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Courthouse in Munich
Photo: Matthias Balk / dpa
An employee of a Munich pharmacy has been sentenced to three years in prison because of false corona vaccination certificates in more than a thousand cases.
The Munich I Regional Court imposed a four-year prison sentence on an acquaintance of the woman who was also accused of having sold the vaccination certificates, among other things for violations of the Infection Protection Act.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
The court found it proven that the duo falsified vaccination certificates on a large scale over several months in 2021.
The man offered these for sale on the Darknet, and he is said to have earned more than 130,000 euros in total.
The pharmacy worker and the man had a brief affair in 2017 and then had a toxic relationship.
The woman has repeatedly tried to secure the man's affection through financial favors.
"That's how it should be"
According to the court, the fact that the pharmacy employee received a lower prison sentence than her accomplice was also due to her early confession.
"That's how it should be," said the presiding judge in his verdict.
The 37-year-old, on the other hand, acted with greater criminal energy and only benefited financially from the systematic counterfeiting.
The court also ordered the man to repay almost 100,000 euros from his earnings.
According to the court, he had already falsified documents before the vaccination certificates were sold.
Because he had obtained jobs as a media designer with forged references and certificates, the district court also convicted him of fraud.
The married 53-year-old is said to have issued the first fake vaccination certificates free of charge for the man and his fiancé at the time.
The duo then jointly decided to falsify the vaccination certificates for commercial purposes, it said.
The two would have used a computer in the pharmacy where the woman was employed.
While the public prosecutor emphasized that the defendants, unlike “99 percent of all people”, ignored corona restrictions at the peak of the pandemic and endangered the health of others with their fakes, the man’s defense downplayed this danger.
She and the woman's lawyer had asked for a suspended sentence for their clients.
The public prosecutor's office, on the other hand, pleaded for four years and ten months in prison for the accused and four years for the pharmacy employee.
wit/dpa
