Health officials announced Monday that they have invalidated vaccination records for about 135 Long Island children because the records were falsified by a former Amityville nurse who was arrested two years ago for allegedly selling counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination cards.
The move is part of an ongoing state investigation into Dr. Julie DeVono’s former employer, Wild Child Pediatrics, after investigators determined she falsified more than 1,500 routine childhood vaccinations.
The falsified records pertained to mandatory vaccinations for children attending daycare and school. Officials said the students had to be vaccinated within 14 days to stay in school. The students included 106 in Suffolk County, 27 in Nassau County and one in Orange County.
In June, the state revealed DeVono was facing administrative charges for falsely reporting 226 vaccines administered to 26 pediatric patients.
Newsday also reported in July that the number of vaccinations DeVono administered to young patients has skyrocketed, from 153 in 2019 to 3,421 in 2020 and 981 in 2021. The increase coincides with the state’s decision to end religious and non-medical exemptions to vaccinations.
DeVono, who now lives in Pennsylvania, could be fined $2,000 for each vaccination record he falsified.
“Today’s action will mitigate the public health threat posed by Julie DeVono and her long-standing childhood vaccination program and will help keep communities across Long Island and beyond healthy and safe this school year,” said Joseph Giovanetti, director of investigations in the state Health Department’s legal division.
The health department is currently contacting the families of the children affected to inform them that their immunization records are invalid, and the children’s schools have already been notified.
DeVono’s attorney, Jason Russo of Garden City, said he was unaware of the new charges when contacted by Newsday on Monday.
“I haven’t seen any evidence of this yet,” he said.
Arthur Kaplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University and an expert on vaccine policy, said DeVono believes children who received “fake vaccines” should be identified and the state should pay to revaccinate them.
“She put their lives and the lives of others at avoidable risk,” Kaplan told Newsday in an email.
According to law enforcement officials, DeVono agreed to administer COVID-19 vaccines to the public under an agreement with the Centers for Disease Control in 2021. However, she and her staff discarded vaccine containers and issued cards that falsely stated adult patients had been vaccinated, then charged them between $220 and $350.
She was arrested in 2022 and pleaded guilty to several charges, including money laundering and forgery, in September 2023. In June 2024, DeVono was sentenced to six months in prison, but can avoid prison time by completing 840 hours of community service that does not involve medical or clinical procedures.
The Nassau and Suffolk county health departments had recommended that school districts require students vaccinated at Wild Child to show proof of vaccination from another medical facility, but most districts have since backed away from the recommendation after opposition from parents.
Earlier this year, a Baldwin midwife was fined $300,000 by the state health department for falsifying immunization records for about 1,500 children. Authorities said Janet Breen gave her patients homeopathic “oral pellets” instead of vaccines, which she registered with the state as vaccines.
A Newsday review of state records found that on Long Island, the cases came from 81 of the region’s 124 school districts. Gov. Breen acknowledged falsifying 12,449 vaccine records, beginning three months after non-medical exemptions ended.
