Early in the morning, Liz Ritschard (Delia Mayer) and Reto Flückiger (Stefan Gubser) are called to a crime scene. The dead woman was an economics professor at the University of Lucerne and was stabbed with scissors. Damage to a car parked in front of the house could have come from the perpetrator's getaway car. Corinna Haas (Fabienne Hadorn) takes paint samples. Around the same time, German unemployed Mike Liebknecht (Misel Maticevic) crosses the Swiss border. He hid a pistol in the glove compartment. A little later, Liebknecht entered the luxurious villa of Swisscoal CEO Anton Seematter (Roland Koch). He takes his daughter Leonie (Cecilia Steiner) and Seematter's wife Sofia (Katharina von Bock) hostage. He is impatiently waiting for the CEO, who is supposed to be coming home soon.
Meanwhile, the getaway car's paint samples reveal that the car belongs to Anton Seematter, whose daughter studied with the murdered woman. Investigators also discover that the victim refused a substantial donation from Seematter, against the will of the university administration. The investigators get in the car and drive to the Seematters' villa for questioning - where they surprise Liebknecht and are then also held hostage. "Friss oder dieb" is a "crime scene" on the subject of unequally distributed opportunities. History lets the super-rich and those left behind collide: on the one hand the arrogant international power elite along with spoiled rich kids, on the other hand the worker who has been rationalized away and has no chance at his mercy.
With increasing escalation, however, the boundaries between the clearly separated worlds and moral concepts are becoming more and more blurred. Until there are only losers in the end.