Getty Images | Allen J. Schaben
A Chicago pharmacist was arrested yesterday on charges that he sold 125 authentic CDC vaccination cards to 11 buyers for about $10 per card, the Department of Justice announced.
“Knowingly selling COVID vaccination cards to unvaccinated individuals puts millions of Americans at risk of serious injury or death,” Special Agent Emmerson Buie Jr. said. “To put such a small price on the safety of our nation is not only an insult to those who are doing their part in the fight to stop COVID-19, but a federal crime with serious consequences.”
The licensed pharmacist, 34-year-old Tangtang Zhao, was indicted in July. Zhao worked for a pharmacy that went unnamed by the DOJ and that “distributed and administered COVID-19 vaccines at its physical locations nationwide.” The company “provided a CDC Vaccination Record Card to each vaccine recipient” as required by the CDC, and “Zhao obtained and subsequently offered authentic CDC vaccination cards for sale online,” the DOJ said.
Zhao is charged with 12 counts of theft of government property and faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison per count if convicted. The indictment lists 12 sales of between eight and 17 vaccine cards each from March 25 to April 11, 2021. The listed sale amounts total $1,277.43.
Thousands of counterfeit vaccine cards seized
In addition to misuse of authentic vaccine cards, the US is also dealing with counterfeits. The arrest for selling real COVID vaccine cards to unvaccinated people came four days after the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said its officers at the Area Port of Memphis have been intercepting hundreds of counterfeit COVID vaccination cards every night.
“The recipients of this ubiquitous contraband are unfortunately all over the United States,” the CBP press release said. “This fiscal year to date, Memphis has made 121 seizures totaling 3,017 of these vaccination cards.”
The CBP press release described a single night in which there were 15 intercepted shipments of fake vaccine cards intended for different cities. One of those shipments was headed to New Orleans and contained “51 low quality, counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination cards.”
The US vaccination cards aren’t nearly as hard to fake as those in Europe, which use a digital certificate. But the fake cards shipped from Shenzhen, China, to New Orleans apparently wouldn’t have fooled many people who looked at them closely. They had “blanks for the recipient’s name and birthdate, the vaccine maker, lot number, and date and place the shot was given, as well as the Center for Disease Control (CDC) logo in the upper right corner,” CBP said. “However, there were typos, unfinished words, and some of the Spanish verbiage on the back was misspelled.”
Identifying which packages contained fake vaccine cards also wasn’t much of a challenge for CBP officers, the announcement said. “Sometimes the manifests describe the shipments as ‘Paper Greeting Cards/ Use For-Greeting Card,’ sometimes they are ‘PAPER PAPER CARD,’ but they are always from China,” the CBP said. “Though they may come in packs of 20, 51, 100, there are never any attempts to conceal them in anything. They aren’t hidden in books, nor are they stuffed in the back of framed paintings.”
Buying, selling, or using a counterfeit COVID vaccine card “can be categorized as the unauthorized use of an official government agency seal (such as HHS or CDC) and may be punishable… [by] a fine and up to five years in prison,” the CBP noted, citing an FBI advisory. “These vaccinations are free and available everywhere,” said Michael Neipert, the CBP’s director of the Area Port of Memphis that covers seven ports of entry in Tennessee and Arkansas. “If you do not wish to receive a vaccine, that is your decision. But don’t order a counterfeit, waste my officers’ time, break the law, and misrepresent yourself.”