Beware: Scammers likely to try to sell you fake COVID-19 vaccines

FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — As the new COVID-19 vaccine rolls out this week, federal authorities are warning people about scammers trying to sell fake vaccines.

Channel 2′s Tom Regan was at Wellstar North Fulton Hospital in Roswell, where the the staff will soon get their first vaccines.

Regan talked to Dr. Lynn Paxton, the director of the Fulton County Health Department, about why fake vaccines are both illegal and dangerous.

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“We know this is a scarce resource, and there are always con men and women ready to take advantage of that,” Paxton said.

Scammers might try to cash in by selling counterfeit vaccines that may just be saline, or something that could make you sick.

Paxton said the Pfizer vaccine shipment the county got this week is being treated like gold.

“We are keeping very tight control, very tight inventory over the vaccines we received,” Paxton said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it’s preparing for a surge in the criminal sale of counterfeit COVID vaccines, especially online.

They are calling their crackdown on fake vaccines “Operation Stolen Promise.”

Paxton said it’s not just the vaccine that scammers are peddling.

“In the early days of COVID, some people set up false COVID testing sites in which they pretended to swab people, and sent it off and charged them a lot of money for a test that they were not doing,” Paxton said.

Paxton said you risk more than just getting ripped off if you buy a fake vaccine online.

“You could literally be injecting some form of poison and you wouldn’t know it,” Paxton said.

Checkpoint Software, a cyber-security company, found many websites selling purported coronavirus vaccines for hundreds of dollars a dose.

“On the dark web, we have been monitoring a number of shops where hackers are purporting to have a supply of Pfizer vaccine and are able to distribute it,” Kierk Sanderline of Checkpoint Software said. “They have whole shops that are built in order to send this out to the highest bidder.”

Sanderline said scam artists are offering to ship vaccines for hundreds of dollars a dose.

Sanderline said people also need to be wary of emails and texts with a COVID-19 pitch. They could be malware that you shouldn’t click on.

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