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Lisa Hammell, 39, of the South Jersey town of Turnersville, sold the cards for from $20 to $100 after advertising them on social media, an indictment returned by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Newark says.
Two of the buyers were from New Jersey and another was a federal employee in Virginia whose mother needed the card because she worked in a hospital and had to be vaxxed, it adds.
The cards printed at the postal facility in Marlton (Burlington County) included the buyers’ names and birth dates along with bogus dates, locations and vaccine numbers, the indictment alleges.
Customers listed the illegal purchases for “movie tickets” “dinner and drinks” and “greetings cards,” while Hammell referred to the electronic payments as “donations,” it adds.
Hammell, who worked as a customer service supervisor, also sold multiple blank fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination cards to others who resold them, federal authorities charged.
Federal authorities got wise after spotting social media posts in which Hammell boasted that she “could design, print, and sell fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination record cards,” the indictment says.
“It pains me to have to live in society with so many (expletive) sheep,” the fellow government worker wrote in a message to Hammell, according to the indictment. “People need to take a stand & tell the government & politicians to (expletive).”
Hammell reportedly replied: “And they think it’s ‘for own our good’ (crying laughing emojis) whennnnnn has modern medicine or our government individually done anything for our own good? And now they’re in cahoots with each other harder than ever. Ya. Def not for our own good.”
"Making fakessssss," the government said Hammell wrote. "Graphic design degree paying off."
Arrested on Tuesday, April 19, Hammell was among 21 people charged in a nationwide crackdown on health care fraud stemming from the pandemic, the U.S. Justice Department said.
She remained free on bond pending court action on charges of fraud and conspiracy to defraud through what the indictment alleges was “deceit, craft, trickery, and dishonest means."
The federal sweep “reinforces our commitment to using all available tools to hold accountable medical professionals, corporate executives, and others who have placed greed above care during an unprecedented public health emergency," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. of the Justice Department's Criminal Division said in a statement.
To this point, federal authorities said, they’ve charged more than 1,000 people for COVID-related scams – and still have open more than 240 civil investigations into more than 1,800 individuals and entities, "together involving billions of dollars in suspected fraud.”
In the end, the amount represents barely a fraction of the cost of COVID-related fraud over more than two years of the pandemic.
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