Frankly, investigating internet fraud seems like a fool's errand in most cases. I wonder what's the closing rate for those that do get investigated; probably minuscule.

Often they're reporting including bank account details. There is lots of simple to investigate fraud. Meaning: Dutch person using their own Dutch bank account to defraud people. That should be super simple to investigate.

On technical forums you sometimes see loads of people complaining that no action is being taken, despite pretty much giving police everything they need (all details: persons full name, bank account details, etc). It often takes place on e.g. Marktplaats (Dutch Ebay-like website).

I was scammed on Marktplaats a couple of years ago, along with about 20 victims who also got scammed by the same person. We gathered a lot of information about the scammer, down to all his personal information, ip addresses, email accounts, advertisement details, etc. After about 2 years we got a form in the mail if we would like to press charges and "sue" for damages. Everybody involved filled in the forms and about one year later this persons trial was canceled because of lack of evidence.

Not sure if it's truly hard to prove internet fraud, are understaffed or they just don't care enough. Anyway, seems like an easy way to make a quick buck or two for criminals. Even tho this person didn't look like a particularly intelligent individual or even a hardcore criminal, he got away with many scams and probably made quite a lot of money in a short period of time.

I found out who the scammer was, supplied the police with ALL the evidence, including the guy's address, phone number, etc. The police decided to not even investigate the case. And I'm not allowed to go to the guy's house and beat him up or threaten him, otherwise I would be the one who's in trouble.

We can only know that if we have stats to compare with other similar countries.

Otherwise, 157 out of 50.000 cases of "internet fraud" might be just average.