Two Long Island nurses have been charged with scamming over $1.5 million selling forged vaccination cards. Reading about this, a few things struck me.
They charged $220 for adults, and only $85 for children. Why such a big discount for kids? How about seniors?
Doing the math, they must have sold at least 7000 cards to net $1.5 million. Now, I do mail order business myself, but have never managed to sell 7000 of anything (except cheap bulk coins). How did they succeed in connecting with so many buyers? Especially given that sales promotion obviously couldn’t be public. They must have been much savvier businesspeople than me. Imagine putting such talents to legitimate enterprise!
However, my wife remarked that they couldn’t have been so smart because they got caught. I’ve written about how often small time crooks do get busted; many bookkeepers embezzling from businesses through phony checks. It’s surprisingly common.
The nurse case reminded me about a local business genius who, at the pandemic’s start, imported 100,000 masks costing $1 each, and tried to sell them for $10. He was criminally charged with price gouging. Didn’t sit well with me; if buyers were willing to pay $10 for something wanted and needed, where’s the crime?
But anyway, the story was weird, because this guy operated a little pizza place, and it was a mystery how he imagined moving so many masks. In the event, he apparently sold almost none, getting stuck with the rest — losing most of his investment. So his crime’s chief victim was himself.
But back to the fake vax cards —
What really puzzles me is the mindset of someone paying $220 for a fake card when you can get a real one for free. Of course that requires vaccination, which some people oppose. For that foolishness many thousands have paid with their lives. But put even that aside. While it’s true that cards are occasionally required for some venues, if you’re anti-vax, where’s the logic in falsely posing as a vaccinated person — which you’re against being?
And for those calling this a “freedom” issue, engaging in such fraud surely undercuts any notion of a principled stance. The freedom claims are anyhow rubbish — nobody has freedom to endanger others. And those nurses, by aiding people faking vaccination status, are likely culpable for resulting Covid infections and deaths.
But maybe using a fake vax card is really just about giving a middle finger to the vaccine-promoting establishment.
A final note: looking at my own vax card, it’s not much to forge. Dates of jabs just handwritten, with no sort of certification. My daughter, in Jordan, got a card there with a QR code on it, now widely required internationally. Who’s in the third world country?
