From Monday, a 46-year-old man and his sister (44) will be on trial in the capital for fraud amounting to millions in Berlin’s corona test centers. The indictment accuses them of particularly serious fraud or aiding and abetting.

The accused are said to have billed the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians for many more tests in the period from May 2021 to February 2022 than there were actually. According to the indictment, the man is said to have swindled around 9.7 million euros and the woman around 2.5 million euros. Both were arrested at the end of March 2022 during searches of apartments and test stations in the city.

The Berlin Regional Court initially planned 13 further trial dates until October 24th for the trial.

Comparable cases also concern the judiciary in other federal states, such as in Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia. In Bochum, an entrepreneur was sentenced to six years in prison in June who confessed to having billed far more so-called citizen tests than had actually been carried out.

The court estimated the amount of damage caused to the federal government at around 24.5 million euros. In May, the Freiburg district court sentenced a young man to a suspended sentence because he had collected around 5.7 million euros for a test center that had never been operated.