91 Long Island school districts subpoenaed in fake vaccine case against ex-Wild Child nurse Julie DeVuono

Julie DeVuono, the Amityville nurse who ran a fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine card scheme, at her sentencing in June. Credit: Tom Lambui
New York officials are investigating whether students from nearly three-quarters of Long Island school districts and from upstate traveled to a former nurse practitioner's Amityville office for fraudulent vaccination records, state Health Department subpoenas show.
The state Health Department has accused Julie DeVuono and her practice, Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare in Amityville, of lying about administering vaccinations against potentially deadly diseases such as polio, measles and rubella in what experts believe would be one of the nation's largest childhood immunization fraud cases.
DeVuono, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to selling more than $1 million worth of fake COVID-19 vaccine cards, in the past has denied through an attorney that she falsified childhood vaccination records, which are required for students to attend school.
Students from school districts as far as Greenville, which borders Albany County, six Hudson Valley districts, and charter schools in Poughkeepsie, the Bronx and Queens had vaccine records from DeVuono that the state has been investigating as possibly falsified, the subpoenas show.
On Long Island, the state subpoenaed student records from 91 of the region's 124 districts, as far east as Montauk. One of the largest group of students, at least 29, was from Smithtown, more than 20 miles from DeVuono’s Amityville office.
The state sent 120 subpoenas to 106 public school districts or individual private or charter schools between January and September 2024. Some districts received two subpoenas on different dates. Newsday obtained the subpoenas via a Freedom of Information Law request.
The 240-mile geographic span of DeVuono's patients demonstrates how far parents opposed to vaccines are willing to travel to find a health care provider who will help them skirt the law, said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University and an expert on vaccine policy.
"Patients do not normally travel those distances" to receive vaccinations that their local pediatricians typically can provide, he said. It "reflects an underground sharing of information" to "identify a sympathetic provider" willing to issue fraudulent vaccination records so children can attend school, Caplan said.
Anti-vaccine parents nationwide exchange tips via social media posts and private messaging groups, he said. Social media also spreads misinformation and disinformation about harms that vaccines are alleged to cause despite studies that have repeatedly shown vaccines are safe, and incontrovertible evidence vaccines have saved thousands of lives, Caplan said.
The anti-vaccine movement has gained strength in recent years, and President Donald Trump's nominee for health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a longtime vaccine skeptic, although during his Senate confirmation hearings Wednesday and Thursday he denied he is anti-vaccine.
The state Health Department held two days of administrative hearings on its allegations against DeVuono Jan. 15 and 16, and it will hold more hearings March 7 and 10, health department spokeswoman Erin Clary said in an email. The department declined to release the detailed charges against DeVuono, including the number of allegedly fraudulent vaccinations, without a new FOIL request — which Newsday submitted Jan. 23 — but Clary confirmed they are for falsifying pediatric vaccination records.
DeVuono could not be reached for comment, and William Nolan, the Garden City attorney whom health department documents list as her lawyer in the state administrative case, did not return calls.
In 2023, DeVuono pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to selling more than $1.2 million in fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards. She was sentenced last year to community service in Pennsylvania, where she now lives. As part of a plea deal, she surrendered her New York nursing licenses.
DeVuono’s LinkedIn page lists her as a "freelance" pediatric nurse practitioner in Pennsylvania, although she does not have a license there and has not applied for one, Pennsylvania Department of State spokesman Matt Heckel said in an email on Tuesday.
In June, the New York State Department of Health announced administrative charges against DeVuono, alleging violations of public health law. In September, the health department said it had determined DeVuono had falsified more than 1,500 pediatric vaccination records — each child is required to receive multiple vaccines to attend school — and was continuing to investigate whether she had falsified more. Every falsified entry in the state’s electronic vaccination system carries a maximum fine of $2,000, meaning DeVuono could potentially face millions of dollars in fines.
The state in September said it had been seeking childhood vaccination records from about 750 DeVuono patients. The subpoenas indicate there now could be significantly more than that number whose records the state suspects could be fraudulent.
Newsday could determine with certainty the number of students whose records were subpoenaed in 43 subpoenas — or just over a third. Those subpoenas covered 609 students.
