Jasmine Cliffords and Nadayza Barkley brought in over US$50,000 selling more than 250 of their fake cards at $200 a pop. For an additional $250 dollars, Barkley, who works at a medical clinic, also offered to insert their customers' names into New York’s official Vaccination records system NYSIIS. Cliffords sold the cards through her Instagram account titled @AntiVaxMomma
Alongside the two, prosecutors charged 13 of their customers, all frontline medical workers at hospitals and nursing homes.
“We will continue to safeguard public health in New York with proactive investigations like these, but the stakes are too high to tackle fake vaccination cards with whack-a-mole prosecutions,” said Manhattan’s District Attorney Cyrus Vance.
“We need companies like Facebook to take action to prevent the fraud happening on their platforms. Making, selling, and purchasing forged vaccination cards are serious crimes with serious public safety consequences.”
The new illegal trade has shown itself in Hawaii as well.
Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that two tourists were arrested after they were found to have entered the state with forged vaccination records and on Wednesday, the news agency reported that another tourist, a 24-year-old Illinois woman, was arrested when airport screeners realised that the name “Moderna” was misspelled on the supposed-documentation she submitted as proof of her vaccination.
They later confirmed that there was no record of her vaccination in the state she claimed she had gotten it in.
