A German public broadcaster has uncovered a “cash for test results” scam in which migrants can pay for the answers to a German-language test required to obtain citizenship in the country.
An undercover operation by an employee of the WDR broadcaster exposed the scheme in which those seeking to pass the B1 German-language exam could join a group on the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Telegram and obtain the test results just days before they sit the exam.
The broadcaster was initially tipped off about the scam by a woman who recently sat the exam and noticed that many of the other entrants were overly confident and finished the test unnaturally quickly. When she asked how they had finished so fast, she was told by one woman that their husband had purchased the test results for her in the lead-up to the exam.
“She told me that you can get the questions for the test in a Telegram group for money,” the woman, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told WDR.
With the assistance of an Arabic-speaking colleague, journalists at the broadcaster conducted their own investigations into the allegation and soon found a group on the messaging app advertising test results for the bi-weekly integration exam.
Upon paying €250, the WDR employee received the test results for the exam to be held two days later.
“Some questions only state which answer is correct. Others have additional explanations in Arabic,” the broadcaster reported.
The exam is regulated by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) and is currently taken by around 20,000 people every two weeks. When questioned by the broadcaster as to how test results could be leaked to then be sold on the black market, BAMF’s head of the integration courses department, Benjamin Beckmann, suggested that someone at the test facility must be responsible.
“The most obvious thing is that a person at an exam center — probably with at least several people in the know — got the security envelope, in which the examination documents were sent, opened them improperly, and took photos of these documents,” he said.
Such an act would inevitably lead to an employee’s termination and the bringing of criminal charges, he added.
The small issue in ascertaining the leak, however, is the fact that the test questions are distributed to 1,467 course providers and then delivered to 4,000 test centers across the country.
Jörn Weingärtner, managing director of GAST eV which is commissioned by BAMF to conduct the tests in Bochum, told WDR that it was inevitable there would be weakness in the chain of delivery.
“Every other weekend, a lot of paper is sent through the Republic, which goes through a lot of hands. And it’s in the nature of things that there can be a weak point somewhere,” he said.
With 360,000 migrants passing the exam last year alone, questions are now being raised as to how many paid for the answers ahead of time and fraudulently achieved a false language grade that facilitated their naturalization in Germany.