First published at 03:40 UTC on September 8th, 2021.
‘It’s huge’: Inside the black market for counterfeit COVID vaccine passports.
"My personal fake vaccine pack" came advertised with an animated gif.
Set against a floral-patterned carpet, the gif rapidly zoomed in and out of a neatly arranged…
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‘It’s huge’: Inside the black market for counterfeit COVID vaccine passports.
"My personal fake vaccine pack" came advertised with an animated gif.
Set against a floral-patterned carpet, the gif rapidly zoomed in and out of a neatly arranged spread: four fake paper vaccine cards stamped with the logo of the U.K.'s National Health Service, paired with a piece of official-looking blank paperwork, and—for authenticity's sake—my (real) first name, and the date of the request. In this world, I had received two (phantom) doses of AstraZeneca. In reality, I am fully vaccinated—with two doses of Pfizer.
The other part of the package, the seller promised, was digital: a QR code that would supposedly give me access to a COVID-19 passport on the NHS's Track and Trace app. It would be sent within 30 minutes after I transferred €200, or about $236, in Bitcoin, the seller said. The paperwork would be sent to my home address. Could the seller get me a French COVID-19 passport, or a German one? No problem—€200 each.
This isn't the farthest reaches of the dark web. It's Telegram, a messaging app, where this seller runs a 111,000 member group flooded with photos of official looking COVID-19 certificates in various languages—and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
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