In the Covid-Era travel scheme, fraudsters offer false test results

“As long as travel restrictions remain in place due to the Covid-19 situation, it is highly likely that the production and sale of fake test certificates will prevail,” said Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, this month.

Allegations of fraud in Covid-19 tests have surfaced around the world. A man was arrested outside London Luton Airport in late January in connection with the sale of fake Covid-19 test certificates.

In November, French authorities arrested seven people for selling fake certificates to travelers at Charles de Gaulle airport, near Paris. Police first learned of the fraud after discovering a passenger with a fake certificate on a flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. After the arrests, police found more than 200 fake certificates on the suspects’ phones, which allowed people to fly abroad, according to French prosecutors.

In late January, police in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, said they had arrested eight people who were allegedly involved in a scheme to sell manufactured negative test results to travelers.

Indonesian authorities arrested 15 people in a separate scheme that month, accusing them of offering false results for about $ 70 each. Police say a former health worker at the city’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport obtained an electronic copy of a negative test certificate and, as of October, used it to print about 20 counterfeit test results per day .

In the Philippines, a government research institute affiliated with the health department warned last month that people posing as their employees were selling fake Covid-19 test results.

Taiwan banned Indonesian migrant workers in December, saying it could not trust the results of the country’s Covid-19 test. Earlier that month, four-fifths of Indonesian workers who provided the Taiwanese authorities with test results showing they were virus-free were tested positive for Covid-19 after being wiped in Taiwan.

“These reports are becoming increasingly inaccurate,” said Chen Shih-chung, Taiwan’s minister of health, in December. “We really have no idea what kinds of problems they have.”

The Indonesian government agency that handles the affairs of migrant workers said it would strengthen oversight of migrant workers’ testing to avoid false testing.

The potential for fraud abounds amid a patchwork of international travel restrictions that were adopted during the pandemic.

“The results of the paper tests come not only in different formats and languages, but they can also be easily manipulated,” said Albert Tjoeng, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association, which represents about 290 airlines worldwide. He said that check-in agents should “try to determine the authenticity of several non-standard test documents that passengers present to them”.

The problem has no easy solution. Some governments have warned of the action. Singapore, for example, says travelers who present fake test certificates will face restrictions on their ability to reside in the city-state in the future, while the Chinese government has warned of “legal liability”.

An effort to make the test verification process easier is CommonPass, a project supported by the non-profit organization The Commons Project Foundation, under which each country will be asked to share its testing and vaccination requirements for travelers, and the names facilities that the authorities trust to administer Covid-19 tests.

Designated facilities will insert travelers’ vaccination and Covid-19 testing information into data systems that can be accessed through CommonPass, allowing individuals to share that data with airlines and border authorities. “It is a way to effectively issue a certificate – a digital certificate, such as a test certificate or a vaccination record – but in a way that is counterfeit-proof,” said Paul Meyer, chief executive of the Commons Project.

CommonPass was tested on several international flights last year, and the Commons Project says it is coordinating its efforts with more than 20 governments.

IATA says it is also developing a mobile app, called the IATA Travel Pass, that will allow passengers to share test results with authorities in a way that, according to the association, will make it almost impossible to travel with false documents.

But getting all countries to accept the same digital passes is a challenge, creating obstacles in an already difficult travel regime.

“Without the ability to rely on Covid-19 testing – and, eventually, vaccine records – across international borders, many countries will feel compelled to maintain the total travel ban and mandatory quarantines as long as the pandemic persists,” said Bradley Perkins, medical director of the Commons Project and former director of strategy and innovation at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

—Lekai Liu and Sam Schechner contributed to this article.

Write to Jon Emont at [email protected]