SAN FRANCISCO — On Etsy, eBay, Facebook and Twitter, little
rectangular slips of paper started showing up for sale in late January. Printed
on card stock, they measured 3-by-4 inches and featured crisp black lettering.
Sellers listed them for $20 to $60 each, with a discount on bundles of three or
more. Laminated ones cost extra.
اضافة اعلان
All were forgeries or falsified copies of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccination cards, which are given to
people who have been inoculated against COVID-19 in the United States.
“We found hundreds of online stores selling the cards,
potentially thousands were sold,” said Saoud Khalifah, the founder of Fakespot,
which offers tools to detect fake listings and reviews online.
The coronavirus has made opportunists out of many people,
like those who hoarded bottles of hand sanitizer at the start of the pandemic
or those who cheated recipients out of their stimulus checks. Now online
scammers have latched onto the latest profit-making initiative: the little
white cards that provide proof of shots.
Online stores offering counterfeit or stolen vaccine cards
have mushroomed in recent weeks, Khalifah said. The efforts are far from
hidden, with Facebook pages named “vax-cards” and eBay listings with “blank
vaccine cards” openly hawking the items.
Selling fake vaccination cards could break federal laws that
forbid copying the CDC logo, legal experts said. If the cards were stolen and
filled out with false numbers and dates, they could also violate identity theft
laws, they said.
But profiteers have pressed ahead as demand for the cards
has grown from anti-vaccine activists and other groups. Airlines and other
companies have recently said they may require proof of COVID-19 immunization so
that people can safely travel or attend events.
The cards may also become central to “vaccine passports,”
which offer digital proof of vaccinations. Some tech companies developing
vaccine passports ask people to upload copies of their CDC cards. Los Angeles
also recently began using the CDC cards for its own digital proof of
immunization.
Last week, 45 state attorneys general banded together to
call on Twitter, Shopify and eBay to stop the sale of false and stolen vaccine
cards. The officials said they were monitoring the activity and were concerned
that unvaccinated people would misuse the cards to attend large events,
potentially spreading the virus and prolonging the pandemic.
“We’re seeing a huge market for these false cards online,”
said Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, whose office has
investigated fraud related to the virus. “This is a dangerous practice that
undermines public health.”
The CDC said it was “aware of cases of fraud regarding
counterfeit COVID-19 vaccine cards.” It asked people not to share images of
their personal information or vaccine cards on social media.
Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Shopify and Etsy said that the sale
of fake vaccine cards violated their rules and that they were removing posts
that advertised the items.
The CDC introduced the vaccination cards in December,
describing them as the “simplest” way to keep track of COVID-19 shots. By
January, sales of false vaccine cards started picking up, Khalifah said. Many
people found the cards were easy to forge from samples available online.
Authentic cards were also stolen by pharmacists from their workplaces and put
up for sale, he said.
Many people who bought the cards were opposed to the
COVID-19 vaccines, Khalifah said. In some anti-vaccine groups on Facebook,
people have publicly boasted about getting the cards.
“My body my choice,” wrote one commenter in a Facebook post
last month. Another person replied, “can’t wait to get mine too, lol.”
Other buyers want to use the cards to trick pharmacists into
giving them a vaccine, Khalifah said. Because some of the vaccines are two-shot
regimens, people can enter a false date for a first inoculation on the card,
which makes it appear as if they need a second dose soon. Some pharmacies and
state vaccination sites have given priority to people due for their second
shots.
One Etsy seller, who declined to be identified, said she had
sold dozens of fake vaccine cards for $20 each recently. She justified her
actions by saying she was helping people evade a “tyrannical government.” She
added that she did not plan to get inoculated.
Vaccine proponents say they have been troubled by the
proliferation of forged and stolen cards. To hold those people accountable,
Savannah Sparks, a pharmacist in Biloxi, Mississippi, began posting videos on
TikTok last month naming the sellers of falsified vaccine cards.
In one video, Sparks explained how she had tracked down the
name of a pharmacy technician in Illinois who had nabbed several cards for
herself and her husband and then posted about it online. The pharmacy
technician had not disclosed her identity but had linked the post to her social
media accounts, where she used her real name. The video has 1.2 million views.
“It made me so mad that a pharmacist was using her access
and position this way,” Sparks said. The video drew the attention of the
Illinois Pharmacists Association, which said it had reported the video to a
state board for further investigation.
Sparks said her work had drawn detractors and vaccine
opponents, who have threatened her and posted her home phone number and address
online. But she was undeterred.
“They should be first in line advocating for people to get
vaccinated,” she said of pharmacists. “Instead, they’re trying to use their
positions to spread fear and help people circumvent getting the vaccine.”
Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general, said that in
addition to violating federal copyright laws, the sale of counterfeit and
stolen cards most likely broke civil and consumer protection laws that mandate
that an item can be used as advertised. The cards could also violate state laws
regarding impersonation, he said.
“We want to see them stop immediately,” Shapiro said of the
fraudsters. “And we want to see the companies take serious and immediate
action.”
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