A health worker who worked at the Olympic Stadium vaccination center during the pandemic pocketed $150,000 selling hundreds of fraudulent vaccine passports. A “shocking” crime, insisted the Crown prosecutor.
“In a context of mass vaccination to limit the impact of COVID-19, an individual in whom we gave our trust decided to make money by endangering the safety of Quebecers. It’s shocking. I will raise it substantially during the sentence,” said Crown prosecutor M.e François Boillat-Madfouny, in the press scrum.
Adams Diwa, a 24-year-old resident of Terrebonne, pleaded guilty Thursday morning at the Montreal courthouse to charges of breach of trust by a public servant and manufacturing false documents. He was caught by the Permanent Anti-Corruption Unit (UPAC) in November 2023.
The corrupt young official is not the first to face justice for a fake vaccine passport scheme. However, his case appears to be one of the most serious due to the sums obtained and the number of false documents produced.
“It was very easy money and their security was so poor, it’s like they’re saying do it! », Confided Adams Diwa in an interview with The Press in January 2022.
Adams Diwa worked as an administrative agent at the Olympic Stadium vaccination center in the fall of 2021. He reported to the CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’île-de-Montréal. The young official’s sole task was to enter vaccination data into the Vaccination Register.
Between September and November 2021, Adams Diwa registered nearly 1,250 fake vaccines in the Quebec Vaccination Register for the benefit of 630 people. One or more accomplices found citizens interested in obtaining a vaccination passport without being vaccinated.
“Mostly it was through word of mouth. You know a friend, who knows a friend, who knows a friend, and the money will travel. It will be paid in cash,” he explained to The Press in 2022.
Adams Diwa used his own user code to register the vast majority of fake vaccines. The scoundrels who paid him didn’t even need to go to a vaccination center.
“I did it very clean. I created a real appointment in the system, as if the person had made their appointment. A date for the first dose, and 28 days later the second dose. I had to write down the type of vaccine and the place where they were vaccinated,” he told The Press in 2022.
In addition to being easy, the official’s scheme was lucrative. In just two months, he pocketed $150,000, according to facts admitted in court. Police found $100,000 in a bank account, $30,000 in cash at his home and the remainder in property.
Remember that in 2021 and 2022, a citizen must have received two doses of vaccine to obtain their vaccination passport and access certain places. This obligation aroused the indignation of a handful of opponents of vaccination.
The file will return next August for observations on the sentence. The Crown prosecutor did not wish to comment on the sentence he could ask for. However, he stressed that the health context constituted the “main” aggravating factor.
“We are talking about a State Register which the government is using to protect the population in an unprecedented health context. There is money involved and accomplices,” argued Me Boillat-Madfouny in the press scrum.
Me Laurence Ledoux defends the accused.