Italian police have caught a gang behind a huge anti-vax scam that helped people sign up to get the Covid-19 vaccine only to have it t...
Italian police have caught a gang behind a huge anti-vax scam that helped people sign up to get the Covid-19 vaccine only to have it thrown away and not injected in a ploy to get a vaccine passport.
According to the investigation, a network of dozens of people involved bringing people from all over Italy to the vaccination centre in Ancona where they paid up to €400 (£330) for a fake jab.
The nurse who was supposed to inject them would squirt the dose into the rubbish bin before she would put a plaster on the patient and give them a 'green pass', which shows proof of vaccination.
Police in Italy arrested a nurse (pictured) who took bribes to give people fake proof of vaccination
Instead of injecting the dose into people's arms she was squrt it onto a tissue or into a bin
The nurse received hundreds of euros in exchange for the scam that took place in northeastern Italy
With growing pressure in European countries including many countries considering making the Covid vaccine compulsory, people are increasingly opting for fraud in order to obtain the vaccine passport confirming that they are vaccinated.
A special police squad in Ancona, northeastern Italy, found people who wanted to avoid having the vaccine were bribing a 51-year-old nurse running a vaccination centre in the area to pretend to give them the jab so that they could get their jab certificate.
As the video shows, the nurse and the patient make a show of getting the injection but she then reaches over and injects the contents into a waste container.
The nurse made a show of pretending to inject patients with the Covid vaccine before dumping the dose
The nurse's behaviour was caught on camera, with the footage released by police
The nurse was arrested and placed in preventive custody, while four people including a 53-old-lawyer from Ancona who acted as intermediaries for the scam were put under house arrest
The the gang were charged with wasting public resources and undermining the effectiveness of the public health work of the Italian national health system in order to tackle the spread of Covid
Italy has had more than eight million confirmed coronavirus cases during the course of the pandemic
The country was one of the first in Europe to use emergency measures beacuse of the virus and has seen 141,000 people die from Covid
Almost 50 million people have had their first Covid vaccine dose in Italy, accounting for 82.8 per cent of the population, while 76.1 per cent are fully vaccinated and 43.8 per cent have had a booster
The nurse was arrested and placed in preventive custody, while four people including a 53-old-lawyer from Ancona who acted as intermediaries for the scam were put under house arrest.
Police are investigating around 50 people as part of their operation, which started in December last year, and have ordered them not to leave the region and present themselves on a daily basis to the local force.
The the gang were charged with wasting public resources and undermining the effectiveness of the public health work of the Italian national health system in order to tackle the spread of Covid.
Police also seized €18,000 that had been garnered from people who paid for the vaccine.
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