Rajanish Kakade/AP
- Thousands of Indians got fake COVID-19 vaccines authorities said, The New York Times reported.
- Scammers in Mumbai used saltwater shots and charged up to $17 a dose at private clinics.
- The scam went on for at least the past two months and 14 people have been arrested.
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More than 2,600 people went to camps in India to get COVID-19 vaccines but may have instead been scammed and given saltwater shots as part of a scheme, The New York Times reported.
Police have so far arrested 14 people they suspect are involved in the scheme which spanned the past two months and occurred at about a dozen private vaccination sites in Mumbai.
Authorities said they confiscated over $20,000 from the suspects. They said organizers of the sites, which included medical professionals, charged up to $17 per dose.
People who got their shots at these sites became suspicious after their vaccination did not show up on the government's online portal that tracks vaccinations and when the hospitals the workers told them they belonged to didn't match the ones of the vaccine cards they were given.
This isn't the first COVID-19 scam. In March, Interpol, broke up global criminal network smuggling vials of fake COVID-19 vaccines across the globe, seizing more than 2,000 counterfeit doses from a warehouse outside of Johannesburg, South Africa.
The doses were made of saline solution.
Around the same time, Chinese officials also seized 3,000 counterfeit vials.
During a surge in cases in India, scammers also sold fake oxygen and drugs to desperate families.