Officials: Sandra Miceli, an upstate nurse, provided fake vaccination cards for about 116 children across New York State
Nassau officials speak about an arrest of a Levittown CVS employee for fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination cards on May 13, 2021, in Mineola. Credit: Howard Schnapp
A Rochester-area nurse falsified vaccination records for roughly 116 children across New York, according to the state Department of Health, which on Tuesday announced it had fined her $55,000.
For roughly 19 months starting in July 2019, authorities said, Sandra Miceli, who operates a wellness clinic in the Rochester suburb of Webster, began falsely reporting to the state that her school- and day care-age patients had received required immunizations. The fictitious immunizations were for diseases including diphtheria, hepatitis B, mumps, measles, meningitis and others that are required to enroll in any school in the state.
A settlement agreement with the department Miceli signed in April calls for state health officials to contact parents and guardians of the affected children to tell them their vaccine records are invalid and that the children need to receive age-appropriate vaccinations before returning to school.
It was not clear if parents knew their children's vaccination records were false, said Joseph Giovannetti, the department’s director of investigations.
"Our investigation was limited to the provider," Giovannetti said, though he added that Miceli had a long history of "promulgating vaccine disinformation" and that some of her patients had sought her out from as far away as New York City.
The deception began shortly after the state eliminated non-medical exemptions for school immunizations, creating what Giovannetti said was a market for fake records. It did not involve any families from Long Island, where investigations in 2023 and this year turned up thousands of fake vaccine records.
According to the settlement agreement, Miceli admitted to “substantial evidence” that she violated state public health law by falsifying vaccine records. Under the agreement, she paid $30,000 of her penalty. The remainder of the penalty was suspended, provided she abides by a permanent ban from using the state’s electronic database for children’s immunization and does not participate in any fraudulent immunization scheme.
The department agreed to pursue no criminal or further administrative charges against her, though the agreement does not immunize her from charges another agency might bring.
Miceli, reached by text message and email, did not comment, and a lawyer who represented her in the department’s enforcement action declined to comment. The district attorney in Monroe County, where Miceli’s clinic, Surviving Naturally, is located, did not respond to a request for comment.
“We will continue to monitor any continued fraud by anyone involved here,” Giovannetti said.
The Rochester case was the department’s second significant non-COVID-19 pediatric vaccine case this year, Giovannetti said. The first involved a Baldwin midwife, Jeanette Breen, who in January received a $300,000 fine from state health officials after falsifying vaccination records for almost 1,500 children.
In Suffolk County last year, prosecutors said Julie DeVuono, an Amityville nurse practitioner, earned more than $1.5 million providing thousands of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards between June 2021 and January 2022. She pleaded guilty in September 2023 to charges of forging vaccine cards, money laundering and offering a false instrument for filing.
Her sentencing is set for June 11, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. State health officials said in December they were investigating whether DeVuono also faked certificates of immunization against other diseases. That investigation is ongoing.
Giovannetti declined to say how much Miceli charged to create the false records or how much her operation had grossed but did say “transactions were cash.”
State records list Miceli as a nurse practitioner in family health and a registered professional nurse, with no enforcement actions on her licenses. The state Education Department, which administers professional licensing, did not respond to a request for comment.
Giovannetti said Miceli’s clinic spread “anti-vaccine propaganda” on its social media accounts from its opening in 2014. That is not a crime, but her false reporting was, he said. In one instance, according to the settlement agreement, she used the alphanumeric code on a particular batch of vaccines to report administering 154 doses, more than 30 times the number of doses she had actually purchased.
Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of public health and epidemiology for Northwell Health, described the breadth of Miceli’s operation, as laid out by authorities, as “shocking … . It is very sad to see people harming their own children or communities by avoiding vaccines that have been around for over 20 years and have an amazing safety record.”
Some of the diseases for which Miceli provided fake vaccination records are potentially fatal, Farber said. Authorities said they had no reason to believe the fake vaccinations in the Rochester case had contributed to any outbreaks of disease.
