Authorities: California bar owner arrested for selling fake vaccination cards
May 7, 2021 9:30 PM EDT
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – Authorities say they have arrested the owner of a Northern California bar where made-to-order fake COVID-19 vaccination cards were being sold to undercover state agents for $20 each.
Officials said Friday they’re unaware of any other such cases nationwide, though bogus cards have been advertised online.
Vaccination cards are being used as a pass for people to attend large gatherings.
After receiving a tip from the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office, authorities say, undercover agents with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control went to Old Corner Saloon in Clements several times in April and bought fake laminated vaccination cards.
May 8, 2021
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) The owner of a Northern California bar where authorities say made-to-order fake COVID-19 vaccination cards were sold to undercover state agents for $20 each was arrested in what officials call the first such foiled operation they are aware of nationwide.
The plainclothes agents from California’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control said they were told at the Old Corner Saloon in Clements to write their names and birthdates on Post-it notes and then watched as employees cut the cards, filled in identifying information and bogus vaccination dates and laminated the finished products.
“On the back where they put the two dates when you were vaccinated, they used two different color pens to make it look like it was two different times,” supervising agent Luke Blehm said Friday. “So they went to some effort to make it look authentic.”
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HONOLULU A man who spent decades in a Hawaii psychiatric hospital for killing a woman was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday for escaping from the facility in 2017 and flying to California, then fleeing to Stockton before he was captured.
In November 2017, authorities said Randall Saito walked out of Hawaii State Hospital, where he was sent in 1981 after he was acquitted of murder by reason of insanity in the 1979 killing of Sandra Yamashiro.
After leaving the hospital, Saito called a taxi that took him to the airport, where boarded a chartered flight to Maui. He used an alias to arrange the flight and paid $1,445 cash for it, prosecutors said. Then he took a commercial flight to San Jose, prosecutors said.