Misspelling leads to Hawaii arrest for fake vaccination card

A 24-year-old Illinois woman submitted a fake COVID-19 vaccination card to visit Hawaii with a glaring spelling error that led to her arrest: Moderna was spelled “Maderna,” according to court documents.

In order to bypass Hawaii’s 10-day traveler quarantine, she uploaded a vaccination card to the state’s Safe Travels program and arrived in Honolulu on Aug. 23 on a Southwest Airlines flight, the documents said.

“Airport screeners found suspicious errors ... such as Moderna was spelled wrong and that her home was in Illinois but her shot was taken at Delaware,” Wilson Lau, a special agent with the Hawaii attorney general’s investigation division, wrote in an email to a Delaware official who confirmed there was no record vaccination record for the woman under her name and birth date.

She was charged with two misdemeanor counts of violating Hawaii’s emergency rules to control the spread of COVID-19. She had been in custody on $2,000 bail until a judge released her at a hearing Aug. 31 and scheduled another hearing in three weeks.

In addition to the suspicious card, authorities determined that the travel information she provided listed she would be staying at a Waikiki hotel, but an assistant manager at the hotel confirmed the woman did not have a reservation.

Authorities arrested the woman at a Southwest Airlines counter when she was trying to leave Honolulu on Aug. 28, the court document said. She showed her ID and vaccination card, and law enforcement informed her she was being arrested for falsifying vaccination documents.

 

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