Crypto investment fraud: when the tax office taxes phantom gains and what to check now

A return shown on a fraudulent trading platform can be taxable even if not one euro ever reached your account. That is the most unpleasant news for anyone who has just realised their money is gone: a tax demand can follow the loss. Whether it arises depends on a single question, and your own paperwork can answer it.

The trigger is the regulator's ongoing series of warnings. Between September 11 and September 16, 2026 alone, BaFin published thirteen consumer notices, seven of which concern offers with a crypto-asset connection. One of them describes the second stage of the damage precisely: a website offering victims the recovery of lost crypto-assets.

Crypto investment fraud: what BaFin reported this week

The regulator publishes such notices on the basis of Section 37(4) of the German Banking Act and Section 10(7) of the German Crypto Markets Supervision Act. This is neither a judgment nor an indictment. It is the information that, according to the authority's findings, a provider is conducting business requiring authorisation without holding that authorisation. For you as an investor it is the most important advance warning available, and it costs nothing.

The notice of September 16, 2026 on the trading platform arbitpad(.)de puts it in the typical wording: there is a suspicion that the unknown operators are offering financial services and crypto-asset services there without the required authorisation. The same day brought a warning about xlla(.)tech, whose operators according to BaFin present themselves as a fictitious company based in Switzerland, as well as a warning about a series of near-identical websites that all work with the same advertising copy about a supposed AI investment.