Case Study: German Financial Agency (OFD Niedersachsen) achieves rapid, legally defensible digital tax investigations with Exterro FTK

Tracking down tax evaders The regional financial agency in Lower Saxony uses Exterro products for digital investigations

The Lower Saxony regional financial authority (OFD Niedersachsen)—responsible for supporting local tax offices and handling about 800 searches of suspected entities a year—faced growing challenges investigating electronically stored evidence in tax‑fraud cases. Existing forensic tools were too complex for many tax investigators, reducing efficiency and the teams’ ability to produce clear, court‑ready findings.

OFD selected Exterro’s Forensic Toolkit (FTK) and deployed 80 licences, enabling in‑house teams with minimal IT training to perform disk imaging, email and registry analysis, password recovery, decryption and Mac/iOS forensics. FTK’s database‑backed architecture, faster processing, broad file/client support and regular updates delivered a smooth rollout and measurable gains in speed, case capacity and the quality of legally defensible evidence.