A former nurse practitioner on Long Island who admitted to selling forged COVID-19 vaccination cards has been hit with a substantial financial penalty. According to News 12, the woman, who had pleaded guilty to forging the cards for money, has now been ordered to pay more than a half a million dollars in civil penalties for the scheme.
The penalty itself sets a record. The State Health Department fined Julie Devuono, of Amityville, a total of $544,000, an amount the agency described as the largest fine it has ever imposed for vaccination fraud in its history, underscoring the seriousness with which regulators treated the case.
At the heart of the penalty is the number of falsified records tied to Devuono. The Health Department said the fine was connected to her making fraudulent vaccination records for 162 children, a figure that highlights the scale of a scheme that touched scores of families during the pandemic era.
The civil penalty follows an earlier admission of guilt in the criminal case. As has been previously reported, Devuono had pleaded guilty to forging the COVID-19 vaccination cards for money, turning official-looking immunization records into a paid product rather than a reflection of any actual vaccinations.
The vaccination fraud was not the only misconduct that cost Devuono professionally. She had already given up her nursing license, a step she took after admitting to a separate scheme involving the writing of fraudulent opioid prescriptions, prescriptions she is said to have issued using the names of her own relatives.
Taken together, the two schemes paint a picture of a licensed medical professional repeatedly abusing the trust placed in that role, first by falsifying immunization records for scores of children and then by exploiting her prescribing authority to generate improper opioid prescriptions under family members' names.
With the record civil penalty now imposed on top of the loss of her license and her guilty plea, the case stands as one of the most significant vaccination-fraud actions the State Health Department says it has pursued, a resolution that regulators have framed as a warning to others who might consider falsifying medical records for profit.