A former nurse from Long Island has been fined $544,000 for selling fake COVID-19 vaccine cards, a penalty described by state officials as the largest civil fine ever imposed for vaccination fraud in New York's 125-year history.
Julie DeVuono, 53, who previously worked as a nurse practitioner in Amityville, pleaded guilty in 2023 to forgery and money laundering charges. Between November 2019 and January 2022, she operated a scheme to sell falsified vaccine cards to parents of 162 school-aged children. The state Department of Health announced the penalty on Thursday.
"Vaccines are the best protection against serious preventable diseases, and the New York State Department of Health has zero tolerance for those that misrepresent or falsify vaccination records as these acts put lives in jeopardy," said State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald.
DeVuono was arrested in January 2022 after an investigation uncovered the scheme. She was sentenced to 840 hours of community service, five years of probation, and ordered to forfeit $1.2 million. Much of that amount had already been seized from her home, along with records detailing the profits from her illegal activities.
Investigators found that DeVuono, who owned the Wild Child Pediatric Center in Amityville, received 3,174 vaccine doses through the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She then charged customers between $85 and $350 for each fake vaccination record, while discarding the actual vaccine doses. Her guilty plea followed agreements by two co-defendants, licensed practical nurse Marissa Urraro and receptionist Brooke Hogan, to testify against her.
According to Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, DeVuono used $236,980 of the money from the scheme to pay off the mortgage on her home. Tierney stated that DeVuono's actions "preyed upon the fears and mistrust of the public during the COVID shutdown to forge COVID cards for the vaccine she never administered, in pursuit of no other purpose than her own enrichment."