The test detects "viral material" and "does not indicate that the virus is fully intact and infectious, i.e. able to cause infection in other people."
The fraud is not in the test itself, but in the reporting of test results. When a PCR test comes back positive, more often than not it is assumed the patient is infected with COVID (which may not be the case) - and cases of infected people are reported widely using these PCR test results.
