Threatened With 5 Years In Prison, 1 Of 9 Perpetrators Of Counterfeit Vaccine And PCR Certificates In East Kalimantan Are PNS

KALTIM - The Samarinda Police of East Kalimantan (Kaltim) managed to uncover cases of forgery of health certificates resulting from Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and COVID-19 vaccination cards. A total of 9 people were named as suspects in this case.

Wakapolresta Samarinda AKBP Eko Budianto Eko Budianto said this case was reported by an APT Pranoto Airport officer on July 29, 2021. The complainant felt suspicious when he checked the air travel letter from the passenger.

"During the examination of sister Hoiriyah, the reporter found a PCR result letter and a vaccine card that was allegedly fake. They found out that because the officer checked the barcode, it was not registered or registered," said Eko Budianto in an official statement in Samarinda quoted by Antara, Wednesday, August 4. .

He said the nine suspects had backgrounds from various professions and one of them was a State Civil Apparatus (ASN) or government employee.

"These suspects have their respective duties, but after we investigated the mastermind of the forgery, there were two suspects with the initials RW and SR who were in charge of duplicating PCR and vaccine cards," said Eko.

While the other suspects helped to duplicate the test results, then there were also those who worked to gather people who wanted to go out of town.

"These suspects are tasked with inviting people who want to use vaccine cards and PCR test results through their services," he explained.

After successfully gathering the community, the test results were taken in a blank format from one of the puskesmas. So they immediately made their own format which of course was fake.

"So first they took the blank format at the health center, then they printed it themselves with a printing machine as many as 41 sheets of vaccine letters," he said.

From this crime, one of the suspects made a total profit of around Rp. 5 million from the 28 counterfeits sold, with a range of Rp. 200 thousand per vaccine letter.

"Currently, the Samarinda Police have confiscated evidence in the form of 7 sheets of fake vaccine letters, 1 PCR letter, 1 cardboard, IDR 3 million in cash, 6 cellphones, pens, scissors, printers and savings books," he said.

The suspects were charged with Article 263 sub-Article 268 of the Criminal Code on Forgery of Letters with a penalty of 5 years in prison.