In the 77 other subpoenas, the state blacked out or did not disclose the number of students affected or the names of the students.
The health department’s FOIL office said in a message to Newsday that it redacted for privacy reasons the number if there were six or fewer students whose records were being sought. In 54 of those 77 subpoenas, plural words such as "individuals" indicate multiple students’ records were sought, while in 17, words such as "individual" indicate only one student’s record was requested. In six, the number was unclear.
DeVuono had never administered a childhood vaccine in her first 17 years of licensure as a nurse, health department records provided to Newsday in June show. She only started doing so after the state in 2019 ended nonmedical exemptions from vaccine requirements, a move that anti-vaccine parents from Long Island and elsewhere loudly protested.
Richard Carpiano, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside, and an expert on vaccine use, said DeVuono's alleged childhood immunization fraud, and a case last year in which the state health department fined Baldwin midwife Jeanette Breen $300,000 for falsifying records for 1,500 children, were "about the most egregious [cases] I've heard of" nationwide.
There likely are other cases that haven't been discovered, he said. Vaccine fraud can be difficult to detect, because parents seeking the falsification of their children’s immunization records will not file complaints, nor will the health care provider, he said.
Fraud is most likely to occur in the few states, like New York, that do not have religious, philosophical or other non-medical exemptions to required immunizations, Carpiano said, adding "that is no reason for these states to loosen their requirements."
According to the National Council of State Legislatures, only four states in addition to New York — California, Connecticut, Maine and West Virginia — did not offer non-medical exemptions as of August. On Jan. 14, West Virginia's new governor, Republican Patrick Morrisey, issued an executive order allowing religious exemptions there, although it's unclear if he needs legislative approval for the move.
DeVuono's COVID-19 vaccine card falsification took place in 2021 and 2022, state records show. Steve Politi, a Central Islip attorney who represented former Wild Child receptionist Brooke Hogan in that case, said his client did not know whether DeVuono was issuing fraudulent childhood vaccine certifications.
But, he noted, "It does seem odd that you would drive by hundreds of pediatricians to get" an easily obtainable vaccine.
"Why would someone come from Montauk for a normal shot they can get in Montauk?" he asked.
In the COVID-19 records case, Hogan pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, a violation, as part of a sealed plea deal and did not serve jail time, Politi said. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office does not discuss sealed records, Tania Lopez, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Ray Tierney, said in an email.
Tierney’s office has not filed criminal charges against DeVuono in connection with the allegedly falsified childhood vaccination records. In December 2023, Lopez said in an email the district attorney’s office had "no evidence" of fraudulent childhood vaccinations.
At DeVuono’s June 2024 sentencing on the COVID-19-related charges, an assistant district attorney said the health department had sent Tierney’s office the results of its investigation into the childhood vaccinations, but that the district attorney had not yet decided whether to file charges.
Asked if the district attorney’s office had determined whether new criminal charges against DeVuono are warranted, Lopez said in an email last week, "We do not confirm or deny investigations are underway."
In September, the state voided the vaccination records of 133 Long Island students and one Orange County student who were DeVuono patients and told parents their children must receive vaccinations from another provider. Dozens of children were barred from attending school after their parents did not follow the order.
Fifty-six parents filed a federal lawsuit Sept. 27 against the state and school districts over their children’s exclusion from school. Fourteen parents remain in the suit, court records indicate.
The lawsuit alleges violations of due process, calls the exclusion of the students unconstitutional and seeks a court order barring school districts from excluding the students. Attorneys for the parents did not respond to requests for comment.
Clary said the health department does not comment on litigation and declined to say whether the state has voided additional vaccination records since September without an additional FOIL, which Newsday submitted. The department does not have "real-time data" on how many of DeVuono’s former pediatric patients currently cannot attend school because they had not obtained vaccines from a different provider, she said.
New York officials are investigating whether students from nearly three-quarters of Long Island school districts and from upstate traveled to a former nurse practitioner's Amityville office for fraudulent vaccination records, state Health Department subpoenas show.
The state Health Department has accused Julie DeVuono and her practice, Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare in Amityville, of lying about administering vaccinations against potentially deadly diseases such as polio, measles and rubella in what experts believe would be one of the nation's largest childhood immunization fraud cases.
