Italian police have caught a gang behind a huge anti-vax scam that helped people sign up to get the Covid-19 vaccine only to have it thrown away and not injected in a ploy to get a vaccine passport.

According to the investigation, a network of dozens of people involved bringing people from all over Italy to the vaccination centre in Ancona where they paid up to €400 (£330) for a fake jab. 

The nurse who was supposed to inject them would squirt the dose into the rubbish bin before she would put a plaster on the patient and give them a 'green pass', which shows proof of vaccination. 

With growing pressure in European countries including many countries considering making the Covid vaccine compulsory, people are increasingly opting for fraud in order to obtain the vaccine passport confirming that they are vaccinated. 

A special police squad in Ancona, northeastern Italy, found people who wanted to avoid having the vaccine were bribing a 51-year-old nurse running a vaccination centre in the area to pretend to give them the jab so that they could get their jab certificate. 

As the video shows, the nurse and the patient make a show of getting the injection but she then reaches over and injects the contents into a waste container.

The nurse was arrested and placed in preventive custody, while four people including a 53-old-lawyer from Ancona who acted as intermediaries for the scam were put under house arrest.

Police are investigating around 50 people as part of their operation, which started in December last year, and have ordered them not to leave the region and present themselves on a daily basis to the local force. 

The the gang were charged with wasting public resources and undermining the effectiveness of the public health work of the Italian national health system in order to tackle the spread of Covid.