NEW YORK– A suburban New York school district has barred patients from a former nurse who pleaded guilty to running a fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination card scheme.
The move by school officials in the Long Island hamlet of Plainedge comes nearly three years after Julie DeVuono, the owner of Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare in Amityville, and an employee were accused of forging vaccination cards and extract more than $1.5 million from the plan.
When DeVuono was arrested in January 2022, prosecutors say she handed out fake COVID-19 vaccination cards and charged $220 for adults and $85 for children. Officers said they found $900,000 in cash when they searched DeVuono’s home.
DeVuono pleaded guilty to money laundering and forgery in September 2023 was convicted in June to 840 hours of community service where she now lives in Pennsylvania.
She said after her conviction that she believed frontline workers had the right to refuse vaccines. “If those people were more afraid of the vaccine than they were afraid of getting COVID, everyone in our society has the right to decide for themselves,” DeVuono said.
Meanwhile, the fallout from her plan continues among New York State health officials sending summons last month to more than 100 school districts requesting vaccination records for about 750 children who had been patients of DeVuono and her former practice, Wild Child Pediatrics.
Newsday reports that more than fifty parents of former Wild Child patients are challenging efforts by the state and school districts to subpoena their children’s records or ban them from school.
In Plainedge, at least two other former patients of the practice have been locked out of the classroom and are now being homeschooled, Superintendent Edward A. Salina Jr. said. to the newspaper.
DeVuono’s efforts to help parents, government workers and others skip vaccinations came as New York state imposed some of its strictest measures. COVID-19 vaccination rules in the country, affecting many government officials and, in New York City, customers of restaurants and other businesses.
Vaccine skepticism has increased and then decreased as a threat in the years since COVID-19 emerged, and childhood vaccination rates for diseases like measles and polio have increased. have fallen.