CORRECTION: The previous headline incorrectly said German activists sold fake election fliers to the Alternative for Germany party. The activists faked a flier delivery service. The headline has been corrected.

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       “Reliable, on time and inexpensive”: That’s what the company promoting its flier delivery services promised. Germany’s far-right party was sold.

       The website looked so real, as did its director’s LinkedIn page, that the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, commissioned the firm to hand out truckloads of fliers ahead of the country’s federal election.

       But the leaflets didn’t make it into voter hands, and before polls opened Sunday, heaps showed up at the party’s offices. The orchestrators of the ploy have revealed themselves as activists protesting far-right politics. In the face of a looming legal battle with the AfD, which pledged to go after them, they have already crowdfunded 100,000 euros.

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       The Center for Political Beauty, an art collective that has targeted politicians for fueling rhetoric against refugees or downplaying Holocaust remembrance, said Tuesday that it had posed as a service offering to work with the AfD before the vote.

       Its fake business — which the activists now describe as “the world market leader in not distributing Nazi fliers” — got orders “worth millions” to deliver 5 million fliers. The group has collected the bulk of the remaining leaflets, which it called “72 tons of AfD rubbish.”

       Ahead of the election race that marks the end of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 16 years in office, all political factions in Germany ruled out forming a coalition with the AfD.

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       The party was voted into parliament, or the Bundestag, four years ago with its hard-line anti-immigrant stance. It whipped up nationalist support during the migrant surge when Merkel opened the doors to more than 1 million refugees, mainly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, in a landmark decision. Now, the party also promises to fight covid-19 rules.

       A spokesperson for the AfD told Germany’s dpa news agency that the extent of losses was not yet clear. The party has mentioned that at least 1 million fliers did not reach any household.

       An AfD spokesman confirmed that the party would file a criminal complaint over the prank. “In fact, there can be no talk of an ‘art action,’ ” he told The Washington Post.

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       In the past 24 hours, the activists have raised funds they say will help recycle the fliers they collected and defend “artistic freedoms.” Fans who donate can get lighters and T-shirts emblazoned with the logo of the company that doesn’t exist — “Flyerservice Hahn” — which also purported on its website to have started as a family business.

       “We just wanted to keep the garbage out of the election campaign,” said the art collective’s Thilda Rosenfeld. The two sides had not signed a contract, she told The Post.

       “We were just trying it in the beginning, as an idea," she said. “And when it started working out, we were actually surprised, because the AfD chose us again and again.”

       The group’s provocative stunts have drawn attention, and drama, before. Four years ago, the activists built a small replica of Berlin’s Holocaust memorial that can be viewed from the windows of an AfD politician who triggered outrage by suggesting that Germany stop atoning for Nazi crimes.

       Sofia Diogo Mateus contributed to this report.