Officials Seize Nearly 1K Fake COVID-19 Vaccination Cards In Baltimore Area

3 years ago 381

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Since the commencement of the pandemic, investigators with the Homeland Security’s Baltimore bureau person seized hundreds of counterfeit masks, fake COVID treatments and adjacent fraudulent websites claiming to merchantability COVID vaccines.

Now, they’re dealing with a spike of counterfeit vaccination cards, being shipped into Baltimore.

So far, the squad has seized astir 1,000 fake vaccination cards, purchased from China and sent to the Baltimore area.

“We’ve made implicit 32 seizures of astir 1,000 COVID cards,” said Christopher Tafe, portion of the Border Enforcement Security Task Force astatine Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Baltimore.

Tafe showed an illustration of 1 vaccination paper they seized that misspelled COVID connected the fake vaccination cards. He said these cards were purchased from China and mailed to Maryland, a national crime, with hundreds of cards meant to beryllium sold for nett for anyplace from $500 to $2500.

“It’s a menace to nationalist safety,” Tafe said.

And the COVID-19 cases don’t halt there. Since the commencement of the pandemic, HSI Baltimore’s squad has been seizing fake masks and fake COVID medications, thing fraudulent coming done the Baltimore larboard oregon airport.

Evan Campanella works for the HSI Baltimore Cyber Crimes group, trying to find fake websites claiming to merchantability vaccines.

“One of the websites we seized was MORDERNA, truthful they stuck an ‘r’ determination successful the website,” Campanella said.

So far, they’ve seized 15 counterfeit oregon fraudulent websites.

On 1 of the websites they seized, 3 residents of Baltimore County were involved. “They were receiving the wealth erstwhile radical went to spell and acquisition the vaccines,” Campanella said.

And with the announcement of an antiviral COVID pill from Merck, they’re keeping their eyes peeled for immoderate fake websites claiming to merchantability that pill.

“As soon arsenic they’re up we bash everything we tin to get them down,” Campanella said.

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If you spot thing that looks suspicious connected a website oregon being sold to the public, you tin interaction HSI Baltimore’s TIP LINE NUMBER astatine 1-866-347-2423