild turn excitement grew when the investigators delve deeper into the photo tags un covering a Facebook profile linked to the images surprisingly it had just six friends but those six friends LED them to a woman named pra a Brazilian model who turned out to be bergman's wife while her husband had mastered the art of digital invisibility pra maintained an
active Instagram presence her account oo luxury with bespoke Chanel dresses and other designer clothing massive diamonds and Yacht trips through exotic locations but it was one word in her Instagram bio that caught the investigators attention London so corporate finding said bergar was living in China which made zero sense why would the guy running a Canadian PE company be hanging out in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with his business well the problem was that priscila's Instagram was frustratingly unhelpful those glossy photos were practically meaningless because Instagram wipes out all the location data leaving
investigators with nothing but a bunch of luxury snapshots but luckily persistant paid off for them as the investigators found Pica's personal blog with the exact same photos and here's where things get interesting her blog hadn't scrubbed the exive metadata one photo didn't just suggest location it gave the exact dress in one of London's most exclusive neighborhoods a development company had just finished refurbishing it and photos of the property interior match those in PR's Blog the hunt for the adult King first had a name and now it had an address but Burgman wasn't always a ghost
though once he was just a farmer son from ansfelden a postcard perfect Austrian town by his early 30s he'd already carved out an unlikely path from the family farm to the Grand Halls of the University of Chicago's business school evidently talented and smart he spent a summer between the International Bank Goldman Sachs and a prestigious consultancy McKenzie quote no one else could have pulled it off said one of his classmates as they too were puzzled about how burgmer had built his hidden Empire you see unlike his colleagues burgmer wasn't interested in traditional Finance this was
the early to mid 2000s the internet was changing almost everything and adal content was no exception back then PE sites were messy directories most content was still images and lowquality virus ridden downloads were Rife then came YouTube suddenly video hosting became so much easier and the adult industry was about to change forever triggering a new Gold Rush from which burgar was to emerge a key player however he definitely wasn't the only big shot in this game and to understand how he became so infamously powerful we need to rewind a bit further to the start of
the digital adult content Revolution but before before we continue let's just be real adult content addiction is destroying lives it kills motivation wrecks relationships and keeps you from reaching your full potential and the longer you wait the harder it becomes to quit but here's the good news it's never too late to take control you don't have to fall down the rabbit hole and this is where quitter comes in with 250,000 plus users this app is helping people quit adult content for good and become the best version of themselves because it's not just a blocker it's
a movement as with quitter you don't have to do this all alone instead you can join thousands of others pushing each other to stay strong break free and reclaim their lives and whenever Temptation does hit you can just hit the panic button with one tap and you're instantly pulled out to that moment of weakness so if you're sick of feeling stuck it's time to break the cycle download quitter today and start taking back control because every day you wait quitting only gets harder to download quitter now and take control of your life just make sure
to use the link in the description and pin comment below to get started today enter Fabian thorman a j programmer dubbed the Mark Zuckerberg of adult content While most people were still figuring out how to upload a profile picture Fabian was reimagining an entire industry as a teenager in the late '90s he developed software that could track uses his behavior online and the tech industry absolutely loved it using these profits Fabian then began buying up adult content sites and by 2010 his company named manwin made its biggest move yet acquiring the Montreal based group that
earned phub for $140 million the previous owners were out to their death to say the least Shady people from the old PE industry had begun to tail them around in Black SUVs they had bodyguards patrolling their W properties and the government had seized $9 million from their bank account the stress was killing them and they needed to get out of the industry which gave Fabian an opening to consolidate his growing Monopoly and once he acquired phub he soon implemented an aggressive expansion strategy buying up all the smaller adult entertainment companies nothing was off limits but
unlike his predecessors he wanted respect he secured official content licenses to prevent himself getting the heat from the old traditional industry which were obviously not pleased by the rise of free digital adult content and he even began to make deals with politicians but eventually by doing this he needed investment and in 2011 he borrowed a massive $362 million from 125 Private investors some were ex- Bankers from companies like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan some represented institutions like Cornell University all lured by the promise of massive returns and the monthly interest on this a c $60
million Fabian said the rate was quote very very steep which if I tell you you would fall over and think I'm crazy financing package of about $362 million us at a very very steep cost which if I would tell you you would all fall over and think I'm crazy around the same time another outdo content power player was emerging across the Atlantic all the way in Austria it was called red tube created in 2006 by student Stephan Jagger and Michael Pol and soon the site had become an overnight sensation with its revenues doubling every 3
years it turned over $229,000 in profit in just one month and yet the company had only employed just four people at the time and spent nothing on Advertising after the money started coming in Stephen Jagger decided to leave after his new religious girlfriend pushed for the exit and so a smart new Austrian investor stepped into the room and that man was bugman and this is where things get really interesting you see redu was sold to fabian's manwin which had become the Undisputed Titan of online adult content and the Empire seemed Unstoppable until 2012 when German
prosecutors charged Fabian with tax evasion he was then compelled to sell to two senior Executives the very same Executives of phub that we mentioned earlier who then renamed the entire company to mindgeek under these Executives M geek grew far stronger adopting big data to understand his audience and offer more compelling content a 2019 arti School in the New York University law review suggested that the company's datadriven content strategy was far more advanced than Netflix's using viewer Behavior to influence what type of content they produced and this was where bergman's hand was finally revealed through a
