With cities like New Orleans now requiring everyone to show their vaccination card or a negative COVID test just to be seated at a table in a restaurant, or to see a band play live at a bar, the sudden demand for cards can birth a black market filled with forged CDC COVID-19 vaccination cards.
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So, if you buy a forged vaccine card and use it to have dinner at your favorite restaurant or have a drink at a bar, could you get into trouble?
Yes! You can says 11Alive legal analyst Page Pate.
According to Pate, using a forged or fake vaccination card could be a federal crime and could get the user up to five years in prison.
"It can be a federal crime to possess or use any fake vaccination card that contains a symbol of a United States governmental agency," Pate says. "If somebody makes a card like that and uses one of those symbols - it can be the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC - if they put those symbols on a card without proper authorization, then they have committed a federal crime and it carries up to five years in prison."
Pate says the law doesn’t just apply to the forger selling the fake card but also extends to the user purchasing the card.
"Be very careful - buying a fake vaccination card can be a federal felony offense,” Pate warns.
Pate cites statutes in 18 U.S. Code § 1017 which makes using "any certificate, instrument, commission, document, or paper... with wrongful or fraudulent intent,” a federal crime.