Inventor and fugitive from US justice, Bernhard Fritsch.
By Paul Serran with guest contributor Frank Parlato
On October 6, 2025, Bernhard Eugen Fritsch used passport number X0961855 to take a Lufthansa flight from Mexico City to Munich, Germany.
In doing so, he fled the US before sentencing for his conviction on one count of wire fraud, a charge from eight years before.
For the US Justice System, Fritsch became a convicted felon on the run, a fugitive from justice.
But for many in the independent media, he is victim of prosecutorial overreach by shady deep-state figures, seeking refuge in his motherland to better plead his case.
Fritsch hands the first MCY MP3 player to Pope John Paul II.
Sixty-four-year-old Bernhard Fritsch started his career with the Brandenburg Philharmonic as CEO and creative director.
As an arranger, producer, and owner of the first digital studio, he worked with prominent industry names such as Quincy Jones, Pavarotti, Sting, Stevie Wonder, The Who, Carlos Santana, Paul McCartney, and Michael Jackson. He had deals with ABC, NBC, CBS, HBO, Sony, Disney, MGM, and Columbia Records.
Fritsch, owner of the first digital studio, and Michael Jackson.
A full-fledged career – but one about to become an obstacle to the liberal tech establishment.
In 1996, Fritsch founded MusicCity.com, the first Nasdaq-listed commercial platform to sell music and video online.
One of the 29 US patents Fritsch holds covers digital music distribution and served as the blueprint for iTunes and Spotify, with Apple settling with Fritsch to license his technology for iTunes.
Fritsch’s last venture before his world came crashing down was StarClub, a startup that let creators earn directly from their content by integrating brand deals, analytics, and payments into one platform. StarClub also offered social-media monetization before Meta or Google introduced similar programs.
Investor Danny Guy.
Bernhard Fritsch’s successful trajectory took a downward turn when he received investments from short-seller hedge-fund operator Danny Guy.
Public filings show Guy making donations to the Clinton Foundation during the US review of Russia’s purchase of Uranium One in Wyoming.
Yes, you read it right: the deal that transferred control of 20 percent of America’s uranium deposits to Russia.
Russian nuclear agency Rosatom later acquired Danny Guy’s hedge fund – after most of his investors lost most or all of the money invested.
Charming fellow, right?
In 2016, Guy’s Concordia International – based in Bermuda – collapsed and cost investors another $150 million. More people lost everything.
His critics describe in lawsuits and complaints that Guy profits from failure, aids foreign control of strategic assets, and resurfaces offshore after investor losses.
Fritsch and StarClub user Wesley Snipes.
According to Fritsch, Guy reportedly suggested a series of seemingly shady deals: urged Fritsch to sell StarClub to Facebook; suggested a ‘death spiral’ (a reverse takeover); a $100 million Goldman Sachs offering to prop up the stock, then sell it off and let the company sink or fail.
Fritsch alleges he declined all these ‘deals’ – so the investor set out to destroy him.
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You and I may think that Danny Guy is hardly the perfect informant to base a prosecution upon – but the DOJ under Barak Obama was willing to do so.
Later, in August 2017, the FBI filed a criminal complaint charging Bernhard Fritsch with wire fraud, obtained an arrest warrant, and obtained authorization to search the offices of StarClub.
The complaint alleged that $8 million in StarClub’s funds were ‘diverted’ to Fritsch’s companies. Not hidden, unauthorized, or unsupported by company documentation – and no particular false statement enticing investment is laid out.
The government’s primary witness: Danny Guy.
There were no authenticated false documents, no proven inducement of investor funds through deception, and no corroborated evidence of personal enrichment beyond declared compensation.
Regardless, 30 federal agents arrived to arrest Fritsch and seized items from the office. He was arrested and taken in handcuffs.
The Judge kept Fritsch in pre-trial detention for 20 weeks.
Fritsch with an Edison Award for one of his patents.
From inventor to inmate.
By the time he was released, StarClub was gone, its assets seized, his Malibu home encumbered, and his US passport surrendered. He wore an ankle monitor.
Worse: the promised ‘speedy trial’ set for October 2017 was delayed year after year — until proceedings finally reached 2025.
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In the process, Fritsch had his Sixth Amendment severely restricted both in the right to counsel of one’s choice and the in the right to self-representation.
A financially broken Fritsch wanted to replace his public defenders, who swore to be unprepared, and retain private counsel, or, if denied, to represent himself.
The judge dismissed his public defenders five days before the trial, but prosecutors moved to have them reinstated.
So, eight years after the criminal complaint, Bernhard Fritsch was tried on the federal charges: two counts of wire fraud.
A case built on the testimony of investor Danny Guy.
The prosecution’s narrative was simple: Guy invested $22 million in StarClub, and Fritsch induced those investments through false statements about the company’s performance.
They even presented a recording made during a meeting between Fritsch and Guy – but the meeting in question took place almost a year after Guy’s investments had ended.
Under federal law, wire fraud requires a false statement made before the transfer of funds.
In a perfect world, that would mean an acquittal, but in the real world, once you fall into the jaws of the establishment, it doesn’t usually let go.
So prosecutors pivoted. Dropped money-laundering counts and reframed the case as a dispute over Fritsch’s spending rather than how he obtained the funds.
The accusation of deceit to get money turned into a trial about how he spent the money.
The moving goalposts: ‘Revenue fraud’ became ‘spending fraud’. Instead of proving that Fritsch lied to obtain money, prosecutors argued that he misused funds afterward.
Munich, Germany.
In April 2025, Bernhard Fritsch’s trial came to a split verdict: he was acquitted on one count of wire fraud, convicted on another.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles asked for a 15-year sentence to be imposed on the October 20 sentencing.
But by then, Fritsch had taken the extreme action of fleeing the US – court filings show him in Munich, Germany.
He took the Roman Polansky-Edward Snowden route: self-imposed exile.
While Prosecutors seek prison time and financial restitution, Germany does not extradite its own citizens to the United States for non-violent financial crimes.
Fritsch wanted to get bail to work on his appeal, where his appellate lawyers said he had good chances to vacate his conviction – but his confounded public defenders warned him that he would be remanded into pre-sentencing custody.
So, he fled.
Judge Dale S. Fischer revoked his bond, ordered it forfeited, and issued a federal warrant for his arrest – but as long as he stays in Germany or other places without extradition agreements with the US, that’s unlikely to happen.
Fritsch first fled to Mexico, was detained there, but a Mexican judge denied immediate extradition to the US because Fritsch was a German national.
The German Embassy issued him an emergency passport and arranged his return to Germany where he arrived on October 7.
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German prosecutors treat investor-misrepresentation cases as civil matters rather than crimes, meaning the US charges against Fritsch would not be extraditable under German law.
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Bernhard Fritsch is now a fugitive.
But free, eight thousand miles away, working to develop new technologies, sketching the blueprints of the next invention.
The post From Inventor to Inmate and International Fugitive: The Misadventures of Bernhard Fritsch in the Jaws of US Justice System appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.