After more than a year of full-blown pandemic crisis, hope was beginning to bubble in March 2021 as newly approved COVID-19 vaccines were being rolled out across the country.
A key component of the massive rollout orchestrated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was the vaccination card, the ubiquitous white index card showing proof of the type of vaccine received and where and when it was administered.
But amid the optimism was also uncertainty, and Chicago-based pharmacist Tangtang Zhao seized upon that anxiety to make a quick buck, federal prosecutors told a jury Tuesday at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
Zhao, 36, is on trial on charges he sold nearly 700 authentic CDC-issued COVID-19 vaccination cards on eBay at the height of the pandemic crisis in 2021, cards that he’d pilfered from a patient immunization room at the South Side Walgreens where he worked.
An indictment filed in U.S. District Court in August 2021 charged Zhao with 12 counts of theft of government property, which carry a maximum of 10 years prison for each count.
Zhao was 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.
In his opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Victor Yanz said the cards Zhao stole came to be an essential part of America’s recovery from pandemic-related shutdowns, with citizens required to show proof of vaccination to travel, to work, or enter certain venues.
“These were valuable cards, and in that value, the defendant saw opportunity,” Yanz said. “An opportunity to seize on fear.”
Zhao’s attorney, Jennifer Snyder, said in her opening remarks that no one was disputing that Zhao sold the cards.
But the evidence would show the cards were never the property of the U.S. government, like a driver’s license or a passport. In fact, 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, she said.
“It’s a reminder,” Snyder said. “A reminder to go back and get your second vaccine and to remember what you got.”
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 $5,000.
Among the evidence the jury was expected to see were chat messages on eBay where Zhao assured potential buyers “these are genuine authentic cards,” Yanz said. 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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The government’s first witness in the case was Sadiki Pierre, a New York-based jazz musician who testified he purchased 10 COVID vaccination cards from Zhao on April 1, 2021, for a total price of $103.39 after tax. After they arrived, he put them in safe in his bedroom closet and “honestly forgot about them until agents came to the door” later that year.
Asked why he wanted the cards, Pierre said he “did it as a fail safe” amid constant rumors about vaccine requirements.
“I guess I was just concerned about crazy things happening,” Pierre said. He said he turned the cards over to agents and signed a form, and thought that would be it. “But now I am here.”
The case was investigated jointly by the FBI and the Office of the Inspector General. At the time of Zhao’s indictment, special agents in charge of each agency said the sale of vaccination cards put the health of untold people at risk.
Snyder, however, said the government was trying to exert control over cards that were never theirs in the first place and were produced in such a surplus they were “left laying around” the store.
“There were no rules for what to do with them,” Snyder said.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
