DA: Nurse used vaccination card scheme proceeds to pay mortgage after arrest

A nurse practitioner accused of running a $1.5 million fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination card scheme used proceeds to satisfy the mortgage on her Amityville house in the days following her arrest, according to a civil forfeiture action filed in state Supreme Court.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney alleged in the filing that Wild Child Pediatric Health Care owner and CEO Julie DeVuono authorized a $236,980 wire transfer just three days after her January 2022 arrest to pay the balance on a mortgage for the house owned by her husband, an NYPD pilot.

DeVuono also closed out a personal savings account and received a check for more than $331,000 in April 2022 from proceeds previously transferred out of her business account while she was running the scheme, according to the complaint filed last May.

The district attorney is seeking a forfeiture judgment of more than $1.3 million in proceeds from the scheme, which prosecutors allege began in June 2021 and ended when police executed search warrants at the Amityville clinic on Jan. 27, 2022.

Prosecutors allege that after entering into an agreement with the Centers for Disease Control to administer free COVID-19 vaccinations to the public, DeVuono directed practical nurse Marissa Urraro of Northport to fake giving shots to patients who would then receive a vaccine card in exchange for cash. The shots were then falsely reported to the state, prosecutors said.

Adult patients paid between $220 and $350 per fake shot recorded with the state, according to the civil forfeiture complaint. Fake pediatric shots ranged between $85 and $220, the complaint said.

To conceal the scheme, DeVuono, Urraro and receptionist Brooke Hogan, all of whom have been criminally charged, “wasted” the doses the clinic reported administering to patients by dumping an equal amount of the vaccine into a trash can, the complaint said.

The employees often received cash payments from patients, which were kept in a safe at the office from which DeVuono would frequently remove cash, according to the complaint. During the raid of the DeVuono home in January 2022, investigators recovered more than $869,000 in cash, the complaint said. DeVuono also shared some of the cash proceeds with her employees, prosecutors said.

The scheme has been linked to a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn filed by an attorney for a group of 30 New York City public school teachers who were suspended without pay after an investigator reported they received their vaccine cards from the Amityville clinic, according to records in that case. Supreme Court Justice Gina Abadi ruled in December that those teachers, 27 of whom previously had been granted tenure, should be returned to the classroom and awarded back pay. Those teachers have not been criminally prosecuted.

The vaccination card scheme was upended after DeVuono and Urraro forged COVID-19 vaccine cards for an undercover detective without administering the vaccination, prosecutors previously said.

DeVuono and Urraro were arraigned on Jan. 28, 2022, and each charged with second-degree forgery. DeVuono was additionally charged with first-degree offering a false instrument. They have not yet been indicted by a grand jury and are due back in court next month.

Prosecutors said at the January 2022 arraignment that a ledger seized during the raid of DeVuono’s home showed the scheme generated $1.5 million, Newsday reported at the time.

Defense attorney Steven Gaitman of Gaitman & Russo in Garden City said DeVuono denies any wrongdoing.

“All money earned by Ms. DeVuono in her practice was lawfully gained,” he said in a statement. “For many years she had a successful pediatric practice. Any funds alleged to have been used by Ms. DeVuono as a result of ill-gotten gains is simply and unequivocally false.”

Urraro’s attorney, Michael Joseph Alber of Huntington Station, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hogan, who prosecutors said also helped make entries into the state vaccination database, was arraigned on a second-degree forgery charge in August and is due back in court in March, court records show. Her attorney, Steven Politi of Central Islip, said he is still discussing with the district attorney’s office the ultimate resolution of his client’s case.

Derin DeVuono, the nurse’s husband, was named as a noncriminal defendant in the civil forfeiture action. In the complaint, Tierney said his office intends to recover from Derin DeVuono the amount paid to satisfy his mortgage and any increased equity established in the time that has since passed.

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.