A Utah man was sentenced to prison on Thursday for selling thousands of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards. 

A federal judge sentenced 34-year-old Nicholas Frank Sciotto to 12 months for selling at least 120,000 counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination record cards after he admitted in July to conspiring to defraud the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. 

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Sciotto made more than $400,000 in profit. 

He was also sentenced to three years supervised release and ordered to pay a $40,000 fine. 

Prosecutors say Sciotto lived in Weber County when he started making the cards in March 2021, conspiring with another man, Kyle Blake Burbage. According to a complaint filed in federal court in March 2023, the cards “looked identical to bonafide COVID-19 vaccination record cards which were issued by the CDC at the time.” 

“I know someone selling legit vacc (sic) cards cheap for people who don’t want to partake in a science experiment,” Sciotto wrote in a Facebook comment in March 2021. 

Sciotto printed the cards at a local print shop in Utah, the complaint alleges, convincing the store’s owner that he worked for a local hospital and was authorized to “print out thousands of copies of COVID-19 vaccination record cards.” 

Sciotto charged $10 for each card, plus shipping, with a discounted price of $7.50 for anyone who ordered 100 or more. He sold “many” of the cards to people living in New York City “to facilitate their evasion of local health and safety protocols,” according to the complaint. Most of the transactions were done via Venmo or Cashapp, and Sciotto advertised the cards on Facebook. Sciotto tried to keep a low profile by changing the shipping addresses and envelopes every week when he made the shipments. 

Some of those cards were then resold, with a market value hovering between $50 to $100 per card, according to the complaint. 

“Sciotto engaged in this scheme – without regard for any public health consequences or risks that he exposed individuals to during the pandemic, without their knowledge or consent, and he undermined the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccination program and other governmental health and safety regulations and protocols at significant profit,” reads a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Utah. 

Bird flu has infected a commercial flock of about 800,000 fowl at an egg farm in southeast Washington, the state’s Department of Agriculture said this week.

It’s the first detection in Washington this year of highly pathogenic avian influenza in a commercial poultry operation and is one of about four dozen known commercial and domestic flocks in the state to be infected with the disease since 2022, the department said.

“It was a pretty long break we got,” said Amber Betts, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Agriculture. She explained that the fall migration season for wild birds raises the risks of the disease spreading at poultry facilities. 

As of Thursday, there were no signs the H5N1 virus had spread to humans or other types of livestock in the area where the infected flock was detected, Betts said. 

“Right now, it’s a poultry outbreak,” she said.

In response to outbreaks like this, flocks are quickly euthanized and disposed of either through composting or cremation. Left unchecked, the disease spreads quickly among birds at poultry farms and causes severe illness or death for the animals.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a program to compensate poultry operations for losses tied to bird flu.

Here in Washington, state and federal officials will monitor other commercial bird flocks within about six miles of the Franklin County site where the latest outbreak has occurred. 

Commercial poultry operations in that zone are required to monitor their flocks’ health closely, with regular surveillance testing, and must request permits from the state to move products deemed safe in or out of the area, according to the state Department of Agriculture.

The last outbreak at a commercial poultry facility in Washington involved about 1 million birds, while domestic flocks that have been infected have ranged widely in size, Betts said. 

Bird flu circulates among wild birds and can spread to agricultural flocks. 

The first detections in the U.S. of the current H5N1 outbreak of the disease were in January 2022. Since then, the sickness has affected at least 103 million poultry in the U.S., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The strain of the virus now active in the U.S. has also infected dairy cows and other mammals, including harbor seals in northwest Washington. There’ve also been at least 25 reported human cases across the country in 2024, none of them in Washington state, CDC figures show.

Bird flu infections tend to be rare in people and typically occur when people are around animals with the illness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the risk to the general public from the virus remains low. 

Symptoms in people, according to the CDC, may include eye redness, flu-like respiratory illness, fever, cough, sore throat and in more serious cases, pneumonia.

Between 2003 and April of this year, the World Health Organization recorded 889 cases and 463 deaths in 23 countries caused by the H5N1 bird flu virus. A concern is that the virus could mutate in ways that allow it to spread more easily among people.

It looks like southeast Wyoming residents can expect cool temperatures and scattered rain and snow over the next few days, according to the Cheyenne Office of the National Weather Service.

The agency posted the following on it’s website:

”Here’s your weekend forecast for southeast Wyoming and Nebraska Panhandle. A low pressure system tracking through Colorado will drive a cold front slowly through the area Friday. Most locations expected to see some form of precipitation. Rain expected east, with a mix west and snow in the mountains Friday. Low moves southeast into southern Colorado Saturday, with mainly dry conditions for most locations. The low then turns northeast and we could see rain showers developing across our southern areas for Sunday. Here’s hoping you get some rainfall/snowfall the next 3 days!”

Cheyenne, Laramie Forecasts

Cheyenne Forecast

Thursday

Sunny, with a high near 70.

Laramie Forecast

Thursday

Sunny, with a high near 68.