Last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city’s more than 300,000 workers would need to be vaccinated or undergo weekly tests.
Law enforcement agencies have done everything they can to contain fraud. Earlier this month, a Chicago-based pharmacist was arrested by federal agents and charged with selling 125 vaccination cards to 11 different buyers on eBay. Last month, a naturopathic doctor in California was charged with falsely receiving her clients as the Moderna vaccine.
New York lawmakers recently passed law that would make forging vaccination cards a state crime. In an interview, State Senator Todd Kaminsky, one of the bill’s sponsors, said counterfeit vaccination cards are a growing threat.
“It was foresight on our part to realize that there would be those who forge vaccination cards and pose a threat to public health,” he said.
@Tizzyent, the TikTok user who made a video about Ms. Clifford’s plan this month, is an independent filmmaker in Florida who asked to be identified by just his first name, Michael, because he has received threats for his videos in the past would have. He said in an interview that he has been fighting misinformation on social platforms for more than a year.
“It’s something that is just a nuisance,” he said.
He said he had been made aware of a number of people selling fake vaccination cards on social media, but that the @AntiVaxMomma program, which she was apparently recruiting for when he stumbled upon one of her posts, seemed particularly advanced .
“A good friend of mine died of Covid a few days ago,” he said. “When I see someone offering a workaround like this that puts everyone at risk, it horrifies me.”
Chessia Rose Marcius contributed the reporting.
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