The Marine Corps Reservist from New York has been charged with conspiring to sell fake Covid-19 vaccination cards to fellow Marines.
The nurse named Steven Rodriguez is accused of being part of a scheme to defraud the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Defense Department was defrauded by the fact that these cards were given to Marines.
Active and reserve military service members have been ordered to be vaccined against Covid.
The distribution of fake cards to other Marin reservists helped them evade the requirement.
The defendants put military and other communities at risk of contracting the deadly H1N1 virus by distributing fraudulent vaccine cards to the unvaccinated.
The Office remains committed to rooting out and prosecuting those individuals who threaten our public health and safety.
The scheme resulted in more than 300 stolen or false vaccine cards circulating and 70 false entries in immunization databases.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said in a press release that unvaccinated individuals were able to receive the Excelsior Pass.
The scheme ran from March to this month.
Prosecutors said that the two people who worked in the Long Island clinic promoted their scheme through messages on messaging applications and on social media.
They referred to the COVID-19 Vaccination Cards with code names such as Christmas cards andCardi Bs.
According to court documents, Lin forged and distributed blank vaccine cards to buyers and other co-conspirators for a profit.
According to documents, Liu told buyers to meet Rodriguez at the clinic where he works to buy fraudulent cards.
Rodriguez would meet the buyer, but instead of administering the vaccine he destroyed a piece of it.
He gave a forged COVID-19 Vaccination Card to the buyer to make it appear that the buyer had received a dose of vaccine. He made false entries in the immunization database that the buyer had been shot.
In October, federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C. charged him with entering the Capitol grounds during the January 6, 2021, riot and other crimes connected to the invasion of the halls of Congress that day by a mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump.
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