The New York State Department of Health announced on July 9 that it has imposed a $544,000 civil penalty on Julie DeVuono, a former Suffolk County nurse practitioner found to have falsified vaccination records for 162 school-aged children. The departmentcalled it the largest civil penalty for vaccination fraud in its 125-year history, surpassing a previous record of $300,000 set in 2023.
State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald adopted the findings that DeVuono falsely reported administering at least one vaccination to each of the 162 children, in violation of Public Health Law, between November 2019 and January 2022. "Vaccines are the best protection against serious preventable diseases, and the New York State Department of Health has zero tolerance for those that misrepresent or falsify vaccination records as these acts put lives in jeopardy," McDonald said.
