Police dismantle criminal organization that sold foreign residency appointments

Spanish police have dismantled a criminal organization that used bots to block access to the online foreign residency appointment booking system.

With these bots, which were able to evade the website's firewalls, and a VPN, intermediaries (lawyers, 'gestors' and others) would book the appointments themselves - in this case specifically for asylum-seekers - and then resell them for €30 to €200 despite being free.

The criminals operated out of different cities across Spain including Barcelona and Tarragona. 

Police have managed to identify 94 people allegedly involved in the organization, of which 69 have been arrested and another 25 are under investigation.  

Last year Catalan News reported extensively on the unavailability of appointments, spoke with a cybersecurity expert who created an open-source 'NIE Bot' to help foreigners book them, and recorded a podcast episode on the issue.  

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