“It was a good vein, in four months you can reach 100,000 euros”, testifies a former salesman

182,000 false passes discovered since this summer, 400 investigations opened and around a hundred arrests already carried out. The fight against fake pass traffic is accelerating to identify the sellers and their accomplices. But while waiting for the channels to drop, getting a fake pass is almost child’s play.

On the Snapchat app for example, the purchase takes a few minutes, following a few easily identifiable accounts. For a hundred euros, we get the QR code of another, which is similar to the method “artisanal“. For 350 euros, by delivering your surname, first name, social security number, you get what buyers call a real fake pass, accessible on your Ameli account, as if you had been really vaccinated. A really more sophisticated scam.

These real false passes, Yassin, in his twenties, passed them before being arrested. “AT the base was to help my relatives, it was really not a matter of money“, testifies the young man who is now awaiting trial and has ceased this activity.”When it took hold, the idea was to take the money because it was really astronomical sums, plus without investing. Frankly if you put it all in, in four months you can reach 100,000 euros“.

Yassin quickly saw his advantage in this traffic: “C‘was a good vein to take and I went all out on it. I’m not gonna go bother selling drugs, it’s less serious“Less serious and also much simpler,”you don’t even bother looking for clients, they come directly to you, thanks to social networks, word of mouth “.

At the top of the chain, there is therefore necessarily a health professional, explains the young man. “VS‘is obliged, a doctor or a pharmacist, whether he is aware or not, there is always a health professional“, either victim of piracy, or in agreement with the traffic.

Beyond the risk to health, users of false passes risk up to three years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros. It is even heavier for counterfeiters and dealers. Doctors, physiotherapists, nurses or pharmacists complicit in trafficking, in addition, risk being banned from practicing their profession. If most of the traffickers already tried in Lille, Bordeaux or Muret, for example, get away with suspended prison sentences, two people in Île-de-France have served four months in pre-trial detention.

“It is not at all a minor offense, it is really a serious infringement, warns Camille Chaize, spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior, this is the reason why we have stepped up our investigative work of the judicial police, which is quite thorough. We work a lot with health insurance, capable of identifying anomalies using an artificial intelligence system.”

“We are strengthening our digital investigations on social networks in particular. There is Snapchat, WhatsApp, Telegram and on the Internet in general.”

Camille Chaize, spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior

to franceinfo

The Ministers of the Interior and of Health evoked the idea of ​​a statute of penitentiary promising the abandonment of prosecutions to the holders of fake health passes who would finally want to fall into line and be vaccinated. Many doctors are already helping certain patients to operate this reverse process.

“I had a few people who told me ‘let’s say I know someone who would have had a fake pass, what should I do? ‘, relates Christian Lehmann, general practitioner in Poissy, I told them ‘you come closer to a vaccination center, you explain what happened. It will be reported to the authorities, to Social Security and then to the police. It is not to cop you, but to close the channel. Either you don’t and you just wait for your die to drop and someday someone calls you ‘. “

There is no question for the general practitioner to make those concerned feel guilty who come before him. “Someone who is’ repented ‘, who sees around him unvaccinated and hospitalized family members, we are not going to punish him by saying’ ah! You had the fool to pay for a paper that is worth nothing so now, we will watch you get infected ‘, obviously“.

AT Garches hospital, near Paris at the beginning of December, a 54-year-old woman died of Covid-19 with her fake health pass in her pocket. Her husband filed a complaint against X.