Buyers of fake COVID-19 vaccination certificates with Sputnik V started to be blackmailed – Kommersant

A new fraudulent scheme has emerged in Russia, in which cybercriminals blackmail buyers of fake coronavirus vaccination certificates. About it informs “Kommersant” with reference to the group of experts from Angara companies.

We are talking about people who bought a fake certificate of vaccination with Sputnik V. According to experts, they began to receive messages stating that the doctor who issued the certificate was arrested. After that, the scammers offer the frightened buyer to transfer 50 thousand rubles to the card in order to delete the correspondence with the personal data of the doctor who bought the certificate from the mail or social network of the doctor.

Telegram channel “Banksta” writesthat certificate buyers’ databases are transferred to fraudsters by certificate sellers.

Infosecurity a Softline Company confirmed that there is now an upsurge in such cases of fraud. According to Alexei Drozd, head of the SerchInform information security department, people who bought the certificate are intimidated by criminal prosecution, speaking of complicity in forging documents.

According to Art. 327 of the Criminal Code (“Forgery of official documents”), not only the one who falsified the vaccination certificate, but also the customer can be held liable: the purchase and storage of the document faces up to one year in prison, experts from Angara say.

On June 19, it became known that 24 criminal cases were opened in Moscow on the facts of the sale of fictitious certificates of vaccination against COVID-19 and fake certificates of the absence of coronavirus infection. Sellers of forged documents face up to 2 years in prison.

That in the chat rooms selling illegal services you can buy a certificate of vaccination against coronavirus infection, wrote Telegram channel Baza. According to the channel, when buying a certificate, the information about the vaccination is entered by the seller of the service into the federal register of vaccinated, and the buyer has a mark about the vaccination on his personal page on “State Services”.

The cost of the service ranges from 10 to 20 thousand rubles. For a “virtual” injection, you need passport data, SNILS number and a confirmed account on “State Services”.

The Insider also easily found people in Moscow who offered to enter data on two Sputnik V vaccinations at once into the database on State Services and issue a certificate. In a chat under the banner “Help in Moscow,” they assured that the 220th city polyclinic in Moscow would be indicated as the vaccination site. The phone that these people use to communicate was previously used by a car dealership, which is described as fraudulent on review sites.