Austrian authorities raided 24 homes across the country on Wednesday in connection to a network allegedly creating fake vaccine certifications and other documents to sell online.
The searches were carried out in homes across seven of nine all of the regions of Austria and saw police recover 84 vaccine passports, 30 mobile phones, 17 laptop and desktop PCs, five tablets and 13 USB memory sticks.
The raids came after authorities observed people talking about the fake documents on the encrypted mobile phone messaging app Telegram, Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung reports.
A total of 22 people are suspects in the raid but are not believed to be a formal network but rather a loose collection of people who reuse to take the Wuhan coronavirus vaccine and have issued the fake vaccine documents to people within their own social circles.
Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner commented on the raids on Wednesday saying, “The pandemic has given rise to new forms of crime. The Federal Criminal Police Office and the State Criminal Police Offices are facing up to these tasks through consistent and structured investigations, in close cooperation with the health authorities.”
Since April Austrian authorities have discovered 1,100 cases of forgery relating to the Wuhan coronavirus and the subsequent vaccines.
A recent case involved employees at the charitable aid agency Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB), who issued fake vaccine certifications at the Vienna Austria Centre, a major vaccination hub in the Austrian capital.
Arbeiter-Samariterbund spokeswoman Stefanie Kurzweil stated that they observe at least two attempts at fraud relating to the vaccine per week, including attempts to bribe staff at the vaccination centre.
In November of last year, the Austrian government announced that it would be making vaccinations mandatory for all Austrian residents as of February and that those who refuse the jab could face heavy fines and even possible prison time.
Austria is not the only country to conduct raids on those producing fake vaccine documents. In Italy, police conducted a series of 40 raids across the country and identified at least 120 buyers of fake health passports that were being sold online for as little as 120-200 euros (£102-170/$135-225).
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