

"If our search identifies a potentially prohibited product, our team swiftly reviews the store and product and takes appropriate action," Vivek Narayanadas, Shopify's vice president of legal, wrote in a letter to the National Association of Attorneys General. To date, Shopify has terminated three stores it found to be selling fake or blank vaccination cards, or fraudulent vaccine stamps. The National Association of Attorneys General at the beginning of April called on eBay, Shopify and Twitter to stop people from selling or advertising fake CDC vaccine cards on their platforms. Hawking bogus cards violates the company's policies, the company told CBS MoneyWatch, noting that it has been monitoring its platform for such schemes since February. Shopify, a platform that allows retailers to create ecommerce sites, said it has acted swiftly against users of its technology who are trying to sell fraudulent vaccine cards. adult population - have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and have received authentic vaccination cards. One seller, whose Shopify store is now defunct, was selling a pack of four blank vaccination cards for $80.Īlmost 130 million people 18 or older - roughly half of the total U.S. The information is annotated either in pen or on a printed sticker. They also note the drugmaker, lot number, and date and location for the administered vaccine. The 4-by-3-inch, double-sided paper cards bear the logo of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in black and white, along with a cardholder's name and birthdate. The low-tech vaccine records are also easy to replicate. The account was registered to a man who works as a pharmacist in the Chicago area, WaPo reported. The Washington Post also recently uncovered an eBay seller who sold more than 100 blank vaccination cards over the course of two weeks, according to the newspaper's review of purchases linked to the account. A screenshot of a now defunct Shopify-powered website selling fake vaccine cards.

Online retail sites have banned some bad actors, who then often reappear and sell fake cards under different names, according to Khalifah. So what should you do with your vaccine card?įakespot has identified hundreds of different sellers that have cropped up since the beginning of the year, and the firm estimates they've hawked thousands of false records over the past three months. "It's a new concept we haven't seen before." "In January we started noticing Shopify stores selling fake vaccination cards, and that was really interesting because it introduced a new dynamic to society where people can counterfeit immunity and interplace it with a fake card," Khalifah told CBS MoneyWatch. And with names such as, such sellers are hardly discreet. Hundreds of fraudsters are selling blank or forged versions of the cards over ecommerce sites including eBay, Etsy and Shopify, while also running advertisements for the fakes on Facebook, according to Saoud Khalifah, CEO of Fakespot, which uses artificial intelligence to detect online retail scams.
