Man sentenced to year in prison for selling fake COVID vaccine cards

A man who sold more than 120,000 fake COVID-19 vaccination cards will spend one year in prison. Nicholas Frank Sciotto, a 34-year-old man from Salt Lake City, will also pay a $40,000 fine for defrauding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This amount represents only a fraction of his profits from the scheme.

Sciotto made over $400,000 by selling counterfeit vaccine cards on Facebook for $10 each, with a minimum order of 10.

During the height of the pandemic, many restaurants and businesses in cities and states with strict COVID-19 restrictions required customers to show proof of vaccination to enter. The same was true for certain workplaces, where some employers mandated proof of vaccination for employees.

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Earlier this summer, Sciotto admitted to his side gig of creating and selling counterfeit vaccine cards. As part of the scheme, he created a fake volunteer badge from a major COVID-19 testing company and used it to trick print shops into allowing him to print thousands of copies of vaccination cards.

He received assistance from a man in South Carolina in distributing the cards. That individual pleaded guilty last summer and is scheduled to be sentenced later this month.

“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,” a United State’s Attorney’s Office press release said.