DNA Explainer: Black market for fake COVID-19 vaccine certificates growing at rapid pace across world - Study

The world is fighting the COVID-19 pandemic not just on one front but on multiple levels. Now it has come to the forefront that fake vaccine certificates are in huge circulation all over the world. To fight the pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines are being administered to people around the world by different governments.

As the COVID-19 virus is here to stay for a long, vaccination is the last resort to bring back things and lives to normalcy and start public activities like before with strict restrictions in place. Hence all governments are rigorously going with their inoculation drives to start economic activities.

Travellers are also required to have a negative COVID-19 test result (RT-PCR report) or a vaccination certificate to travel from one state or one country to another.

After inoculating, governments are issuing vaccine certificates to their people to keep a tab on who all have been vaccinated and who still needs to get a shot. But like all other commodities and services, black marketeers have found a new way to earn money.

They are now issuing fake vaccine certificates to people and this has increased ten times in the past few months. Check Point, an American-Israeli multinational software company, conducted a study to observe the black market for fake COVID-19 vaccine certificates.

Check Point Research (CPR) report says the demand for fake test results and COVID-19 vaccine certificates in the black market has increased because of those who do not wish to be vaccinated.

Findings of the study

The study found that the fake vaccine market has expanded to 29 countries all over the world.

The nine major countries new to the list namely are Austria, Brazil, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Singapore, Thailand, UAE.

Check Point Research (CPR) experts claim there were nearly 1,000 vendors of fake vaccine certificates as of August 10 on Telegram.

However, this number saw a huge increase in the last one month and has now grown beyond 10,000, signalling a 10 fold growth.

Earlier these fake COVID-19 vaccine certificates were available on Telegram for USD 85.

Since US President Joe Biden announced a vaccine mandate, the price for a 'registered' CDC vaccine certificate has now increased to USD 200.

The number of group members on Telegram has increased from 30,000 to 300,000 in the past few months.

The study found that in December 2020, a few hundred COVID-19 vaccines were being sold on the Darknet for USD 250.

However, the black market then started selling fake negative COVID-19 test reports and vaccine certificates for USD 130-150.

Now people can get fake COVID-19 vaccine passports or certificates, CDC and NHS vaccine cards and also fake PCR COVID tests.

Singapore is one of the biggest markets for this as a single fake vaccine certificate is being sold for 250 Euros.

A Telegram bot has been designed in Austria that can help get people fake COVID-19 vaccine certificates for free.