.svg)
Two men who conspired to harvest illicit profits by producing and distributing fake Covid-19 vaccination records during the height of the pandemic have been sentenced at Luton Crown Court. Waqas Hanif, 28, a former NHS vaccination programme care co-ordinator from Luton, Bedfordshire, was jailed for three years on Thursday, 3 September 2026, while his accomplice, 31-year-old Touqir Nasir, received a suspended custodial sentence alongside a mandatory curfew. The sentencing concludes an extensive joint operation led by the National Crime Agency and NHS England, which dismantled a lucrative black-market pipeline that generated more than 2,000 counterfeit vaccination entries on national health databases.
Daily Dazzling Dawn understands that the illicit enterprise operated primarily between June and October 2021, directly exploiting the infrastructure of the Kingsway Health Centre in Luton where Hanif was employed. Leveraging site administrator privileges on Pinnacle—the primary software platform utilised by the NHS to record delivered vaccinations—Hanif bypassed clinical verification protocols to register unadministered doses. Unvaccinated clients seeking to circumvent pandemic travel restrictions and venue entry mandates paid fees ranging from £80 to £150 per two recorded doses, with transactions brokered predominantly through encrypted messaging networks including Telegram.
The Scale of the Kingsway System Breach
Specialist digital forensic examiners attached to the National Crime Agency’s National Cyber Crime Unit flagged a total of 2,663 suspicious vaccination entries registered through the Kingsway Health Centre. Of these entries, investigators traced 1,875 fraudulent submissions directly to five distinct Internet Protocol addresses operating from Hanif’s private residence. When NCA officers executed an entry warrant at his home address in January 2022, they recovered Hanif’s official NHS staff identification credentials, £7,000 in unbanked cash, confidential internal NHS paperwork, and an application dossier for a private safe deposit facility in Luton.
Subsequent inquiries revealed that Hanif had secured the largest safe deposit box available at the Luton Safe Deposit Centre on 14 August 2021, a date coinciding with the peak output of falsified database submissions. Facility surveillance recordings confirmed Hanif visiting the vault on multiple dates, transferring the locker container to private inspection booths before replacing it. A formal search of the rented box yielded £136,405 in seized physical currency. Forensic examination confirmed Hanif’s fingerprints on multiple banknotes, whilst mobile device extractions uncovered roughly 250 images containing personal identifying details, including full names and residential addresses, belonging to approximately 340 individuals.
Financial Funnels and Identity Concealment
While Hanif conceded during formal interviews that he generated the fabricated entries, claiming he had acted under coercion from local criminal entities, financial analysis revealed an organised monetary conduit operating alongside Touqir Nasir. Nasir, who attended a voluntary police interview in March 2023, had registered a secondary bank account during the operational timeline under the alias Adam Parker, a name legally adopted via deed poll.
Banking records established that over £56,000 passed through this specific account via hundreds of deposits typically structured between £100 and £400 each. NHS database audits confirmed that several individuals depositing these exact sums had corresponding false vaccination profiles logged directly onto the national system. Bank ledgers also confirmed a direct £1,000 payment from the account to Hanif, which Hanif subsequently admitted to investigators represented proceeds for records generated on Nasir's instructions.
Judicial Outcomes and Public Health Integrity
Legal proceedings concluded at Luton Crown Court following cumulative guilty pleas. Hanif admitted offences under the Computer Misuse Act, the Fraud Act, and the Proceeds of Crime Act on 4 March 2025. Nasir pleaded guilty to a Fraud Act charge on 4 December 2025, and entered an additional guilty plea under the Proceeds of Crime Act in February 2026, which was subsequently affirmed during a Newton Hearing in June. Today, the court sentenced Hanif to three years' immediate imprisonment, while Nasir received a 10-month custodial sentence suspended for 12 months, accompanied by a six-month electronic curfew.
Speaking on the outcome, Deputy Director Paul Foster, Head of the National Crime Agency’s National Cyber Crime Unit, told journalists that the defendants cynically abused the national healthcare infrastructure for financial gain during a national crisis. Foster emphasised that while clinical choices remain personal, subverting official systems to assist individuals in dodging critical public safety controls is a serious criminal offence, noting that the coordinated operation with the NHS England Counter Fraud Team successfully curtailed organised exploitation of the pandemic response.
