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Jericho resident Po Shan Wong, and Flushing resident Zhen Wu, of JCD Distribution, were in federal court in Central Islip on Tuesday, Nov. 10 on a criminal complaint charging them with selling “Virus Shut Out Cards,” which they marketed as air sanitizers designed to kill COVID-19.
After new cases of the virus spiked in April, it is alleged that between May and July, Wong, JCD’s general manager, and Wu, his sales manager, operated out of a business in College Point.
During the pandemic, JCD advertised “Virus Shut Out Cards” on the company’s website and Facebook page, and marketed and sold those products to customers by phone, making various untested claims regarding the effectiveness of the cards, despite no proof that they had any effect on COVID-19.
DuCharme said that among the products advertised on JCD’s Facebook page claimed that the cards emit chlorine dioxide and, thereby, serve as “portable space disinfection and sterilization cards” with a “sterilization rate at 99 (percent).”
In fact, DuCharme noted, chlorine dioxide—a gas—is a bleaching agent and a pesticide as defined by Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.
JCD’s Facebook page also contained images that depicted a blue card, approximately the size of a credit card, being used by children and adults, which were sold in quantities of 50 for $9.50 a card.
According to prosecutors, samples of the “Virus Shut Out Cards” were tested by the EPA’s National Enforcement Investigations Center and found to contain sodium chlorite in amounts sufficient to convert into chlorine dioxide when exposed to the water vapor and carbon dioxide in the air.
DuCharme said that breathing air with sufficiently high concentrations of chlorine dioxide may cause difficulty breathing, irritation in the nose, throat, and lungs, shortness of breath, chronic bronchitis, and other respiratory problems.
“The brazenly false claims allegedly promoted by the defendants about their product potentially endangered the public not only by claiming to protect against the COVID-19 virus, but also by exposing users to the health hazard posed by a misbranded pesticide,” DuCharme said.
Specifically, Wong, 55, and Wu, 35, were charged with conspiring to distribute and sell one or more pesticides that are not registered with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and that are adulterated or misbranded.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has opened a flood gate of fraudsters whose only goal is to take advantage of the public with bogus and unsubstantiated claims of virus protection products, such as this one,” USPIS Inspector-in-Charge Philip Bartlett said.
“Consumers should be skeptical of any device, elixir, lotion, or potion claiming to prevent or cure COVID-19 because to date, there is no such product. Postal Inspectors are working hard to stop these fraudsters in their tracks”
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