pandemic
Lots of forged vaccination passports: More than 11,000 investigations are ongoing
The paper IDs are not forgery-proof (symbol photo)
© Photo booth / K. Schmitt // Picture Alliance
Vaccination records are very easy to forge and that apparently happens in large quantities. More than 11,000 people who have been vaccinated are being investigated. The number of unreported cases who used a false passport and was not exposed is said to be far greater.
Nationwide, according to a report, the police are now investigating more than 11,000 cases of forged vaccination passports. The Bavarian State Criminal Police Office alone has had 3070 cases since the beginning of the year – after 110 cases by the beginning of September, the Berlin daily newspaper reported on Sunday in advance, citing its own survey among the state criminal police offices. At the same time, the police are assuming a high number of unreported cases.
In North Rhine-Westphalia 2495 cases were counted, almost half of them since the end of November. In Berlin there are 1028 cases, in Hesse and Baden-Württemberg each a number in the “lower four-digit range”, in Rhineland-Palatinate 727 and in Hamburg 720 cases. Even in the poorly populated Schleswig-Holstein there are 550 cases – two thirds of them occurred in the past four weeks.
More restrictions, more counterfeits
The Saxon State Criminal Police Office stated that there was a large number of unreported cases. It is determined “consistently in every suspected case”. According to the newspaper, an internal picture of the situation from the Federal Ministry of the Interior assumes that the demand for fake vaccination passports will “level up” due to the tightened corona measures.
Easy to fake
It is also acknowledged that the passports are “easy to forge” because they contain “no security features”. The “lack of test approaches” to detect counterfeits when creating digital vaccination certificates are also problematic. For about a week now, pharmacies have been able to use a server to check whether the batch number given in the vaccination certificate has actually been issued and vaccinated.
The police can now also check batch numbers for authenticity on the internal Extrapol platform. Police officers are now “specially trained to detect forgeries,” said the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office. According to the authorities there, cases of counterfeiting are now being determined centrally in a department in Saarland.
Since the end of November, using a wrong vaccination certificate in a pharmacy, for example, has been threatened with a fine or up to two years’ imprisonment. For a “professional” trade there can be up to five years imprisonment. Many state criminal investigation offices recently ran warning campaigns with references to these penalties.
The Berlin State Criminal Police Office pointed out to the “tageszeitung” that the forgeries were not only offered for sale on Telegram, but also on Whatsapp or Ebay classified ads – at prices between 50 and 350 euros. Digital evidence is more expensive than the yellow paper vaccination books.