DeVuono, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to selling more than $1 million worth of fake COVID-19 vaccine cards, in the past has denied through an attorney that she falsified childhood vaccination records, which are required for students to attend school.
Students from school districts as far as Greenville, which borders Albany County, six Hudson Valley districts, and charter schools in Poughkeepsie, the Bronx and Queens had vaccine records from DeVuono that the state has been investigating as possibly falsified, the subpoenas show.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- Julie DeVuono, the former nurse practitioner suspected of falsifying children’s records for vaccines against measles, polio and other diseases, saw patients in her Amityville office from 91 of Long Island’s 124 school districts, eight districts in and near the Hudson Valley, and New York City, a Newsday analysis of state records shows.
- Experts say the range of DeVuono’s vaccine patients — from upstate Greenville to Montauk — suggests an underground network of parents seeking a health care provider to furnish falsified records so their children could attend school.
- The state health department sent 120 subpoenas to the districts to obtain hundreds of children’s vaccination records. The health department held hearings Jan. 15-16 in its administrative records falsification case against DeVuono and will continue the hearings in March.
On Long Island, the state subpoenaed student records from 91 of the region's 124 districts, as far east as Montauk. One of the largest group of students, at least 29, was from Smithtown, more than 20 miles from DeVuono’s Amityville office.
The state sent 120 subpoenas to 106 public school districts or individual private or charter schools between January and September 2024. Some districts received two subpoenas on different dates. Newsday obtained the subpoenas via a Freedom of Information Law request.
The 240-mile geographic span of DeVuono's patients demonstrates how far parents opposed to vaccines are willing to travel to find a health care provider who will help them skirt the law, said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University and an expert on vaccine policy.
The subpoenas' geographic span "reflects an underground sharing of information" among anti-vaccine parents, said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University. Credit: NYU Langone Health
"Patients do not normally travel those distances" to receive vaccinations that their local pediatricians typically can provide, he said. It "reflects an underground sharing of information" to "identify a sympathetic provider" willing to issue fraudulent vaccination records so children can attend school, Caplan said.
Anti-vaccine parents nationwide exchange tips via social media posts and private messaging groups, he said. Social media also spreads misinformation and disinformation about harms that vaccines are alleged to cause despite studies that have repeatedly shown vaccines are safe, and incontrovertible evidence vaccines have saved thousands of lives, Caplan said.
The anti-vaccine movement has gained strength in recent years, and President Donald Trump's nominee for health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a longtime vaccine skeptic, although during his Senate confirmation hearings Wednesday and Thursday he denied he is anti-vaccine.
The state Health Department held two days of administrative hearings on its allegations against DeVuono Jan. 15 and 16, and it will hold more hearings March 7 and 10, health department spokeswoman Erin Clary said in an email. The department declined to release the detailed charges against DeVuono, including the number of allegedly fraudulent vaccinations, without a new FOIL request — which Newsday submitted Jan. 23 — but Clary confirmed they are for falsifying pediatric vaccination records.
DeVuono could not be reached for comment, and William Nolan, the Garden City attorney whom health department documents list as her lawyer in the state administrative case, did not return calls.
In 2023, DeVuono pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to selling more than $1.2 million in fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards. She was sentenced last year to community service in Pennsylvania, where she now lives. As part of a plea deal, she surrendered her New York nursing licenses.
DeVuono’s LinkedIn page lists her as a "freelance" pediatric nurse practitioner in Pennsylvania, although she does not have a license there and has not applied for one, Pennsylvania Department of State spokesman Matt Heckel said in an email on Tuesday.
In June, the New York State Department of Health announced administrative charges against DeVuono, alleging violations of public health law. In September, the health department said it had determined DeVuono had falsified more than 1,500 pediatric vaccination records — each child is required to receive multiple vaccines to attend school — and was continuing to investigate whether she had falsified more. Every falsified entry in the state’s electronic vaccination system carries a maximum fine of $2,000, meaning DeVuono could potentially face millions of dollars in fines.
