The Interior Ministry has revised upwards the number of fakes used in France, while acknowledging that these figures are greatly underestimated.
This is another epidemic which affects France and whose cases continue to grow. No less than 182,000 fake health passes are circulating in France today, according to the Interior Ministry, against 110,000 at the end of last week. A sharp increase which is explained not by a new desire to defraud as the holidays approach, but by an increase in controls wanted by Gérald Darmanin.
According to the entourage of the minister quoted by LCI, the number of false claims advanced on Monday is however certainly underestimated, because only the cases “Proven” are counted. So many have probably gone under radar so far and could be discovered in the coming weeks. “The number of false passes is actually higher” and will be “Brought to evolve”, assure relatives of Gerald Darmanin. At the end of September, the Health Insurance for example only spoke of 36,000 suspected cases of false health passes. While the government is now talking about the idea of imposing sesame – soon to be vaccinated – on all employees in the company, the fakes could continue to multiply.
Falsifying one’s vaccination can, however, have dramatic consequences. Release told a few days ago the story of Aïcha, a woman in her fifties, who died of Covid-19 at the Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine). However, she had presented a health pass when she arrived in the establishment, but the doctors had found no trace of antibodies in her analyzes. Her husband had finally admitted that her pass was not one in the face of the suspicions of the medical profession.
Real fake passes
Like many unvaccinated people wishing to obtain a health pass, the fifty-something had bought a fake online for a few hundred euros. Larger than life because issued by health professionals, thanks to hacking or the simple use by a health professional of the internal health insurance system “Covid vaccine”, they have been abundant since July.
A patient’s file is modified so that they are considered vaccinated, without receiving any injection. At the Nice University Hospital and Antibes Hospital, nearly 30% of patients in intensive care due to Covid-19 present a false pass, according to the head of the intensive care unit of the CHU on BFM TV. Despite everything, it is very difficult for resuscitators to identify, even if they would like, the real false vaccines. It does happen, however, occasionally, that a confession, or a material element, makes it possible to know that one of their patients has “benefited” from a false vaccination certificate.
In recent weeks, according to the Interior Ministry quoted by AFP, a hundred people have been arrested, both users and traffickers of fake health passes. At the beginning of December, a network of counterfeiters which would have made it possible to create between 5,000 and 10,000 false certificates was dismantled. By using the identifiers of pharmacists, retrieved from the site of the National Order of Pharmacists, they would have made a profit of around 2 million euros.
Engaging in such practices is risky from a legal point of view. For the presentation of a false health pass, the fraudster can be fined 135 euros, 1,500 euros in the event of a repeat offense within two weeks, or even 3,750 euros and six months’ imprisonment if the fraud is repeated under thirty days.
However, for returnees now wishing to be vaccinated after buying a fake pass, a tolerance is applied, explained Olivier Véran at the end of last week. On the other hand, there is no tolerance for counterfeiters, who incur penalties of up to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of 150,000 euros.