Men sentenced over £136k Covid vaccine fraud

Two men have been sentenced for selling 2,000 fake Covid-19 vaccination records to people who had not had the jab.

Waqas Hanif, 28, and Touqir Nasir, 31, both from Luton, created false documents at Kingsway Health Centre, where Hanif worked on the vaccination programme, and sold them online.

A joint NHS and National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation led to their arrest and the seizure of £136,00 from a safety deposit box rented by Hanif.

Hanif was jailed for three years and Nasir received a 10-month sentence, suspended for one year, after they admitted fraud-related charges at Luton Crown Court on Thursday.

The NCA said unvaccinated people paid for official vaccine passport records through social media, with Hanif charging between £80 and £150 for two recorded doses.

Investigators found he had administrator access to the NHS vaccination recording system at the time, between June and October 2021.

Of the 2,663 suspicious entries linked to Kingsway, 1,875 came from IP addresses connected to Hanif's home.

More than £56,000 was also deposited into an account belonging to Nasir during the fraud.

Both Hanif, of Sherwood Road, and Nasir, of Runley Road, were convicted of conspiracy to cause a computer to perform a function with intent to commit offence; conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and possession of criminal property.

Nasir's sentence included a six-month curfew.

NCA deputy director Paul Foster said: "These men cynically abused our healthcare system for financial gain, at a time when the country was going through the turmoil and pain of the Covid 19 pandemic.

"Although receiving the vaccine is a matter of personal choice, such exploitation of our healthcare system to allow unvaccinated individuals to bypass restrictions that are in place to protect the British public is illegal."

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