Records indicate more students could be impacted
The state in September said it had been seeking childhood vaccination records from about 750 DeVuono patients. The subpoenas indicate there now could be significantly more than that number whose records the state suspects could be fraudulent.
Newsday could determine with certainty the number of students whose records were subpoenaed in 43 subpoenas — or just over a third. Those subpoenas covered 609 students.
In the 77 other subpoenas, the state blacked out or did not disclose the number of students affected or the names of the students.
The health department’s FOIL office said in a message to Newsday that it redacted for privacy reasons the number if there were six or fewer students whose records were being sought. In 54 of those 77 subpoenas, plural words such as "individuals" indicate multiple students’ records were sought, while in 17, words such as "individual" indicate only one student’s record was requested. In six, the number was unclear.
DeVuono had never administered a childhood vaccine in her first 17 years of licensure as a nurse, health department records provided to Newsday in June show. She only started doing so after the state in 2019 ended nonmedical exemptions from vaccine requirements, a move that anti-vaccine parents from Long Island and elsewhere loudly protested.
Richard Carpiano, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside, and an expert on vaccine use, said DeVuono's alleged childhood immunization fraud, and a case last year in which the state health department fined Baldwin midwife Jeanette Breen $300,000 for falsifying records for 1,500 children, were "about the most egregious [cases] I've heard of" nationwide.
There likely are other cases that haven't been discovered, he said. Vaccine fraud can be difficult to detect, because parents seeking the falsification of their children’s immunization records will not file complaints, nor will the health care provider, he said.
Fraud is most likely to occur in the few states, like New York, that do not have religious, philosophical or other non-medical exemptions to required immunizations, Carpiano said, adding "that is no reason for these states to loosen their requirements."
According to the National Council of State Legislatures, only four states in addition to New York — California, Connecticut, Maine and West Virginia — did not offer non-medical exemptions as of August. On Jan. 14, West Virginia's new governor, Republican Patrick Morrisey, issued an executive order allowing religious exemptions there, although it's unclear if he needs legislative approval for the move.
DeVuono's COVID-19 vaccine card falsification took place in 2021 and 2022, state records show. Steve Politi, a Central Islip attorney who represented former Wild Child receptionist Brooke Hogan in that case, said his client did not know whether DeVuono was issuing fraudulent childhood vaccine certifications.
But, he noted, "It does seem odd that you would drive by hundreds of pediatricians to get" an easily obtainable vaccine.
"Why would someone come from Montauk for a normal shot they can get in Montauk?" he asked.
No criminal charges for childhood vax
In the COVID-19 records case, Hogan pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, a violation, as part of a sealed plea deal and did not serve jail time, Politi said. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office does not discuss sealed records, Tania Lopez, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Ray Tierney, said in an email.
Tierney’s office has not filed criminal charges against DeVuono in connection with the allegedly falsified childhood vaccination records. In December 2023, Lopez said in an email the district attorney’s office had "no evidence" of fraudulent childhood vaccinations.
At DeVuono’s June 2024 sentencing on the COVID-19-related charges, an assistant district attorney said the health department had sent Tierney’s office the results of its investigation into the childhood vaccinations, but that the district attorney had not yet decided whether to file charges.
Asked if the district attorney’s office had determined whether new criminal charges against DeVuono are warranted, Lopez said in an email last week, "We do not confirm or deny investigations are underway."
In September, the state voided the vaccination records of 133 Long Island students and one Orange County student who were DeVuono patients and told parents their children must receive vaccinations from another provider. Dozens of children were barred from attending school after their parents did not follow the order.
Fifty-six parents filed a federal lawsuit Sept. 27 against the state and school districts over their children’s exclusion from school. Fourteen parents remain in the suit, court records indicate.
The lawsuit alleges violations of due process, calls the exclusion of the students unconstitutional and seeks a court order barring school districts from excluding the students. Attorneys for the parents did not respond to requests for comment.
Clary said the health department does not comment on litigation and declined to say whether the state has voided additional vaccination records since September without an additional FOIL, which Newsday submitted. The department does not have "real-time data" on how many of DeVuono’s former pediatric patients currently cannot attend school because they had not obtained vaccines from a different provider, she said.
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