Black market sales of vaccination passes

Vaccine passes are being offered for sale on a social media platform for $10, with transactions being done in bitcoin currency.

One anonymous post offers $50 for passes and claims they are ‘‘real’’. ‘‘We pay $ for vaccine passes, and then we sell them to members of the public who need them,’’ the post read.

‘‘Since the vaccine passes are real they will be accepted at shops, unless they require an ID check.’’

The posts were spotted by a member of FACT Aotearoa – a group working against the spread of conspiracy theories and antivaccine activity – and reported to police on Monday morning.

My Vaccine Pass is the Government’s vaccine certification system. It is a QR code that can be shown digitally or on printed paper, allowing venues to check whether a person has been vaccinated against Covid-19 or not.

Under the traffic light system, the passes will be needed to attend large festivals and many venues . Venues that use the passes will be able to operate more freely, even when there is Covid-19 in the community. An amendment to the Covid-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill makes the buying and selling of a vaccine certificate a criminal offence with penalties of up to six months in prison and up to $12,000 in fines. A police spokeswoman said complaints ‘‘regarding the misuse/fraudulent use of vaccine passes were dealt with on a case-by-case basis’’.

Michael Dreyer, manager of national digital services at the Ministry of Health, said fraudulent use or misuse of My Vaccine Passes ‘‘will be taken very seriously and not be tolerated’’.

‘‘Police are able to enforce the legitimate use of the My Vaccine Pass and can ask to check that a person’s ID matches their pass, or do spot checks at venues.’’

Dreyer said those checking My Vaccine Passes could ask for photo ID to verify the pass was issued to the person using it.

Auckland University researcher Andrew Chen said efforts to use the pass fraudulently were not unexpected, particularly when the traffic light system came into force. ‘‘I’m certain it’s happening elsewhere because it’s so easy to do.’’

He said people who wanted to remain unvaccinated ‘‘would be highly motivated to find a way to continue living their lives as they would have’’. The passes were not very ‘‘fraud-proof’’, and the Government’s advice to businesses making use of a verification app optional was ‘‘unfortunate’’.

‘‘The issue with the passes is that anybody can make a copy and give it to anybody else.’’

Businesses requiring proof of vaccination to enter could sight the pass only, Chen said.

‘‘In that case, anyone carrying anything that looks like a pass will be let in, so there’s no fraud protection there whatsoever.’’

Chen said he expected many people using fake passes would get away with it and this would create some degree of risk of Covid-19 transmission. Other more fraudproof certification methods would require everyone to have a smartphone, or would be much more expensive and take a longer time to develop, Chen said.

He believed businesses that were required to check for vaccine passes should have to use the verification app ‘‘at the very least’’. He said this would detect some people trying to use a completely fake pass with no real QR code and those who had changed the name.