Five people arrested for trafficking in fake Covid documents near Schiphol Airport site

The police arrested five people on Wednesday for selling falsified coronavirus documents hundreds of times. It concerns four men and a woman between the ages of 22 and 37. They are each suspected of having traded between dozens and hundreds of false pieces of coronavirus evidence which could be used to access various locations. In total they earned tens of thousands of euros, the police estimated.

At the end of last year, the police arrested five people who allegedly created and sold fraudulent coronavirus evidence as externally hired employees at the GGD coronavirus test and Covid-19 vaccination facility near Schiphol Airport. Those who obtained the documents received QR codes which they could use to gain access to many public places. This includes people who might have been contagious with the coronavirus, those who did not want to be tested, or who were not vaccinated against Covid-19. One of the arrested people made use of several brokers, after which the five new suspects came into the picture with the police.

These intermediaries used WhatsApp to send the citizen services numbers and birth dates of people who wanted coronavirus documents to the temporary workers stationed at the GGD. They then generated a QR code for the broker to sell. In this way, the five suspects each delivered up to hundreds of QR codes. These were sold for hundreds of euros per code.

The police said on Wednesday they searched eight homes in De Rijp, Amsterdam, Amstelveen, Almere and Utrecht. Three other suspects who are involved in the coronavirus evidence scheme are still being sought. They likely traded QR codes on a smaller scale.

The organization overseeing all GGD branches, GGD GHOR Nederland, said it will not respond to the issue as long as the police investigation is ongoing. The police also said that they now have buyers' data in their hands, and are warning people never to share their citizen service number so easily.

"These can be used to commit identity theft, which can have major consequences."