complex series of financial deals following red chop sale he secured a majority stake in mindgeek while staying under the radar exactly how remains a bit of a mystery but Canada's globe in M claims that bergar was a majority owner in several of M geek's 48 subsidiaries with a 59% stake in one called RT holding which owned Ru one of the most valuable companies in the network because Muk wasn't just focused on growing that business internationally they were also hardcore about dodging taxes each of these locations had Financial rules that made it easier for mge to
keep more of the profits a convenient perhaps even deliberate side effect of the chaos surrounding mindgeek was that tracing the money had become nearly impossible it was the perfect industry for people to stay concealed from the public while profiting immensely in the background as we know now mindgeek two main owners were still just the tip of a huge giant Iceberg they represented their faceless Ultra Rich owners people who they later admitted didn't even know themselves as they refused to be publicly associated with the industry so at last the hunt had reached this climax as Dawn
broke out in that London Street Alexi mastros wasn't just waiting to confront a reclusive billionaire he was hoping to bring accountability to an industry that had operated in the shadows for way too long and let's just reflect on the irony of this for a minute a man who reporters claimed had made his for watching by exposing the most intimate moments of millions of people online many according to sources without their consent had gone to extraordinary lengths to the keeper own life private Behind These Mansion Walls lived a man whose company had reported revenues of $460
million in 2018 money made victims alleged or by turning a blind eye to their trauma and at 8:30 a.m. there was a movement behind the mansion's curtains bergar eventually emerged wearing dad jeans partly the Huf ES entire one might expect from an adult content media Mogul for a man who' managed to stay invisible for so long this very moment would strip away years of carefully constructed anonymity in seconds Mr Bergman Master is called out but the billionaire froze and in that moment the shock in his face told his own story the realization that his privacy
had finally been breached quote I'm very sorry to disturb you in your house Master continued I just wondered if I could ask you a few questions about M geek the journalist wants to know about the allegations against the company did he have anything to say about the alleged lives destroyed by videos on the platform but the answer was no bugar true to his reputation for secrecy didn't say a single word instead his face would twist with anger not at the questions themselves but at the prospect of being found without responding he quickly turned away and
left into the Shadows leaving the questions hanging in the morning air and that was pretty much the first and last time he was ever revealed to the public and we can only imagine how he felt as he closed the door and locked it behind him that was supposed to be just another quiet morning a deep breath may be a longside as now he'd have to compute what happened inside his head to his wife and kids as people who knew him record that he'd be the last person to have anything to do with the industry he
apparently returned each year to help with the Wei harvest in Austria just as he had in his youth always in his trademark white shirts and jeans he owned at least 103 hectares of land mostly Farmland but also Forest several houses and a magnificent Farmhouse and the journalist would recall his feeling of deflation at Burg's lack of interaction but while the infamous confrontation lasted mere seconds its impact would send shock waves throughout the industry within months the war started to close in on mind geek lawsuits could finally named burgar as a defendant and his Brazilian wife
Basilica could told the Sunday Times that she wanted him to cut ties with the company quote to be honest I never knew of this she told the Press when asked about the allegations of abuse and exploitation I was totally out of this the only thing he told me is that he wishes he was not in this I have children now none of us want that we all want things to be right had even Burg's own wife been in the dark about the true nature of his business if so it only reinforced his skill in separating
business from his personal life either way whatever distance he had once maintained had completely vanished at the same time public pressure was now mounting after the magazine the New Yorker published yet another brutal expose of alleged exploitation and abuse on PW which eventually triggered the executives to resign from manggeek in 2023 and not long after that the company was sold off mindgeek was then renamed to Alo and offloaded to a newly formed entity with the name as I onic as it was Hollow ethical Capital partners and so today high up in Montreal's aquamarine Tower where
M geek is based right now the Machinery behind the SES was on the Defenders of it still claim it offers freedom to consenting adult performers but the accounts of others tell a different story for people like Serena no Rebrand can eras the devastation according to sources she had struggled with a mental health fac homelessness dropped out of school and battled addiction and she was just one of thousands today nearly 300 victims joined forces across 2 five lawsuits against M geeek with some really horrifying allegations one particularly awful Federal class action lawsuit filed in Alabama revealed
two alleged victims aged 14 and 16 whose abuse videos were hosted and monetized on the platform and their stories become all too familiar but the Scandal wasn't stopping a mindgeek it was spreading lawsuit now targeted Visa hedge funds like Redwood Capital Management and cbec capital alleging they knowingly funded and profited from Child exploitation by investing in Pro assessing payments for the site Mike B who spent decades defending Wall Street Giants is now leading one of the largest cases against the mindgeek empire his team represents over 30 women and they're deploying an unusual legal strategy using
anti-racketeering laws originally designed to take down the mafia what interest B isn't just m geek's corporate structure and the victims caught up inside of it it's the dirty financing behind it as you can probably imagine the numbers just don't quite add up and with some of the very biggest institutions pushing their cash into online adult content there is probably another layer to this dark scheme meanwhile mindgeek is trying to reinvent itself the company's new owner ethical Capital Partners put forward Solomon Freedman a criminal defense attorney is the new face of the company and now bergar
is facing personal lawsuits and his wife is publicly calling for him to cut Tice with the company which is why the hunt for this man revealed just one face behind the fortune but somewhere in the Gloom of This Global business conglomerate countless others have profited from the exploitation most of which will never never be named or even known the story of this guy might just be the beginning of a much larger Reckoning one that may extend to the highest Circles of power
