Utah man gets prison time for selling 120,000 fake COVID-19 vaccine cards

A Utah man was sentenced to prison on Thursday for selling thousands of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards.

A federal judge sentenced 34-year-old Nicholas Frank Sciotto to 12 months for selling at least 120,000 counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination record cards after he admitted in July to conspiring to defraud the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Sciotto made more than $400,000 in profit.

He was also sentenced to three years supervised release and ordered to pay a $40,000 fine.

Prosecutors say Sciotto lived in Weber County when he started making the cards in March 2021, conspiring with another man, Kyle Blake Burbage. According to a complaint filed in federal court in March 2023, the cards “looked identical to bonafide COVID-19 vaccination record cards which were issued by the CDC at the time.”

“I know someone selling legit vacc (sic) cards cheap for people who don’t want to partake in a science experiment,” Sciotto wrote in a Facebook comment in March 2021.

Sciotto printed the cards at a local print shop in Utah, the complaint alleges, convincing the store’s owner that he worked for a local hospital and was authorized to “print out thousands of copies of COVID-19 vaccination record cards.”

Sciotto charged $10 for each card, plus shipping, with a discounted price of $7.50 for anyone who ordered 100 or more. He sold “many” of the cards to people living in New York City “to facilitate their evasion of local health and safety protocols,” according to the complaint. Most of the transactions were done via Venmo or Cashapp, and Sciotto advertised the cards on Facebook. Sciotto tried to keep a low profile by changing the shipping addresses and envelopes every week when he made the shipments.

Some of those cards were then resold, with a market value hovering between $50 to $100 per card, according to the complaint.

“Sciotto engaged in this scheme – without regard for any public health consequences or risks that he exposed individuals to during the pandemic, without their knowledge or consent, and he undermined the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccination program and other governmental health and safety regulations and protocols at significant profit,” reads a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Utah.

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