While institutions continue to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination before service, some unvaccinated individuals are sliding by using counterfeit vaccination cards.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Lindsay Diamond, a graduate student in the Information Science Department at the University of Colorado-Boulder, has closely studied trends in vaccination compliance and hesitancy in online spaces. Her research methods include patrolling social media platforms to monitor anti-vaccination groups’ activities.
Although she refrains from joining private social media groups for research ethics purposes, Diamond said, she has seen individuals allude to fake vaccination cards in posts, often by using alternative platforms and employing special language to remain discreet.
“People find a way to speak about these things. They might have private anti-vaccine Facebook groups, or use some of the more alternative social media platforms like Telegram or Parlor or MeWe that aren’t being as heavily monitored or censored,” Diamond explained.
“There’s also lingo making it a little bit harder to track down.”
Among anti-vaccination’ online discussions, participants will never spell out the word ‘vaccine,’ according to Diamond. Instead, they’ll substitute parentheses for the ‘c’s in the word (va((ine) or, recently, they’ve been using the phrase ‘dance party’ to refer to vaccinations, she said.
The online interactions Diamond witnesses, for the most part, take place between people located in different parts of the country. Although she hasn’t come across a conversation about counterfeit vaccination cards that mentions any place in or around Boulder County, she said, “I know from experience that we do have strong anti vaccine groups operating in Boulder County and I would not be surprised if, behind closed doors, these kinds of conversations (about fake vaccine cards) are happening.”
However, it’s not only the people who belong to online anti-vaccine groups pursuing fake vaccine cards, according to Diamond, and there are various methods to produce them — including several which are quite simple.
“Depending on what a person is wanting one in order to do, there’s sort of that sense of how much is that person going to be paying attention to the details while producing a fraudulent vaccine card,” she said. “I’ve seen images of the counterfeit vaccine cards and some are really well done … and some are not.”
To forge a physical vaccine card, replicating the weight of the paper can at first be a challenge. However, sourcing a paper of higher quality or investing in cardstock could do the trick, Diamond said.
After securing the right paper, “we can all see that (vaccine cards are) pretty simplistic in features,” Diamond said. “So in terms of being able to copy the CDC’s logo or the information that’s on there, it’s not a huge task to reproduce something that looks quite simple.”
Giveaways of a fraudulent vaccine card, according to Diamond, include the misspelling of the vaccination name or an insufficient number of digits that make up the vaccine’s supposed batch number. Nevertheless, “it’s all in the eye of the beholder,” she pointed out, “and in terms of who is actually looking at the vaccine cards in order to give someone access to something.”
At places where the person checking people’s proof of vaccination is more preoccupied with efficiently getting people in the door — as is the case at many bars, gyms and more unvaccinated individuals using counterfeit cards have a higher potential of getting admitted than without a card. In such instances, “someone could easily just modify another person’s image of their vaccine card and hold up their phone (to the person at the door) as though it was theirs,” Diamond said.
To combat this, District Attorney for Boulder County Michael Dougherty, “would encourage restaurants and bars that are requiring individuals to show vaccine cards to get up to speed on what the fake vaccine cards look like and how to spot a counterfeit just as they do with licenses,” he said.
For Dougherty, the act of forging a vaccination card is “the epitome of selfishness,” he said — not to mention, every aspect of the business is illegal.
According to Dougherty, it’s illegal and criminal to possess, produce or sell a fraudulent vaccination card in Colorado, and such offenses could be prosecuted as class five felonies or class one misdemeanors — both of which could lead to significant jail time.
Although “we’ve not yet seen any cases (of fake vaccine cards) in Boulder County,” Dougherty said, the district attorney’s office is aware of how they could be produced.
Dougherty’s main concern, however, lies with the people who are in the business of selling counterfeit vaccination cards, he said.
“With the fake vaccine cards, what I’m really concerned about is people who are selling them. There have been reports around the country of individuals who are selling them and making quite a bit of money around those sales and, to me, those are incredibly egregious cases where individuals are profiting off of the pandemic and profiting off putting other people in our community at risk,” Dougherty said.
While scoping social media, Diamond also noticed the high prices people were willing to pay for forged vaccine cards.
“For some of these people, the costs of counterfeit cards were in the range of $100 to hundreds of dollars, if not more,” she said. “It’s fascinating when you think about reproducing a piece of paper and then charging something at that level.”
While fraudulent vaccination cards may merely be pieces of paper, the risks they pose are of far grander significance, according to Dougherty.
“We’re living through a worldwide pandemic of course, unfortunately, in any tragedy or crisis that strikes humanity or our country, there’s a small group of people who put their interests above those of the community. I certainly hope we don’t see any cases like that here in Boulder.”
