To avoid Hawaii's mandatory quarantine, an Illinois woman allegedly faked a COVID-19 vaccine card, infamously misspelling “Moderna” as “Maderna.”
On Wednesday, the tourist reportedly didn’t show up to a Zoom court hearing and is currently wanted by Hawaii state officials for contempt of court.
She uploaded a vaccination card to the state’s Safe Travels program and arrived in Honolulu on Aug. 23 on a Southwest Airlines flight, according to reporting by the Associated Press.
"Airport screeners found suspicious errors ... such as Moderna was spelled wrong and that her home was in Illinois but her shot was taken at Delaware," Wilson Lau, a special agent with the Hawaii attorney general’s investigation division, wrote in an email to a Delaware official who confirmed there was no vaccination record for the woman under her name and birth date.
She was charged with two misdemeanor counts of violating Hawaii’s emergency COVID-19 ordinances. She was released without bail before this week’s hearing.
The hearing Wednesday was intended to be a routine "status hearing." But Deputy Attorney General Kory Young has requested a $500 bench warrant for her arrest after she failed to show up.
While she was previously represented by Hawaii's Office of the Public Defender in past hearings, she failed to apply for representation by a public defender for future hearings, Hawaii Public Defender James Tabe said.
"Therefore, we are not representing her," said Tabe.
It’s not clear as of Thursday who is representing her.
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