MIAMI — Appointments are a hot commodity at DMV offices across Miami-Dade County — and apparently are for sale.

On Monday, the county agency in the process of taking over driver’s-license services in Miami-Dade declared it had “uncovered a network of appointment scalpers” who have been “hoarding free appointments and reselling them for a profit.”

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

Lines outside the state-run DMV offices can form the night before for walk-in slots, and people report having to wait months to get appointments. Fernandez’s office put most of the blame on driving schools in Broward and Miami-Dade, which appear to be securing appointments under random names and then selling customers the coveted time slots. The appointments sold for as low as $25 and as high as $250, the office said.

“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 Collector’s Office said in a written response to questions about Monday’s release. “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.”

In the three weeks since Fernandez’s office opened up a downtown Miami office for driver’s-license services, a suspected 200 appointments came through suspected scalpers, his office said.

The scalpers got the time slots through the online appointment system, utilizing bots, fake accounts and other means to secure appointments, the office said.

While DMV locations in Miami-Dade are mostly run by the state, the county Tax Collector’s Office is in the process of taking them over under a change mandated by state law. Most Florida counties already run their license offices, but the change in the Florida Constitution that mandated Miami-Dade elect an independent tax collector in November also requires the office to take over the state’s DMV operations.

The Fernandez release doesn’t say whether the resold appointments violated state laws or simply represented expert maneuvering through the online scheduling system.

“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. “I’m 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.”

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