Children barred from school in New York over ‘fake’ Covid vaccine scheme

Father says he faces a choice between paying for home-schooling, double-vaccinating his children or moving out of state

Children have been barred from school in New York because they were patients of a nurse who handed out fake Covid vaccine cards.
In January 2022, Julie DeVuono, the owner of Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare in Amityville, and an employee, Marissa Urraro, were charged with forging Covid-19 vaccination cards and entering the fake jabs in the state’s database, a scam that allegedly raked in more than $1.5 million.
In recent months, authorities widened the scope of their investigation into Ms. DeVuono’s fraud, issuing subpoenas to more than 100 school districts asking for the vaccination records of about 750 children who had been patients of the nurse.
This included the two children of Joseph Garcia, aged seven and four, who attend school in Plainedge, Long Island.
Mr. Garcia, who sits on Plainedge’s school board, told The Telegraph his children were barred from the classroom on Wednesday after health officials claimed there was no record of them having been vaccinated on the state database.
He said that blood tests carried out by a separate physician prove his children were vaccinated.
Despite this, he said his appeal to state authorities has been denied, adding that he now faces a choice between paying for homeschooling, double-vaccinating his children, or moving out of state.
“I feel like I’m yelling into the wind,” he said, comparing his situation to the Salem witch trials. “Just because I went to a practice that allegedly gave out fraudulent vaccines, the government should not be participating in guilt by association.”
The real estate agent, 42, continued: “My family is not anti-vax. We wanted real vaccines, my kids cried real tears when they got the jabs, and I have the documents to prove it. Now we can’t get them to believe that my children are properly vaccinated.”
When officers searched Ms. DeVuono’s home, they discovered $900,000 in cash stashed under her bed, which prosecutors alleged came from the former nurse selling counterfeit certificates at a price of $220 for adults and $85 for children.
Ms. DeVuono pleaded guilty to money laundering and forgery in September 2023 and was sentenced in June to 840 hours of community service where she now lives in Pennsylvania.
Following her sentencing, she said that she believed front-line workers had the right to refuse vaccines. “If those people feared the vaccine more than they feared getting Covid, anybody in our society has the right to decide for themselves,” she said.
More than 50 parents of former Wild Child patients are challenging the state’s and school districts’ efforts to either subpoena their children’s records or exclude them from school, according to Newsday.
“The big concern I have is that my four-year-old has done all these shots relatively recently and is now expected to double-vaccinate based on what amounts to a paperwork issue,” said Mr. Garcia.
“I do intend on bringing a lawsuit against the department of health, but that would take two to four years and frankly cost more than I can afford.
If the department of health can show me that my children really didn’t get legitimate vaccines, we would re-vaccinate. But they are not providing any way for families like mine, who can show their children are vaccinated, to review that decision.”
Demand for fake vaccine certificates in the U.S. soared towards the end of the pandemic in 2021, prompted by the introduction of proof-of-vaccine requirements, the Wall Street Journal reported.
New York state enacted some of the strictest Covid-19 vaccination rules in the nation, mandating that all state employees were vaccinated or take weekly tests.
State officials also made falsifying a Covid-19 vaccination card a crime, with those caught carrying punishable with up to a year in prison.
Vaccine skepticism has ballooned in the years since the pandemic, and childhood vaccination rates for diseases including measles and polio have fallen.
Major studies of vaccine side-effects in the U.S. have found no link between two Covid jabs and the rare incidences of deaths recorded after vaccination.
The New York State department of health and Plainedge School District were approached for comment.