Five jailed in Germany for organized driving test fraud scheme

Five men have been jailed in Germany for their roles in an organized driving test fraud scheme.

The accused were found to have paid doppelgangers to take people's driving theory tests fraudulently in their name.

A defendant born in 1987 was given the longest custodial sentence, at 4 years and 3 months.

The court deemed that he had a central role in the organization ,but still, the judge said he was "not the last in the hierarchy." The court said it believed that the men were part of a far-reaching system designed to subvert the driving license process.

Two other defendants, who operated driving schools in the Heilbronn and Göppingen area in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, received sentences of 3 years and 9 months. The court said they had "profited financially the most from the system."

According to the prosecution, people looking to skip their theory test would typically pay around €2,000 (roughly $2,400), or considerably more in certain cases. It alleged that the quintet had earned more than €179,000 across 59 cases in a period of almost three years, splitting it among themselves.

The court noted in its ruling that the defendants had not created the system, it believed that they had taken up positions in a pre-existing organized crime network.

The judge noted that the defendants had been cooperative and quick to confess in a trial lasting just seven court days, saying that their penalties could have been "considerably higher" had they contested the case.

Wilhelmshaven police issued what seemed to be a veiled public request to think twice before calling the emergency services on Tuesday, relaying details of an unusual and probably unnecessary callout for its officers the previous evening.

Police were dispatched at about 3:30 p.m. "after an emergency call from a child," the incident report began, at first written as if a potentially serious incident might ensue.

It transpired that the youngster, whose identity and gender was not revealed, was complaining about disciplinary measures within the family.

"The background was, among other things, that the child's bus pass had been confiscated, so that they could not visit friends as planned," police wrote.

"The police officers dispatched checked the situation on site. Indications of the child being endangered could not be identified in the process. It was possible to clear up the familial situation," law enforcement wrote.

The seemingly tongue-in-cheek report stopped short of explicitly asking people to weigh the merits of calling Germany's police emergency hotline on 110.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has said that Europe must better protect its energy infrastructure from hybrid and outright attacks – and can learn from Ukraine in this regard.

"Critical infrastructure is increasingly a frontline of geopolitical confrontation," said Wadephul at an international conference on energy security in Berlin on Tuesday, warning that "neither Germany nor our allies and partners in Europe are immune."

Wadephul highlighted a rise in hybrid attacks on European infrastructure, including cyberattacks, drone sightings and damage to undersea cables, many of which have been attributed to Russia, which has been waging war against Ukraine for over four years.

"Today is about listening to Ukraine's political and economic decision-makers, communities, civil societies and experts to learn from their experience, their flexibility, their perseverance and their innovativeness," Wadephul said in the presence of Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal and representatives of the Group of Seven (G7), the European Union and NATO.

"Ukraine has accumulated the hard-earned expertise that the EU urgently needs to bolster its own resilience and energy security," he continued, highlighting the speed with which Ukrainian authorities are able to repair damage and restore energy supplies following Russian attacks.

"Highly centralized systems may be efficient in peacetime, but they can become an extra vulnerable crisis situation," the minister warned. "Distributed generation, mobile capacity, microgrids, energy storage and redundancy all increase survivability."

Ukraine's struggle to keep the lights on

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The number of attacks on members of German political parties increased significantly last year, with members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) overtaking those of the Green Party as the most targeted.

According to a government response to a parliamentary question submitted by the AfD, German police recorded 5,140 such attacks on representatives of all parties in 2025, a 40% increase on 2024 (3,690) and almost double the number in 2023 (2,790).

For first time, members of the AfD were subject to most attacks (1,852), followed by members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) whose members experienced almost three times more abuse (1,171 cases) than the previous year (420).

Of the attacks suffered by AfD party representatives, police classified 121 cases as physically violent crimes – as opposed to verbal abuse, hate speech or defamation.

"Those who constantly defame, delegitimize and dehumanize the AfD and its supporters shouldn't be surprised when enemies of democracy see in this a call to violence," said AfD interior spokesman Martin Hess.

Hess, a former police officer who Germany's police union (Gewerkschaft der Polizei or GdP) has attempted to exclude from its membership, is considered to represent the extreme right wing of the AfD and has defended and promoted the racist concept of "Remigration" in parliament.

German authorities identified over 15,000 breaches of youth protection regulations on the internet in 2025, the vast majority of which involved child abuse (12,334 cases) and child pornography (1,091 cases), according to a new report.

Other offenses in areas such as political extremism, cyber bullying, adult pornography and violence made up a comparatively small proportion of the transgressions.

In 96% of cases (14,520), authorities were able to bring about the immediate deletion of illegal content, with criminal proceedings launched in almost 6,500 cases.

"These once again alarming figures show how far away we are from enabling safe and secure participation in the online world for children and teenagers," said Education and Youth Minister Karin Prien (CDU), lamenting that many internet providers still do too little to ensure child protection.

And since digital entertainment and artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming more and more central to young people's lives, Prien called for "security, protection and clear rules which keep up with technological advances."

Stefan Glaser, who heads up the state-funded Jugendschutz.net (youth protection) portal which produced the new figures, said that internet providers were continuing to "expand their manipulative business models" rather than implementing effective security measures.

He said that AI chat robots which take on the role of "emotional sparring partners" were particularly problematic, explaining: "Such semi-social relationships warp reality and make it more difficult [for young people] to identify what is artificial and what is real."

In some cases, the study warned, without adequate filters and security settings in place, there is a danger that AI bots could go so far as to describe and even encourage sexual activity among minors.

The average age of start-up founders in Germany sunk to a record low of 34.2 years in 2025, while 40% were aged younger than 30, according to a new study by the state-owned German investment bank KfW.

By way of comparison, the average age of those setting up their own businesses in Germany at the start of the century was between 37 and 38, with only 24% of them under 30.

For KfW chief economist Dirk Schumacher, the social media presence of successful start-up influencers is inspiring other young entrepreneurs to follow suit.

"Many young people are reading in the media about successful start-up founders or influencers who are serving as role models for self-employment," he said.

But he cautioned that, while the average age of start-up owners is sinking, the overall number of start-ups is dropping, too.

"In contrast to the past, fewer businesses are actually being founded in Germany," Schumacher said.

Indeed, while the number of new start-ups increased from 585,000 to 690,000 last year, that's still half of the 1.5 million of business foundations registered in 2002.

But that might be set to change as new generations embrace a fresh Gründergeist, or "foundational spirit." While only 26% of the overall German population told the KfW study they would prefer to be self-employed, that figure rises to 36% among the under-30s.

Startups are revolutionizing drone technology

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Guten Morgen! Welcome to DW's coverage of what Germany is talking about on Tuesday, May 19, 2026.

Emergency services are still searching for three missing people after a house collapsed in the center of Germany's most easterly city, Görlitz, on Monday evening. Local police suspect a gas explosion.

Meanwhile, a new study suggests that almost one in five German petrol stations have breached new rules limiting the amount of times they can increase fuel prices.

Later on Tuesday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will welcome Swiss President Guy Parmelin to Berlin, and we're also expecting the results of an inquiry into the car attack at Magdeburg Christmas Market in December 2024.