![]() ![]() It's humiliating," he said, speaking to AFP through the Viber phone app from his new home. You have to beg them to get what you want. ![]() "All along, you know they're cheating you, but you can't say anything. Yet dealing with gangsters like "The Whale", Ali warned, was also risky and cost him his dignity. The rush to Europe has fuelled a massive demand for fake IDs among people like Ali - not his real name - who already risked their lives once to reach Greece from Turkey on inflatable boats. Unlike tens of thousands of other refugees and migrants, he was able to avoid the perilous, exorbitantly-priced land journey through the Balkans and central Europe, all thanks to "The Whale". "It turns out the guy I'd been speaking to, who sounded so big and scary on the phone, was actually tiny," said 31-year-old Ali, now living as a refugee in The Hague which he reached by plane several months ago using a forged Italian identity card that cost him just 30 euros ($34). Ali, a Palestinian-Syrian banker desperate to reach the Netherlands, had to hide his surprise when he finally met a shadowy forger known as "The Whale" at an Arab-style shisha cafe near Athens. ![]()
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