International Students in Copenhagen Trapped in Address Fraud to Obtain CPR Numbers

More international students in Copenhagen are participating in fraudulent address schemes due to the need to obtain a Danish personal registration (CPR), local media reports say.

The so-called CPR number in Denmark is a civil registration number that everyone in Denmark should possess. One cannot apply for a CPR number without having an address in Copenhagen, Erudera.com reports.

A former international student in Denmark shared her story with The Local, unveiling some strange things she experienced while renting.

She rented a room in Brønshøj, Copenhagen, which turned out to be less private than she expected. She noticed that her belongings were not organized in the same order she had left them. It appeared that her landlord often entered the room.

Moreover, the landlord even made some strange requests, such as asking her to pretend to be a friend of the family when a midwife visited the place after his wife gave birth.

This is because the landlord had not formally registered her as a tenant but listed her at a different address with the authorities.

According to Copenhagen Citizen Service, a CPR number is necessary to access healthcare, attend language classes, open a bank account, pay taxes, and receive a salary if students are working while studying in Denmark.

“All residents in Denmark need to have a CPR number. You need it to open a bank account, access your health insurance, borrow books from the library, pay tax, receive a salary and so on," a notice posted on the City of Copenhagen website reads.

Denmark also attracts significant numbers of international students, especially exchange students, and their numbers have been on the rise in recent years.

Official data show that last year, there were 8,591 international exchange students in the country, up from 7,130 in 2022 and 3,566 in 2021.

International students are as well having difficulty finding housing in Denmark, which is consequently making it more difficult for them to receive a CPR number.

“Many new arrivals don’t understand the importance of a CPR number because we don’t have this concept in our country,” Saiful Azim, a Bangladeshi national working as a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, told The Local.

Data by Statista indicate that over half of international students in Denmark last year came from European countries, 15 percent from North America, and 13 percent from Asia.

To get a CPR number, international students should:

• Be staying in Denmark for more than three months.
• Have an EU residence document ( if from the EU while Nordic citizens excepted).
• Have a residence permit (for non-EU citizens).
• Have a place to live.