About twenty customers receive fines ranging from 800 to 1,500 euros, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The doctor was arrested Tuesday and taken into police custody, along with two suspected accomplices, a 53-year-old woman and a 49-year-old man, as part of an investigation for "aggravated swindle" and "false administrative".

The man was indicted for "complicity in aggravated fraud" and "money laundering", under judicial supervision.

The woman was placed under the intermediary status of assisted witness for "aggravated fraud complicity", a less incriminating status than that of indicted.

The indicted doctor, aged 56, has a practice in the small town of Joinville-Le-Pont, south-east of Paris.

He is suspected of having sold at least 220 false passes, for a price displayed at 1,000 euros each.

These falsification cases linked to the Covid-19 pandemic often implicate "people employed in vaccination centers (...) cyber-attackers who use the doctor's code to make false passes", but rarely " a doctor who begins to cash in ", commented at the time of the arrest a police source from Val-de-Marne to AFP.

In July, investigators from the Territorial Security of Val-de-Marne were alerted to the existence of a Snapchat account offering fake PCR tests and fake health passes.

Their investigations "showed that the patients never came to the office".

Clients would not be particularly opposed to vaccination.

It is "the summer period" which would have motivated their fraudulent purchases: "Some countries demanded a complete vaccination cycle and they paid exorbitant prices to go on vacation", had advanced the police source.

Investigators also suspect the doctor of Social Security fraud.

At least three departments - Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris and Val-de-Marne - would be victims.

© 2021 AFP