CHICAGO -- A Chicago pharmacist has been found guilty of federal charges alleging he stole hundreds of COVID-19 vaccination cards from the South Side Walgreens where he worked and sold them on eBay at the height of the pandemic.
After a three-day trial, a jury found Tangtang Zhao, 36, guilty on Friday afternoon of all 12 counts of theft of government property, which carries a maximum of 10 years in prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
In a rare move, however, the jury sent a note to the judge saying that while they’d reached a unanimous verdict, at least three members of the panel had reservations about the prosecution of the case.
“We do feel that although we have reached our decision, it is important for us, as citizens, to share that we feel this case has been extraneous,” the note read, according to a transcript of the proceedings. The note was signed by three members of the jury.
U.S. District Judge Manish Shah set a sentencing hearing for Nov. 28.
An indictment filed in August 2021 accused Zhao of selling nearly 700 authentic COVID-19 vaccination cards on eBay that he’d pilfered from a patient immunization room at the South Side Walgreens where he worked.
At the time, the government’s massive vaccination rollout was just getting underway nationwide, creating both hope and confusion in an already pandemic-weary public.
The ubiquitous white index cards showing proof of the type of vaccine received and where and when it was administered became a key component of the vaccination effort, with citizens required to show proof of vaccination to travel, to work or enter certain venues.
Prosecutors alleged during the trial that Zhao seized upon the anxiety to make a quick buck.
“These were valuable cards, and in that value, the defendant saw opportunity,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Victor Yanz said in his opening statement last week. “An opportunity to seize on fear.”
Zhao’s attorneys argued that the cards were never the property of the U.S. government, like a driver’s license or a passport. Instead, they were manufactured and delivered by a private company with no specific rules on how they were to be distributed, and served mostly as a way to document when to come back for a booster shot, according to the defense.
In a statement to the Tribune on Monday, Zhao’s lead attorney, Gal Pissetzky, said the government “wasted thousands of dollars in resources to prosecute an irrelevant case” instead of focusing on “real violent crime and victims.”
Pissetzky also said he believes the jury made a “legal mistake” in finding the cards were government property.
Zhao is among dozens of pandemic-related fraud cases brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis more than three years ago, but he’s one of the only ones to take his case to trial.
According to the charges, Zhao was working in 2021 as a pharmacist at a Walgreens at 75th and State streets, where the pharmacy was being operated out of a temporary trailer due to ongoing renovations to the store.
While there were security cameras in the trailer, there were none showing the patient immunization room where the CDC vaccination cards were being stored, Yanz said.
Yanz said Zhao listed the cards for sale on eBay under his username “asianjackson,” describing them as “blank cdc vaccination record” cards. Sales “started with a trickle,” he said, with the first card selling in about 14 minutes for a price of $7.99. By the end of that first night, Zhao had sold 10, Yanz said.
Over the next three weeks, Zhao created 37 different listings and sold a total of 658 cards, upping the price at least six times along the way, Yanz said. In all, he netted about $5,600.
Among the evidence were chat messages on eBay where Zhao assured potential buyers “these are genuine authentic cards.” After receiving a warning from eBay that he was prohibited from selling government property, Zhao tweaked his listing description, saying he was selling only a “clear pouch for CDC vax record cards.”
The image shown with the new listing depicted a real vaccination card inside a “standard sandwich baggie,” Yanz said.
The sales ended on April 15, 2021, when a reporter for The Washington Post reached out to Zhao through eBay’s chat system and said he was writing an article about the sale of vaccination cards on the auction site.
Zhao immediately claimed that his account had been hacked and that “someone else” had been selling the cards under his name, Yanz said. He also told others who reached out to him to “destroy” any cards they may have purchased from him previously.
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