BERLIN (AP) – German organizers promised before the World Cup they would stamp out scalping, but no one outside the stadiums looking for a ticket is leaving empty handed – unless steep prices are a hurdle.

The plans were ambitious. Tickets contain a microchip and were registered to individuals so that fans who went through the turnstiles would have to match with their ticket.

“We will know who everybody is in the stadium,” promised Christian Sachs, spokesman for Germany’s interior ministry, which is responsible for World Cup security.

Word has spread quickly among the three million visitors in Germany – tens of thousands of them traveling from game to game looking for tickets – that Germany backed off the strict controls once the monthlong tournament began.

Only between 500 and 1,000 checks are done at stadiums that seat no less than 41,000 fans and tickets can be signed over for a small fee up to game time, no questions asked.

An hour before Germany’s 3-0 win Tuesday against Ecuador, $55 seats were readily available, first for $700 and then far less as kickoff loomed.

Police ignored a German man scribbling down the personal information needed to transfer two tickets to a pair of Ecuadoreans.

Scalpers seem to be flush with tickets, whether from sponsors or national soccer federations or elsewhere. The head of Botswana’s federation even was disciplined for scalping.

“I’ve gone to two Mexico games with friends, but man did I pay a lot,” said Eduardo Sanchez, a Mexican studying in Spain.

Each ticket cost him $750.

Leaders of soccer’s governing body never liked the Germans’ plans, which were intended to limit stadium access for hooligans and other troublemakers but threatened to cause greater problems with long lines. General secretary Urs Linsi told the Germans to “relax” and last October president Sepp Blatter called the controls too elaborate and strict.

Now that the World Cup is underway, FIFA officials have praised the handling of tickets. And the Germans are applauding as well.

“You can’t stamp out the black market completely, it’s like a rock concert, but we have curbed it,” said Gerd Graus, spokesman for Germany’s World Cup committee. “Tickets are a success story.”

Some tickets have landed in strange hands.

A man in Gelsenkirchen, site of one of the 12 World Cup stadiums, sold hundreds of tickets that came from the Ecuadorean soccer federation out of his hardware store, police said. People were lined up for blocks before FIFA stopped him.

Reports have surfaced in the German media that officials from poorer soccer federations are selling their tickets on the black market. On Saturday, the president of the Botswana association was caught selling $127 tickets for England’s match against Trinidad and Tobago for $380.

World Cup organizers have no easy answer for why more than 30,000 Swedes were in Berlin’s 72,000-seat Olympic stadium for a match against Paraguay. Each country’s federation is given eight percent of a game’s tickets, so there should have been 5,700 yellow-clad supporters yelling for Sweden.

Germany’s World Cup committee spokesman Graus said many fans wearing Swedish colors could have been Germans.

As usual, there have been victims of ticket fraud. On Friday, 380 British school children aged 11 or older were turned away at the gate when their tickets for the Portugal-Iran game proved to be fakes.

But most World Cup visitors are confident they will get good tickets outside the stadiums. American Matt Johnson said he wasn’t having problems getting into games.

He knew scalping prices were likely to be high and tickets tight for the Brazil-Croatia he was traveling to see.

“I’ll get in,” said Johnson, a radio producer. “But I look at it this way, the worst that could happen to me is I’m outside the stadium with a beer and the Brazilian fans – and they are half the show.”

AP-ES-06-20-06 1726EDT