Attorney General Josh Stein vows to continue leading the fight against unlawful sales of fake vaccination cards by calling on OfferUp, an online mobile marketplace, to act immediately to prevent fraudulent or blank COVID-19 vaccine cards from being sold on its platform.
“If you want to get a vaccine card, you can do so by signing up to get the vaccine for free,” said Attorney General Josh Stein. “Platforms that allow people to buy and sell fraudulent vaccine cards are only putting more people at risk of catching this virus and stretching out this pandemic. My colleagues and I are urging these companies to do more to stop these sales.”
Attorney General Stein, along with Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, led a bipartisan coalition of 42 attorneys general raising concerns about the public health risks of these fraudulent cards in a letter to the company. The cards appear to be official because they include the logos for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Deceptive use of these logos violates many state laws that provide for injunctive relief, damages, and other penalties for such conduct.
Last week, Attorneys General Stein and Slatery also co-led a bipartisan coalition of 46 attorneys general calling on Twitter, eBay, and Shopify to take action to remove these vaccine card sales on their platforms. Since that letter, Attorney General Stein has heard from representatives of each of those companies. Today, the attorneys general are calling on OfferUp to:
- Monitor its platform for ads or links selling blank or fraudulently completed vaccination cards.
- Promptly take down ads or links that are selling cards.
- Preserve records and information about the ads and the people who were selling them.
Attorneys General Stein, Slatery, and Raoul are joined in sending this letter by the Attorneys General of Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virgin Islands, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
A copy of the letter is available here.