For years, Stenn Technologies pitched itself as the future of trade finance. And Wall Street bought in—hard. Backed by nearly $1 billion from names like HSBC (HSBC, Financial), Citigroup (C, Financial), and BNP Paribas, the London-based fintech claimed it was helping global suppliers get paid faster. But the weekly data updates that reassured investors? They were built on smoke. Bloomberg's deep dive reveals that dozens of listed “customers”—from Japan's Edion to Spain's Repsol—deny ever doing business with Stenn. And some of the firm's biggest suppliers traced back to hollowed-out buildings in Prague and shell companies with Russian ties.

At the heart of the illusion was a securitization deal: investors bought into what looked like receivables from legitimate corporations. The twist? Those receivables likely never existed. One entity, Milkyway Exploration, supposedly shipped millions in goods from Thailand to major corporates—yet not a single company confirmed the transactions. Some of these suppliers even had ties to sanctioned entities accused of supporting Russian naval intelligence. But because the deal was banked by the who's who of global finance—including Goldman Sachs and Barclays—most investors assumed the checks had been done. They hadn't.

The result is one of the largest fintech collapses since Greensill. With Stenn now in administration and key executives silent, investors may be left with nothing but lessons. And hard ones at that. Regulators are circling. Internal audits have likely begun. But the big question remains: how did nearly $1 billion flow through such a fragile structure without more scrutiny? As one legal expert put it bluntly—if these invoices were fake, this wasn't innovation. It was a good old-fashioned fraud.