Andrea got a job as a dancer abroad last October. She had not been fully vaccinated, she says, because she had just had the virus. That information was enough to board the plane at Barcelona’s El Prat Airport, but not for entry to her destination, where a Covid vaccination certificate was required. Andrea – not her real name – decided to acquire the document on the black market and contacted numbers advertised on Instagram. After paying out €800 via Bizum and passing on her personal data, she realized her mistake. “They sent me a photoshopped document with a QR code that showed the name Gabriel when I passed a scanner,” she tells EL PAÍS. Ashamed of seeming naive, she did not report the scam to the police. How could she when what she wanted to buy was illegal?
Cybercriminals have pounced on the opportunities thrown up by the coronavirus pandemic. In Andrea’s case, they were taking advantage of those seeking a so-called Covid passport. This black market exists, and the prices being quoted are not low. A recent study by the Israeli multinational cybersecurity company, Check Point Research, has detected a steep increase in fees. While in October the average price paid for a fake passport was around $250 (€220) and $25 (€22) for a negative PCR test, by January it had risen to around $600 (€530) and $100 (€88), respectively.
The sale of fraudulent vaccination certificates began to attract the attention of the authorities before last summer, when the…
