Cybercrime Prosecution in the Metaverse: Evidentiary and Jurisdictional Challenges

Abstract

The emergence of the metaverse as an immersive, persistent, and decentralized digital ecosystem introduces complex challenges for criminal law, evidence collection, and transnational enforcement. Unlike traditional cyberspace, the metaverse integrates virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technologies to create embodied environments in which users interact through avatars, possess digital assets, and engage in real-time spatial behaviors. This multidimensional architecture redefines the nature of cyber-offending, enabling new forms of harm—including avatar-based assault, identity manipulation, NFT theft, biometric exploitation, and socially engineered deception—that do not easily conform to existing legal categories. This narrative review examines the evidentiary, jurisdictional, and regulatory difficulties that arise when prosecuting metaverse-based crimes. The analysis highlights the volatility and fragmentation of immersive digital evidence, which complicates scene reconstruction, behavioral interpretation, and authentication of avatar actions. Real-time spatial interactions, AI-assisted gesture generation, and decentralized data flows further challenge forensic reliability. Jurisdictional barriers intensify these issues, as offenders, victims, servers, and platform operators often reside in different regions, undermining traditional territorial principles and limiting the effectiveness of mutual legal assistance mechanisms. The review also evaluates the inadequacies of current national cybercrime frameworks, which rarely recognize metaverse-specific harms, and the shortcomings of international conventions that were developed for earlier forms of cybercrime. Gaps in definitions of virtual property, identity integrity, biometric protections, and smart-contract liability hinder consistent regulation. In addition, the dominance of private platform governance restricts access to critical evidence and weakens state enforcement capacity. The paper concludes that meaningful progress requires metaverse-aware legislative reforms, adaptive forensic methodologies, and enhanced international coordination. Without systematic modernization, legal systems will remain ill-equipped to address the evolving landscape of immersive digital crime.