Telegram Fraudsters Ramp Up Forged COVID-19 Vaccine Card Sales

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Telegram groups are being abused by fraudsters peddling fake COVID-19 vaccination cards to the unvaccinated and anti-vaxxer communities, according to researchers.
 
Brittany Allen, trust and safety architect at Sift, noticed the illicit sales on the encrypted messaging platform as the COVID-19 vaccination began to ramp up earlier in the year. Several groups circulating on Telegram specialize in different types of fraud, including selling stolen credentials or credit-card numbers, as well as guides to how to defraud certain companies. Lately though, fraudulent vaccination cards have become a hot commodity, she said.
 
“When it became a bigger possibility of being able to travel, or when certain events began to require proof of vaccination, we started to see people posting vaccine cards for sale or soliciting vaccine cards for themselves,” she told Threatpost in an interview.
 
It is illegal to make or buy fake COVID-19 vaccination record cards with an official government agency’s seal, according to the FBI. “[T]he unauthorized use of an official government agency’s seal (such as HHS or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)) is a crime, and may be punishable under Title 18 United States Code, Section 1017, and other applicable laws,” according to an FBI warning about fake vaccination cards.
 
Even so, “more and more posts or messages about cards for sale started popping up in February, and then it really began to take off towards the end of March and through April,” Allen said. “I saw in the news recently that you can now travel to Iceland, and vaccinated U.S. citizens can travel to the E.U., and some universities are actually now requiring that for the fall. As the need to show proof of vaccine increases, we’re definitely going to see even more of this; we haven’t reached the peak yet.”
 
She said that some of the activity consists of one-off posts in fraud-oriented groups with names like “Bitcoin Bandits” – but increasingly, some Telegram groups (with hundreds or even thousands of members) now specifically focus only on selling fake vaccine cards.

Read more: Telegram Fraudsters Ramp Up Forged COVID-19 Vaccine Card Sales | Threatpost