Eva Ihnenfeldt was in her bathrobe when German police showed up at 8 a.m. one morning to search her home.

“I racked my brain for any unexplained murders,” said the owner of a digital marketing business, which was simultaneously searched. The search warrant cited paragraph 132a of the German criminal code. Her crime was blogging about a gag gift from her children, an honorary Ph.D. certificate purchased for €39 on Groupon.

…{The German] obsession [with academic titles] has spawned not only a host of weird rules and traditions—misuse can draw a year in prison or stiff fines—but a posse of mostly anonymous vigilantes who scout out unearned titles, academic plagiarists and other ivory tower scofflaws.

Sleuthing under pseudonyms including Dr. Simplicius and Plagin Hood, dozens of German scholars spend hours of their own time scouring obscure theses for questionable citations. Targets have included academics, minor celebrities and leading politicians. Most are exposed on the website VroniPlag Wiki, named for an early target.

…One academic downloaded 50,000 medical theses and exposed more than 60 cases of significant plagiarism. Another spent three months, full-time, investigating a single thesis.