When the Perpetrators Are Abroad: Investment Fraud and the Limits of German Crime Statistics

Germany's Police Crime Statistics (PKS) for 2025 record 3,974 cases of investment fraud under Section 263 of the German Criminal Code (StGB, offence key 513200) in the core tables, a decline of 12.5 percent. The same statistics record 28,465 cases of investment fraud in a separate set of tables covering offences with damage in Germany where the suspect acted from abroad or from an untraceable location, an increase of 76.2 percent. That second set of tables, the PKS-Ausland, receives almost no public attention.

That is where the numbers are. In 2025, 87.7 percent of all registered cases of this offence and 84.3 percent of the combined damage of 1.52 billion euros sit in the foreign-offence tables. Registered investment fraud damage in the foreign-offence tables alone reached 1.28 billion euros in 2025, more than double the 564.8 million euros recorded in 2024. Of these foreign cases, 91 percent involved the internet as a crime tool. The clearance rate for investment fraud in the foreign-offence tables stood at 4.2 percent in 2025; across all 661,238 foreign offences of 2025, the country of offence could not be determined in 93.7 percent of cases.

Cybertrading fraud and pig butchering have no offence key of their own. Both disappear inside key 513200 for investment fraud, and the federal tables carry no crime-tool marker for cryptocurrencies. The BKA victimisation survey SKiD 2024 adds the final layer: roughly four out of five cyber offences are never reported at all.