A pharmacy employee is said to have produced hundreds of fake QR codes for the digital corona vaccination card together with accomplices and sold them on the Internet. On Friday, a pharmacy in Munich and private apartments were searched, the woman and another suspect came into custody, as investigators from the Bavarian Central Office for Combating Fraud and Corruption in the Health Care System (ZKG) announced on Saturday in Nuremberg. A ZKG spokesman said it was a procedure of "above average importance". The Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation had previously reported on it.
The fake codes are said to have been offered on a German-language cybercrime forum on the Internet since mid-August. In the end, you had to spend 350 euros to get a digital vaccination card - without having been vaccinated against the coronavirus. In October alone, the counterfeiters are said to have issued more than 500 vaccination certificates. During the searches, cryptocurrencies and cash worth almost 100,000 euros were seized.
A false vaccination card was found in other EU countries, the investigators said.
However, many false IDs are likely to be circulating in Germany.
According to a spokesman for the ZKG, which is based at the Nuremberg Public Prosecutor's Office, it is not possible to determine the names of the buyers of the fake codes.
It was initially unclear whether the forged vaccination cards could be deleted or made invalid.
The counterfeiters are said to have used the IT infrastructure of the Munich pharmacy.
The pharmacist himself was not accused, the investigators emphasized.