Pair Arrested for Falsifying Vaccine Cards for Healthcare Workers

Two women were arrested and charged with selling fake COVID-19 vaccination cards and then putting in false information in New York’s vaccine registration database, according to police.

Jasmine Clifford, 31, of Lyndhurst, New Jersey, flaunted her anti-vaccination beliefs on social media, where she sold at least 250 fake vaccination cards to healthcare workers for $200, NBC 4 reported. An accomplice, Nadayza Barkley, 27, of Bellport, NY, charged an additional $250 to at least 10 people to register false information on their behalf in the state’s vaccine database from her job at a health clinic in Patchogue.

The coronavirus vaccine is free.

An additional 13 people, some of them hospital and nursing home workers, were charged for purchasing the cards.

A state police investigator who got wind of the scam posed as a customer for Clifford, who charged him $200 for a package containing a falsified CDC vaccination card with personal information he provided her.

“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,” District Attorney Cy Vance said in a statement. “We need companies like Facebook to take action to prevent the fraud happening on their platforms.”

Clifford was advertising and selling her fake cards through social media platforms owned and run by Facebook.

Clifford and Barkley face felony charges related to false instruments and misdemeanor conspiracy charges, and Barkley faces additional charges of offering a false instrument and conspiracy.

Separately, an Illinois woman traveling to Hawaii was arrested and is facing a $2,000 fine for false vaccine information, the New York Post reported. She was busted because she misspelled Moderna.

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smarcus@hamodia.com