According to analytical company Coinfirm, criminals are selling fake COVID-19 vaccination certificates and stolen vaccines for cryptocurrencies on darknet markets.
According to a report by Coinfirm, BTC, ETH, DASH, LTC, TRX, XMR, and ZEC have been chosen to accept payments either because of their ubiquity in the cryptoasset market or because of the anonymity provided by confidential coins. One of the darknet vendors, the COVID-19 Vaccine Shop, appears to be selling AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BionTech, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Sputnik V vaccines in bulk.
Some darknet market providers from the US, Russia and other countries are also selling fake COVID-19 vaccination certificates, which are issued thanks to “corruption in the health sector,” according to the report. Sellers promise not only to provide a vaccination document, but also to enter the buyer’s data into national health systems, where doctors’ signatures are used in some cases. Moreover, in most countries, including Russia, forgery and use of forged documents is a criminal offense.
One of the Bitcoin addresses, identified by Coinfirm as the recipient of funds for fake vaccination certificates, led to a Hong Kong-based exchange serving “Eastern European customers.” Coinfirm mentions the long-standing problem of the lack of KYC checks on many cryptocurrency trading platforms, which allows criminals to “easily” cash out illegally obtained cryptocurrencies.
“It is for these reasons that every exchange and trading floor is required to implement a strict KYC policy,” analysts say.
Recall that at the beginning of this year, the Israeli information security company Check Point found many fraudulent proposals for a COVID-19 vaccine for bitcoins on the darknet.
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