Thursday 26, October
How appointments at the Ausländerbehörde are resold on the black market
Any foreigner living in Berlin knows how frustrating it can be to find an appointment at the immigration office (Ausländerbehörde). But where some people saw a problem, others found an opportunity.
According to a (paywalled) article in the Tagesspiegel, some foreigners found the experience so frustrating that they asked for help in an online forum, where they received a private message with a simple offer. They would get an appointment at the state agency, but it would cost €40. In desperation, they agreed to the deal – and got the appointment.
As it turns out, this scheme was being run by a single IT specialist (simply referred to as T. in the article). This person was able to write code which would book appointments on the relevant website before others could access it and then sell them on for between €40 and €100.
He even offered a special student discount and resold appointments to people from Nigeria, Israel, Afghanistan, the USA and Lebanon – earning between €800 and €1000 each month, before he finally gave it up as he thought it was too risky.
Oh well, back to not being able to get an appointment at all.
