Mohammad, a 28-year-old Syrian software engineer, had recently been accepted into a language institute in Brunswick, about 235km east of Berlin - but after weeks of failing to get a visa appointment at the German embassy in Beirut, he started to look for an alternative.

Following a friend's advice, Mohammad, who spoke to Al Jazeera using a pseudonym, found himself inside a shady office space in Beirut's Hamra neighbourhood. Here, a gray-haired Lebanese man told him: "I can get you an appointment at the embassy anytime you want."