Farber said fake vaccinations appeared to have mushroomed after the pandemic hit.
“If it happened before, it happened very infrequently,” he said. “Now it’s more and more often.”
A Rochester-area nurse falsified vaccination records for roughly 116 children across New York, according to the state Department of Health, which on Tuesday announced it had fined her $55,000.
For roughly 19 months starting in July 2019, authorities said, Sandra Miceli, who operates a wellness clinic in the Rochester suburb of Webster, began falsely reporting to the state that her school- and day care-age patients had received required immunizations. The fictitious immunizations were for diseases including diphtheria, hepatitis B, mumps, measles, meningitis and others that are required to enroll in any school in the state.
A settlement agreement with the department Miceli signed in April calls for state health officials to contact parents and guardians of the affected children to tell them their vaccine records are invalid and that the children need to receive age-appropriate vaccinations before returning to school.
It was not clear if parents knew their children's vaccination records were false, said Joseph Giovannetti, the department’s director of investigations.
"Our investigation was limited to the provider," Giovannetti said, though he added that Miceli had a long history of "promulgating vaccine disinformation" and that some of her patients had sought her out from as far away as New York City.
The deception began shortly after the state eliminated non-medical exemptions for school immunizations, creating what Giovannetti said was a market for fake records. It did not involve any families from Long Island, where investigations in 2023 and this year turned up thousands of fake vaccine records.
According to the settlement agreement, Miceli admitted to “substantial evidence” that she violated state public health law by falsifying vaccine records. Under the agreement, she paid $30,000 of her penalty. The remainder of the penalty was suspended, provided she abides by a permanent ban from using the state’s electronic database for children’s immunization and does not participate in any fraudulent immunization scheme.
The department agreed to pursue no criminal or further administrative charges against her, though the agreement does not immunize her from charges another agency might bring.
Miceli, reached by text message and email, did not comment, and a lawyer who represented her in the department’s enforcement action declined to comment. The district attorney in Monroe County, where Miceli’s clinic, Surviving Naturally, is located, did not respond to a request for comment.
“We will continue to monitor any continued fraud by anyone involved here,” Giovannetti said.
The Rochester case was the department’s second significant non-COVID-19 pediatric vaccine case this year, Giovannetti said. The first involved a Baldwin midwife, Jeanette Breen, who in January received a $300,000 fine from state health officials after falsifying vaccination records for almost 1,500 children.
In Suffolk County last year, prosecutors said Julie DeVuono, an Amityville nurse practitioner, earned more than $1.5 million providing thousands of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards between June 2021 and January 2022. She pleaded guilty in September 2023 to charges of forging vaccine cards, money laundering and offering a false instrument for filing.
Her sentencing is set for June 11, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. State health officials said in December they were investigating whether DeVuono also faked certificates of immunization against other diseases. That investigation is ongoing.
Giovannetti declined to say how much Miceli charged to create the false records or how much her operation had grossed but did say “transactions were cash.”
State records list Miceli as a nurse practitioner in family health and a registered professional nurse, with no enforcement actions on her licenses. The state Education Department, which administers professional licensing, did not respond to a request for comment.
Giovannetti said Miceli’s clinic spread “anti-vaccine propaganda” on its social media accounts from its opening in 2014. That is not a crime, but her false reporting was, he said. In one instance, according to the settlement agreement, she used the alphanumeric code on a particular batch of vaccines to report administering 154 doses, more than 30 times the number of doses she had actually purchased.
Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of public health and epidemiology for Northwell Health, described the breadth of Miceli’s operation, as laid out by authorities, as “shocking … . It is very sad to see people harming their own children or communities by avoiding vaccines that have been around for over 20 years and have an amazing safety record.”
Some of the diseases for which Miceli provided fake vaccination records are potentially fatal, Farber said. Authorities said they had no reason to believe the fake vaccinations in the Rochester case had contributed to any outbreaks of disease.
Farber said fake vaccinations appeared to have mushroomed after the pandemic hit.
“If it happened before, it happened very infrequently,” he said. “Now it’s more and more often.”
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