MARINE RESERVIST, NURSE CHARGED WITH CARD SCAM

A Marine Corps reservist who was charged in last year’s riot at the U.S. Capitol also schemed with a nurse to steal, forge and sell hundreds of fake coronavirus vaccination cards and destroy vaccine doses to fake inoculations, federal authorities said Thursday.

Sgt. Jia Liu, 26, was released on $250,000 bond to home detention with an ankle monitor after a court appearance Thursday. Nurse Steven Rodriguez, 27, was released on $100,000 bond.

“By deliberately distributing fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination cards to the unvaccinated, the defendants put military and other communities at risk of contracting a virus that has already claimed nearly 1 million lives in this country,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.

Liu’s lawyer, Benjamin Yaster, declined to comment. A message was left for Rodriguez’s attorney.

The defendants are charged with conspiring to commit forgery and to defraud the federal government. The charges carry the potential for up to 10 years in prison.

According to an indictment, Rodriguez, who worked at a clinic on Long Island, pilfered blank COVID-19 vaccination cards.

The two men allegedly offered customers the choice of buying blank or fraudulently filled out cards, with a premium-priced option: a fake vaccination record in the New York state and city databases that are used to issue vaccine passes.

A buyer who sprung for the add-on would go to the clinic, where Rodriguez would dispose of a dose of vaccine, forge a card and make a phony entry into the databases, the indictment said.

It said some of the fake cards went to Liu’s fellow Marine reservists, following a Pentagon order in August that all members of the military be vaccinated.

The Marine Corps “is aware of the situation, and we are fully cooperating with federal authorities,” Lt. Col. Craig W. Thomas said in a statement.

He said the Marines had already taken steps toward administratively separating Liu before Thursday’s arrest. Administrative separation is a military term that’s akin to firing in the civilian world.

Liu was charged this past fall with climbing through a broken window into the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. In that case, he has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges.