Man Charged in Jan. 6 Riot Sold Forged Vaccination Cards
I have a great idea, Jia Liu must have said to Steve Rodriguez. Let’s make up phony vaccine cards! Hey, they just have to look “close” to the real ones, be the same size and stuff. Man, we’ll make a bundle! “Wow, that’s genius,” I surmise that Stephen replied.
“Yea! Cash in on all those anti-vexers. Who cares? I got my three!”
“Jia…Steve…What were you thinking? You & yourself only, make the bed you’re gonna lie in!”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/us/marine-corps-nurse-fake-vaccine-cards.html?smid=em-share
Man Charged in Jan. 6 Riot Sold Forged Vaccination Cards, U.S. Says
Prosecutors said that the man, Jia Liu, a Marine Corps reservist, conspired with a nurse, Steven Rodriguez, to distribute hundreds of fraudulent vaccine cards.
A Marine Corps reservist who was charged with entering the Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, is now accused of conspiring with a nurse to steal, forge and distribute hundreds of fraudulent coronavirus vaccination cards, prosecutors said on Thursday.
The reservist, Jia Liu, 26, of Queens, N.Y., and the nurse, Steven Rodriguez, 27, of Long Beach, N.Y., plotted to distribute the fraudulent vaccination cards to people who were not vaccinated, including Marine reservists who were trying to evade the Pentagon’s vaccine requirement for members of the military, prosecutors said.
Michael J. Driscoll, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s New York field office, said the scheme resulted in more than 300 stolen or false vaccination cards circulating through the community as well as the destruction of “multiple doses” of the coronavirus vaccine.
Mr. Liu and Mr. Rodriguez were arrested on Thursday morning and charged in an indictment with one count of conspiring to defraud the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and one count of conspiring to commit forgery, prosecutors said.
Mr. Liu was also charged with one count of conspiring to defraud the Defense Department for providing fraudulent vaccination cards to Marine reservists, prosecutors said.
“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 one million lives in this country,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
Both men pleaded not guilty on Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Mr. Liu was released on a $250,000 bond to home detention with GPS monitoring, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office said. Mr. Rodriguez was released on a $100,000 bond, the spokesman said. If convicted, both men face up to 10 years in prison.
Benjamin Yaster, a lawyer for Mr. Liu, declined to comment on the charges.
“The charges are disturbing, obviously,” Gary Farrell, a lawyer for Mr. Rodriguez, said in an email. “This young man has no prior record and has a good family, which is why he was released on an unsecured signature bond with the consent of the government.”
Prosecutors said the scheme lasted from at least March 2021 until this month and offered buyers blank vaccination cards, or completed vaccination cards with falsified information.
Buyers could also be entered into immunization databases, which allowed them to receive the Excelsior Pass, which displays a user’s vaccination status in a digital app, prosecutors said.
As part of the scheme, Mr. Liu bought blank vaccination cards from Mr. Rodriguez, and then forged and distributed them for a profit, prosecutors said.
Mr. Liu also directed buyers to meet Mr. Rodriguez at his clinic in Hempstead, N.Y., which was not identified in court records, prosecutors said.
At the clinic, Mr. Rodriguez would destroy a vial of the vaccine, and then record the dose on a vaccination card as if he had administered it to the buyer, prosecutors said. He would then enter the information into immunization databases, falsely indicating that the buyer had been vaccinated, prosecutors said.
Both men promoted the scheme on encrypted messaging apps and on social media, using code names for the vaccination cards such as “gift cards,” “Cardi Bs,” “Christmas cards” and “Pokemon cards.”
Mr. Liu was already facing charges in connection with the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and attacked police officers as Congress was seeking to certify the results of the presidential election.
Mr. Liu, who was seen on video footage entering the Capitol in a black jacket with an American flag hood over his head, was charged last year with four counts, including disorderly conduct in a capitol building, prosecutors said. That case is still pending.
Kirkus Reviews, the gold-standard for independent & accurate reviews, has this to say about
What Goes Around Comes Around:
A stable, positive, non preachy, objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre. A successful guide that uses anecdotes to reveal powerful truths about life.
~ Kirkus Reviews
“I’ve read a number of books that focus on sharing a similar message, including “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, “The Answer” by John Assaraf & Murray Smith, “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill, and I must say that I find Rob’s to be my favorite.” – Sheryl Woodhouse, founder of Livelihood Matters LLC
Man Charged in Jan. 6 Riot Sold Forged Vaccination Cards
Man Charged in Jan. 6 Riot Sold Forged Vaccination Cards
Here’s a head scratcher that I’m of two minds about as it relates to the subject in question, though either way it is a great, multiple illustration of “Cause & Effect” in action. On the one hand it is somewhat poetic that Jeff Zucker would have to fire Chris Cuomo for the “brother Andrew” matter, while he himself was hiding his own “peccadillo,” only to have that indiscretion revealed and have to “walk the plank” himself!
However, a rule is a rule is a rule and guess what? Yup! “What Goes Around Comes Around!”
One nuance of the situation for Jeff Zucker, was whether the fact that he was carrying around his own secret may be why he didn’t act more decisively on the Cuomo situation? Not to imply that it means he deserved the firing squad if it was true. But he had signed on to follow the rules and lead by example, which he was abusing at the same time that Chris was understating his role to help Andrew. But still, did he equivocate on Cuomo because in his own mind it seemed hypocritical? In the end, it is a small matter but interesting to contemplate nonetheless.
Colombo Family Crime Boss and 12 Others Are Arrested, Prosecutors Say
An indictment unsealed on Tuesday accuses the organization of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort a labor union.
For two decades, the leadership of the Colombo crime family extorted a Queens labor union, federal prosecutors said — an effort that continued unabated even as members of the mob clan cycled through prison, the family’s notorious longtime boss died, and as federal law enforcement closed in.
Over time, what began as a Colombo captain’s shakedown of a union leader, complete with expletive-laced threats of violence, expanded into a cottage industry, prosecutors said, as the Colombo organization assumed control of contracting and union business, with side operations in phony construction certificates, marijuana trafficking and loan-sharking.
On Tuesday, 11 reputed members and associates of the Colombo crime family, including the mob clan’s entire leadership, were charged in a labor racketeering case brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
All but two of the men were arrested Tuesday morning across New York and New Jersey, prosecutors said. Another was surrendered to the authorities on Tuesday; another defendant, identified as the family consigliere, remained at large, prosecutors said.
The indictment accuses the Colombo family of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort an unnamed labor union that represented construction workers, using threats of violence to secure payments and arrange contracts that would benefit the crime family.
The charges are an ambitious effort by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take down one of the city’s five Mafia families. In addition to the union extortion scheme, which is the heart of the racketeering charge, the indictment charges several misdeeds often associated with the mob, including drug trafficking, money laundering, loan-sharking and falsifying federal labor safety paperwork.
Detention hearings for the defendants in Brooklyn federal court continued into the evening Tuesday, as they entered not-guilty pleas to the charges; prosecutors had asked the court to keep 10 of the defendants in custody.
“Everything we allege in this investigation proves history does indeed repeat itself,” Michael J. Driscoll, F.B.I. assistant director-in-charge, said in a statement. “The underbelly of the crime families in New York City is alive and well.”
Around 2001, prosecutors said, Vincent Ricciardo — a reported captain in the family, also known as “Vinny Unions” — began to demand a portion of a senior labor union official’s salary. When Mr. Ricciardo was convicted and imprisoned on federal racketeering charges in the mid-2000s, prosecutors said, his cousin continued to collect those payments.
Starting in late 2019, prosecutors said, the senior leadership of the Colombo family became directly involved in the shakedown, which extended to broader efforts to siphon money from the union: for example, manipulating the selection of union health fund vendors to contract with entities connected to the family, and diverting more than $10,000 each month from the fund to the family.
Andrew Russo, 87, who prosecutors describe as the family boss, is accused of taking part in those efforts, as well as a money-laundering scheme to send the proceeds of the union extortion through intermediaries to Colombo associates. He was among nine defendants charged with racketeering.
Mr. Russo appeared in court virtually from the hospital Tuesday; he is set to be detained upon his release, pending a future bail hearing.
The family’s infamous longtime boss, Carmine J. Persico, died in federal custody in North Carolina in March 2019.
Federal law enforcement learned of the extortion scheme about a year ago, prosecutors wrote in a court filing Tuesday; investigators gathered thousands of hours of wiretapped calls and conversations recorded by a confidential witness, wrote the prosecutors, who also described law-enforcement surveillance of meetings among the accused conspirators.
The authorities said they repeatedly captured Mr. Ricciardo and his associates threatening to kill the union official. “I’ll put him in the ground right in front of his wife and kids,” Mr. Ricciardo was recorded saying in June.
On another occasion cited by prosecutors in the memo seeking his detention, Mr. Ricciardo directed the union official to hire a consultant selected by the Colombo family, saying: “It’s my union and that’s it.” Prosecutors said his activities were overseen by a Colombo soldier and the consigliere who remains at large.
Much of the activity outlined in the indictment took place while the defendants were either in prison or on supervised release for prior federal mob-related convictions. Theodore Persico Jr., described as a family captain and soldier, was released from federal prison in 2020 and, despite a directive not to associate with members of organized crime, “directed much of the labor racketeering scheme,” prosecutors said.
Mr. Persico, 58, is set to inherit the role of boss after Mr. Russo, prosecutors wrote.
Several of the defendants were named in what prosecutors described as a fraudulent safety training scheme, in which they falsified state and federal paperwork that is required for construction workers to show they have completed safety training courses.
One of the defendants, John Ragano — whom prosecutors say is a soldier in the Bonanno crime family — is accused of setting up phony occupational safety training schools in New York, which prosecutors said were “mills” that provided fraudulent safety training certificates to hundreds of people.
In October 2020, prosecutors said, an undercover law enforcement officer visited one of the schools in Ozone Park, Queens, and received, from Mr. Ricciardo’s cousin, a blank test form and an answer sheet; weeks later, the agent returned to pick up his federal safety card and paid $500.
The purported schools were also used for meetings with members of La Cosa Nostra — the group of crime families commonly known as the Mafia — and to store illegal drugs and fireworks, according to the indictment.
Mr. Ragano wasn’t charged on the racketeering count, although prosecutors also sought his detention pending trial. In addition to the racketeering count, several defendants, including Mr. Ricciardo and his cousin, were charged with extortion, conspiracy, fraud and conspiracy to make false statements.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
Correction:
An earlier version of this article misstated the number of people identified in an indictment as members of the Colombo crime family. It is 11, not more than a dozen.