Two brothers from Aspach who have helped hundreds of refugees to acquire citizenship in Germany in an irregular way, by forging documents such as language tests and certificates of citizenship have been sentenced to several years in prison by the Stuttgart Regional Court.
The 32-year-old and his brother, 38-year-old have been sentenced by the Court to prison terms of four and a half years and four years and eight months for a total of 355 counts of documents forgery, Schengen.News reports.
The defendants did not invent the business idea themselves, but they used and implemented it on a large scale.
In addition, under similar charges, a third brother is still in custody, according to local media reports.
Internationals interested in obtaining a German passport are required to submit a naturalisation and language test and a certificate of citizenship. The two brothers forged and sold these documents from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.
As a result of such illegal activities, the two brothers are said to have stolen over €300,000.
According to the assessment of the court, the brothers offered almost all the required documents that their customers had to present to the authorities. The two brothers contacted their customers through the Tik Tok platform.
A report from SWR notes that the certificates for customers were either handed over in a restaurant in Backnang, sent by post or handed over through a language school in Ellwangen that was presumably in the know.
449 Fake German Language Certificates Found in Beirut
Cases involving fake documents in order to obtain a German passport are not few. Last month, 449 German language proficiency certificates used when applying for a visa were falsified at the Goethe Institute in Beirut, Lebanon.
Two employees from the Goethe Institute in Beirut used their access to the system to falsify data, alter the scores of failed tests and sell the wrongly issued language certificates.
New Citizenship Law Attracting a Larger Number of Internationals
In June this year, authorities in Germany introduced the New Citizenship Law, allowing internationals to obtain citizenship within a shorter period.
In addition, through the new law, internationals planning to acquire German citizenship are not obliged to renounce their previous nationality.
Announcing the introduction of the new law, the Minister of Interior of Germany, Nancy Faeser said that all internationals living in Germany meeting the needed requirements would be eligible to acquire citizenship. However, the Minister stressed that they would have no tolerance for foreigners with antisemitic or racist or other similar behaviours.
