Utah man sent to prison for selling over 120,000 fake COVID vaccine cards
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Collin Leonard, KSL.com
SALT LAKE CITY (KSL.com) — A Salt Lake man who sold at least 120,000 fake COVID-19 vaccination record cards during the pandemic was sentenced Thursday to a year in prison.
Nicholas Frank Sciotto, 34, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States in July, also faces a $40,000 fine and three years of probation.
Sciotto was living in Weber County when he started an online business printing and selling vaccine cards “mainly to persons in New York who were subject to tighter COVID restrictions,” according to charging documents.
From about March to September in 2021, prosecutors say he used mostly Facebook to sell the cards at $10 each for orders of 10 or more cards, and $7.50 each for orders of 100 or more cards.
Sciotto posted on Facebook during that time period saying, “I know someone selling legit vacc cards cheap for people who don’t want to partake in a science experiment,” and sent an “image of stacks of COVID-19 vaccination record cards” to a contact through Facebook Messenger days later, the charges state.
In July 2021, Sciotto made a fake badge to claim he was with a major COVID-19 testing company in Utah and convinced the owner of a local print shop that he was authorized by a hospital to print vaccination cards, according to court documents. He tried to avoid police detection by “changing every week the envelopes and shipping locations he used to mail” the counterfeit cards.
Between April and June 2021, “Sciotto sold approximately 45,000 counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination record cards,” according to court documents, and over 120,000 between March and September 2021. In total, investigators estimate the man brought in over $400,000 in profits.
A South Carolina man, Kyle Blake Burbage, also faced the same charge for buying at least three packages of fake cards wholesale from Sciotto and selling at least 10 for “a market value of $50 to $100 each,” according to prosecutors.
Burbage pleaded guilty in August 2023 and is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 29.