Fury as scalpers hoard free slots to skip line of Americas most hated appointments... but at a HUGE cost

Residents of Miami-Dade were outraged after scalpers were revealed to be selling free booked slots for the Department of Motor Vehicles for an outrageous $250 profit. 

A network of appointment scalpers was uncovered by the Miami-Dade County Tax Collectors Office last week, as free appointments are believed to have been scooped up over years and sold for big bucks. 

The Tax Collectors Office said the network of bad actors who had been hoarding the free appointments were creating false demand and unnecessary barriers for residents in need of essential services. 

To secure such an appointment could cost from as low as $25 to as high as $250, the office told the Miami Herald. 

We know who they are and how they operate. We will not accept any appointment obtained through system abuse, said Miami-Dade County Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez in a press release. 

Our office is committed to ensuring that all residents have fair and equal access to services without interference from those seeking to exploit the system. 

Fernandezs office told the outlet that it is believed much of the blame lied with driving schools in the area, which appeared to have been booking appointments under random names to sell them on to customers. 

We are still investigating, but it appears that many of the people scalping appointments were part of driving schools in Miami-Dade and Broward County, which has been collapsing our system, the Tax Collectors Office told the outlet. 

A network of DMV appointment scalpers was uncovered by the Miami-Dade County Tax Collectors Office last week, as free appointments are believed to have been scooped up over years and sold on for profit

We know who they are and how they operate. We will not accept any appointment obtained through system abuse, said Miami-Dade County Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez (pictured right)

Fernandezs office told the outlet that it is believed much of the blame lied with driving schools in the area, which appeared to have been booking appointments under random names to sell them on to customers

Some of the residents on the list never showed up to their appointments, possibly because they were simply placeholders for individuals to whom they resold the appointments. 

The office further estimated a suspected 200 appointments were made through scalpers in the three weeks since Fernandezs office opened up a downtown Miami DMV. 

Scalpers were believed to have utilized bots or fake accounts to secure slots on the DMV online booking systems, the office added. 

Yet, their seemingly profit-driven system of reselling appointments does not appear to be illegal, Fernandez told the outlet. 

DMV locations in Miami-Dade, which are currently mostly run by the state, are slowly in the process of being taken over by the Tax Collectors Office under a change mandated by state law. 

Fernandez hopes to begin urging changes in the law to ban appointment scalping. 

We believe this type of activity has been happening for a long time at other DMV state-run locations. We are taking action to make this illegal and enforce the law to stop the fraud, Fernandez said in a statement to the Miami Herald. 

Im here to fix it, and in the coming days, we will be working with our local and state partners to find a solution to this problem. 

Fernandez hopes to begin urging changes in the law to ban appointment scalping. We believe this type of activity has been happening for a long time at other DMV state-run locations. We are taking action to make this illegal and enforce the law to stop the fraud, Fernandez said

Residents in Miami expressed outrage to the scalpers poaching the free appointment slots. One said: We got here at 10am on Monday and waited until 5pm before they waived a white flag. I came back at 5 this morning and we are still waiting to see someone

The Tax Collectors Office said the network of bad actors who had been hoarding the free appointments were creating false demand and unnecessary barriers for residents in need of essential services

Long have residents known the ordeal of securing an appointment with the DMV, one told CBS News: It is not a good idea at all. I have been waiting in line for hours. 

We got here at 10am on Monday and waited until 5pm before they waived a white flag. I came back at 5 this morning and we are still waiting to see someone, another told the outlet. 

A spokesperson said that the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles cancels about 1,000 fake appointments daily. 

While the agency is working to identify and block bookings made by third-party brokers, it said: FLHSMV is not responsible for appointments booked through third parties and cannot guarantee those appointments will be honored. 

The selling of DMV appointments was recently moved to be made a civil offense in Miami-Dade by County Commissioner Kevin Cabrera which, if violated, results in a $500 fine and up to 60 days in jail. 

The new ordinance would require written consent from the Miami-Dade Tax Collectors Office and is due for its second reading on April 1, according to CBS News.