Canterbury businessman admits making fake Covid 19 vaccine passes

The man has been charged and appeared at Christchurch District Court today. Photo / File

A Canterbury businessman has today admitted making fake Covid-19 vaccine passes in protest of what he viewed as an unfair mandates system.

The man in his 60s, who has interim name suppression, pleaded guilty to a forgery charge at Christchurch District Court this afternoon, admitting counterfeiting a total of 30 My Vaccine passes and supplying them to people around the country.

He will be sentenced on October 27.

The summary of facts says the man copied the My Vaccine Pass from online and created a false template on his office computer.

He believed that unvaccinated people were being "unfairly disadvantaged" by being unable to get legitimate My Vaccine passes.

Although the counterfeit passes only had generic QR codes, which were not unique to individuals and wouldn't function if scanned, they could likely pass a quick visual check.

In January this year, he printed and supplied counterfeit passes to a number of people in Canterbury and a few others around New Zealand, the summary says.

Police identified 30 counterfeit passes made by him.

On January 21, a journalist using an alias phoned the man under the pretence of wanting a vaccine pass to attend a wedding.

The man told the journalist he was so disgusted by what the Government was doing that he wanted to help people as much as he could.

They agreed to meet that afternoon.

He entered the undercover journalist's alias and date of birth into a template while, at the same time, completing passes for others.

He gave the fake pass to the journalist and accepted $40 which he said was koha.

At the time, he told the journalist that he'd made a pass for himself and used it to visit someone in prison.

Police swooped on the property in January. When spoken to by officers, he declined to comment.

Today, his lawyer Nathan Batts indicated an application for permanent name suppression will be made and a judge will consider it on sentencing.

A North Canterbury doctor was last December caught on camera issuing fake vaccine exemptions to patients.

Dr Jonie Girouard, who runs a weight-loss clinic in Kaiapoi, is an unvaccinated GP who was captured by Newshub issuing fake certificates and coaching patients on how to get away with using them.

The Ministry of Health confirmed earlier it had issued a $300 infringement notice to Girouard after finding she had breached the Covid-19 Public Health Response (Vaccination) Order 2021 by seeing patients in person without being vaccinated and without a valid exemption.