Indianapolis, Indiana – More and more cases with fake Covid-19 cards are seen across the city of Indianapolis and FBI joins the investigation in combating these cases, authorities confirm.
According to FBI Indianapolis, there is Complex Financial Crimes Squad withing the local FBI headquarters and the pandemic has added a slew of new financial fraud cases to his plate.
“I kind of think, when is the work ever going to end?” said Special Agent Spencer Brooks.
Brooks added that the FBI is seeing a decent increase in buying and selling fake Covid-19 vaccination cards across the city as new restrictions for unvaccinated are coming across the country.
“We’re certainly seeing that, that’s certainly out there, that’s certainly an issue,” Brooks said. “We’re seeing more recently, when you’re seeing people need to have them to go out and do certain things.”
The major issue with this popular trend is the fact that unvaccinated people want to go to concerts and work as usual while they are hesitant and don’t want to get the vaccine, putting all the others around them at risk.
While the vaccination is free process for everyone and everyone gets vaccine hard after the second dose of the vaccine, people are simply making easy-money out of the whole situation. Brooks said that he and his team have seen numerous ads across social media where people are selling vaccination cards varying from $10-$250 since they are easily replicated.
“[It’s] kind of different from your passport which has like a tremendous amount of security measures in it,” he said. That also makes it easy for him to spot when the card is falsified.
Brooks said there’s usually an identifiable mistake in the fake cards. Sometimes, it’ll have a missing Center for Disease Control and Prevention or Health and Human Services logo, or it has typos.
Meanwhile, the fake Covid-19 vaccination card is nation-wide issue and is present in almost every state more or less with the new vaccine mandate coming in place very soon. On September 16, Cincinnati officers seized 1,683 counterfeit COVID vaccination cards, but it is a major crime people like Brooks would follow up on.
“There might be a certain situation where you might get a call or a visit from us and we’re asking who you bought it from, or we find some posts of you buying something online,” Brooks said.
Brooks said the local authorities are seeking help from the community and is asking everyone to report such incident.
“That’s something that we want to know about and that’s something that I think your viewers, in their minds, they also think ‘this is not ok. I should report this,'” said Brooks. “I know sometimes that’s hard. But we need folks to report it, because otherwise we don’t really know.”
According to the Department of Justice, violators could face up to five years in prison or a $5,000 fine for misrepresenting the official seal of a U.S. agency, on a fake COVID vaccine card.
If you see someone buying or selling fake vaccine cards, you can report it in several ways.
- Call 1-800-CALL–FBI (225-5324)
- Use the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center
- National Center for Disaster Fraud – website or call 1-866-720-5721
