Long Island nurse Julie DeVuono was indicted last week on charges she raked in $1.5 million selling fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards — but the only customers mentioned by prosecutors are three undercover detectives who conducted a sting.
That could be good news for possibly hundreds of NYC employees, including 82 teachers and four assistant principals, suspected of buying the cards to get around the city’s vaccine mandate, legal experts and advocates say.
“It means they are not going to be charged criminally, or they would have been charged by now,” said Betsy Combier, a paralegal who helped 30 teachers successfully sue the city Department of Education to get their jobs back.
DeVuono, the owner of Wild Child Pediatric Center, has pleaded not guilty to felony charges of selling fraudulent vax cards, registering them in the state immunization data system, and laundering $236,980 by paying off the mortgage on a home she shared with her husband, an NYPD cop. Police found $869,000 in cash stashed in her house.
Wild Child received shipments of 3,174 vaccine doses through an agreement with the federal CDC, the indictment states. Employees allegedly charged customers $220 to $350 for each dose falsely marked on a vax card for adults, and $85 for kids — then tossed the vaccine in the trash.
Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney refused to comment on any consequences for customers.
Whether the DOE employees face disciplinary charges is unclear. The Special Commissioner of Investigations for city schools confirmed to The Post on Friday that its probe of possible misconduct is ongoing.
After the Suffolk County DA arrested DeVuono in January 2022, the SCI gave the DOE the names of 92 employees who claimed they got vaccinated at Wild Child, citing “a high probability” that they had submitted false proof of the required COVID-19 shots, records show.
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The DOE suspended those employees without pay in April 2022, but has since returned them to the city payroll, following lawsuits and union complaints that the staffers were removed without due process.
DeVuono’s lawyer, Steven Gaitman of Gaitman and Russo, said he believes two Wild Child employees originally charged in the alleged scam have agreed to testify against DeVuono. The co-defendants claimed they acted on DeVuono’s instructions to collect money for vaccine cards without giving the shots.
“We suspect they chose to accept a plea bargain and made an agreement with the government to assist themselves and point the finger at Julie,” Gaitman said, adding that DeVuono denies involvement in the alleged fraud.
“Julie had very little involvement with the vaccination side of the practice. Her main focus was her successful pediatric nursing practice. We are going to fight these charges vigorously.”
Jeremy Saland, a criminal defense lawyer and former Manhattan prosecutor, said the DA could charge customers who obtained and used a fake vax card with criminal possession of a forged instrument or offering a false instrument for filing, both felonies. Evidence could include an eyewitness account by a Wild Child employee cooperating with the prosecution.
But prosecutors may have decided against “a wholesale sweep of teachers,” Saland said. “To have them all saddled with felonies and lose their jobs would be somewhat extreme to the teacher and indirectly harm students” by disrupting their learning.
“We have no word on the status of any DOE investigation into this matter,” said United Federation of Teachers spokesman Dick Riley. “Because of a grievance filed by the UFT and a court decision, all who wanted to return to their original schools have done so. Back pay is being processed.”
