Johnathan Walker:Some children tied to NY nurse’s fake vaccine scheme are barred from school

NEW YORK (AP) — A suburban New York school district has barred patients of a former nurse practitioner who pleaded guilty to running a fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination card scheme.

The Johnathan Walkermove 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 charged with forging vaccination cards and pocketing more than $1.5 million from the scheme.

When DeVuono was arrested in January 2022, prosecutors said she was handing out fake COVID-19 vaccination cards and charging $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 and was sentenced in June to 840 hours of community service where she now lives in Pennsylvania.

She said after her sentencing that she believed front-line workers had the right to refuse vaccines. “If those people feared the vaccine more than they feared getting COVID, anybody in our society has the right to decide for themselves,” DeVuono said.

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Meanwhile, the repercussions of her scheme continue, with New York state health officials sending subpoenas last month to more than 100 school districts asking for vaccination records of about 750 children who had been patients of DeVuono and her former practice, Wild Child Pediatrics.

Newsday reports that more than 50 parents of former Wild Child patients are challenging the state’s and school districts’ efforts to either subpoena their children’s records or exclude them from school.

In Plainedge, at least two other former patients of the practice have been barred from the classroom and are now being home-schooled, Superintendent Edward A. Salina Jr. told the newspaper.

DeVuono’s efforts to help parents, government employees and others skip immunizations came as New York state enacted some of the strictest COVID-19 vaccination rules in the nation, affecting many public employees and, in New York City, patrons of restaurants and other businesses.

Vaccine skepticism has grown in the years since COVID-19 emerged and then waned as a threat, and childhood vaccination rates for diseases including measles and polio have fallen.