Fake green passes for sale at 100 euros on Telegram, gang vanquished

False green passes, vanquished a gang of creators who promised, via Telegram, to many ‘customers’ to provide authentic green passes, equipped with QR codes perfectly suitable to pass the checks imposed by current regulations, at a cost of 100 euros. The Financiers of the Special Unit for the Protection of Privacy and Technological Fraud have concluded an important operation to combat the phenomenon of green pass scams, identifying the creators and executors of the illegal activity. The investigation, coordinated by the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, made it possible to identify and search several Italian citizens in Veneto, Liguria, Puglia and Sicily, administrators of Telegram accounts, who ensured the authenticity of the green pass thanks to an alleged complicity of healthcare personnel guaranteeing users the ‘satisfied or reimbursed’ formula. The scammers demanded payment for the title strictly in cryptocurrencies. With the members of the criminal organization exposed, the scammers immediately admitted their responsibilities. The financiers completely rebuilt the customer network and seized the illicit profits in cryptocurrency. Bitcoin and Ethereum were the favorites. In fact, the discovery on the numerous devices of the suspects – seized first and then analyzed – of photographs of identity documents and health cards of numerous subjects, reports certifying the negativity of nasopharyngeal swabs, false certificates of satisfaction of customers for the counterfeit green passes and, above all, chats from which the devious modus operandi adopted by the criminal organization emerges eloquently. Numerous network users who – in order to circumvent the rules for the protection of the community issued by the legislator to counteract the ” evolution of the pandemic in progress – attracted by the idea of ​​being able to buy a green pass without having the right for a cost of 100 euros, in addition to having lost the agreed sum, they also superficially shared their identity documents, exposing themselves to high risks around an illicit use of the same. For the investigation, Bot and Avatar investigation tools, by u the very latest generation, implemented also thanks to the help provided by the IT investigation team of Group-IB, technological partner of Interpol and Europol, combined with an innovative and dynamic ‘real time’ monitoring of the network and the application of investigation techniques avant-garde by the military of the Guardia di Finanza.