He's from a small town in western Ukraine and works in the restaurant industry.

But he wanted to earn more money, so he went online to find a job in Germany.

E found a Ukrainian job agency.

They said the jobs were legal.

They gave me papers so that I could travel to Germany and work in a meat factory in the town of vice and fares for €9.35 per hour.

It's because, you know, talk David Patch, Yeah.

Rosa Rodino, Kiev based Ukrainian job site International Work organized the trip for him and other jobseekers.

They took a minibus from Ukraine to their place of work in Germany, accompanied by a supervisor as non EU citizens.

It should not have been that easy for them to enter Germany, But Maxim says the agency gave him false papers, which they said that he was a student with a vacation job.

In reality, he's never studied.

The agency charged over €500 to find him a job.

When I said I wasn't a student and asked why I was issued these papers, they said Don't worry.

Not your problem.

Dozens of Ukrainians like Maxine turned up for work at a meat factory in Saxony Anhalt in 2020 all of them supposedly students looking for a vacation job.

Some have been offered very different jobs before their journey.

Like Marina, which is not her real name.

There were three jobs on offer.

A supermarket job, one in Kandy and one in a bakery.

But we ended up with a very different one in a meat processing factory.

The work was extremely difficult for women and men.

The women had to lift heavy crates of meat and meat products that weighed between 25 30 kg.

The work for the so called students started in mid September but lasted only five days.

The German authorities quickly realized there was something odd on.

The Ukrainians found out that the police had searched their accommodation.

When I came home, I discovered that the door had been broken.

There was a new lock.

Our translator had written a note saying that the police had raided our apartment, broken the lock and put on a new one because the volumes of books in the mirror this was a coordinated police operation on the 23rd of September.

Across five German states, 800 police officers searched the apartments of people working illegally as well as the officers of job agencies.

The authorities focused on agencies for temporary jobs suspected of bringing workers into Germany with false documents.

Public prosecutors also questioned the young Ukrainians, who were told they had to leave Germany on were banned from returning for three years.

The prosecutors see them as both perpetrators on victims.

Hundreds of the charges are relatively minor.

Illegal entry into Germany and illegal residents are not crimes.

They're misdemeanors documents.

Even if someone has never been in trouble with the law, we will most likely drop the charges against them.

During their stay in Germany, Maxim and the others were officially employed by the German agency Bear Khanna on Lent out to the meat factory.

The company, which did not want to speak to us, is currently under investigation.

It faces major penalties have found guilty.

This'll involves an actual crime, which means that the minimum penalty is one year in jail for each separate a fence.

We looked online for the Ukrainian Job site International Work, which organized the journey for Maxim and the others.

It's still advertising jobs in the U but did not want to speak with us.

Many of the jobs with German work certificates currently do not seem to be feasible because of restrictions related to the coronavirus.

Many young people in Ukraine seek better paid jobs abroad, and they, too, could become the victims of criminal job agencies.

Paying a lot of money to get a job getting into trouble with.

The German authorities are not earning anything.

Maxim says that he has learned a lesson.

I would now check everything very carefully.

I'd also turned to specialists to find out information about the journey.

Not like I did then we didn't know where we were going or what we were doing.

If you don't know where you're going, you not only risk being deported, you could end up in jail.

Yes, In the end, Maxim and the others were in one way fortunate.

They couldn't afford their return journey to Ukraine, so the city of Busan fells paid it for them.

But they had imagined their trip to Germany would be very different.