At least five Magen David Adom volunteers were arrested on Wednesday for illegally orchestrating black market Coronavirus testing for civilians and pocketing the money. The announcement regarding the arrests came on Wednesday.

The Jerusalem police division opened an investigation into the volunteers after a report in Ynet was published documenting the illegal tests being conducted. According to an MDA spokesperson, the organization had submitted a complaint to the police regarding their suspicions that such a racket was taking place and that pirated coronavirus tests were being carried out by one specific MDA volunteer. The statement also said that the volunteers in question have been removed from service and that MDA has filed charges against them. The report from Ynet detailed a number of accomplices as well as the main perpetrator.

After the initial arrest of the volunteer who was suspected as being the ringleader, police investigators found that indeed additional MDA volunteers were involved as well as lab owners in Israel and Ramallah.

According to the Ynet report and initial police investigations, the suspects would arrive at pre-arranged locations throughout Israel and carry out pirated tests. The locations included Ben-Gurion Airport, and various Charedi neighborhoods in Jerusalem and other cities.

It is suspected that many of the tests ensured a negative result, thus allowing the person paying for the illegal test to travel in and out of the country as they please with the fake results.

The volunteers would take the pirated tests and send them to labs in the Palestinian Authority and a private lab in Israel with the goal of ensuring that the results did not end up in the Health Ministry’s database.

“The suspects have severely harmed public health while undervaluing the importance of proper coronavirus testing, the purpose of which is to prevent this infection from spreading and to help the citizens of the country to get through the outbreak with a minimum number of casualties. These suspects did all of this out of greed and the desire to make money,” an Israeli police spokesperson said in a statement. “We intend to bring the full force and severity of the law to act against the suspects.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)