Wild Child's Julie DeVuono: Behind the childhood vaccine probe that didn't happen.

Two children arrived at Northwell Health facilities with alarming symptoms. One had swelling consistent with mumps, the other a severe neck abscess requiring immediate care.

Their parents insisted both had been vaccinated. State records appeared to confirm it.

But blood tests told a different story. Neither child had immunity to highly contagious diseases including mumps, measles and hepatitis B.

Their parents had refused shots by their children's regular pediatricians and instead took their kids to the same Amityville provider, nurse practitioner Julie DeVuono, to obtain immunization records.

Doctors filed urgent complaints with state regulators, warning of apparent child vaccination fraud. One called it "a huge public health concern" and wrote, "She must be investigated, license revoked, and punished to the fullest extent of the law."

Those warnings had little impact.

For the next three years, DeVuono continued to operate Wild Child Pediatrics, claiming to administer thousands of childhood vaccinations, even as questions about her pediatric records mounted — and even as authorities later uncovered a separate $1.2-million scheme involving fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards.

A Newsday investigation found that despite early warnings of an alleged fraudulent pediatric vaccine operation that experts say would be among the largest in recent U.S. history, state regulators failed to stop DeVuono's practice. The investigation also found the Suffolk District Attorney chose to not criminally investigate those allegations, despite urging by health officials.

A complaint was filed against DeVuono in 2020 by another physician, who said she should be "investigated" and "punished to the fullest extent of the law" for alleged vaccine fraud.

The state Education Department has the power to suspend or revoke nurses' licenses. But 18 months after the doctors' complaints, it fined her $500 — for incomplete record keeping in seven cases — while allowing her to keep submitting immunization records for kids to attend school.

DeVuono only stopped practicing when Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney's office secured her conviction in the COVID-19 case, which authorities stumbled upon when DeVuono herself called police to her office following a client dispute over money.

Through a public records request filed with the Suffolk district attorney's office in 2024, Newsday in December obtained thousands of pages of records, undercover video files and audio recordings that provide the most complete accounting of DeVuono’s case. She surrendered her New York nursing licenses and closed her Wild Child pediatric practice as part of a 2023 plea agreement in which she admitted forging thousands of COVID-19 vaccine cards. She also pleaded guilty to submitting an oxycodone prescription for herself in the name of her brother. A judge sentenced her to community service.

The case put DeVuono at the forefront of the antivaccination movement on Long Island, a group skeptical of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, and that believes vaccine requirements are an infringement on personal rights. The movement, which started on the political fringes of both parties, has gained new prominence with the rise of President Donald Trump, who appointed avowed vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Today, the extent of DeVuono's alleged fraud is still not known. State investigators have invalidated an unknown number of children's proofs of immunization and are pursuing a non-criminal administrative case against DeVuono, accusing her of falsifying more than 1,500 vaccine records, which could result in millions of dollars in fines.

Families also provided Long Island school districts with DeVuono-stamped vaccine records after her arrest, court records show, including in the weeks before she agreed to surrender her nursing licenses in the 2023 COVID fraud plea deal with Suffolk prosecutors.

Although state regulators lauded the removal of her licenses, they thought Suffolk prosecutors should have done more. In a January 2024 email, the state Health Department’s director of investigations criticized prosecutors for not looking into their allegations that DeVuono also committed childhood vaccine fraud.

Your office never investigated it.

—Health Department investigations director Joseph Giovannetti in an email to Suffolk Assistant District Attorney James Bartens, referring to a childhood vaccination fraud case

Noting they had found evidence that her alleged fraud began in 2019 — and that they had raised concerns early in its COVID criminal case — the Health Department's investigations director, Joseph Giovannetti, wrote: "It’s our understanding ... your office never investigated it."

A spokeswoman for Tierney’s office confirmed to Newsday they did not launch an investigation into those allegations because prosecutors believed they did not receive enough evidence to bring criminal charges.

In an interview, Tierney said prosecuting pediatric vaccine fraud beyond a reasonable doubt is difficult. He questioned why the state allowed DeVuono to continue practicing even though state regulators received allegations of pediatric vaccine fraud years before his office got involved.

"If it was so cut and dry, why was it left for us to physically take her license from her at the time of sentencing?" Tierney said in response to the state's criticism.

Education Department spokeswoman Rachel Connors said in a statement that even when there is a plea deal, the Board of Regents, which oversees the department, ultimately decides whether to accept a license surrender and stop someone from practicing. The board formally took her license in December 2023, three months after her plea.

Health Department spokeswoman Erin Clary said in a statement: "The Department made considerable, documented efforts to convince the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office to include the pediatric vaccination fraud in its prosecution, and it declined."

The health and education departments cannot directly file criminal charges, but they can refer cases to the state attorney general's office. Asked why the office did not refer DeVuono's case, Clary said, "DeVuono had already been successfully prosecuted by the Suffolk County DA’s Office, the same office that led the investigation from the beginning and holds key evidence to the case."

DeVuono, who now lives in Pennsylvania, could not be reached for comment. Her attorney in the COVID-19 case, Jason Russo, has said DeVuono told him she never falsified pediatric vaccination records.

The Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement this month that DeVuono doesn’t have a Pennsylvania nursing license and hasn’t applied for one.

'Ripe for investigation'

The Education Department had previously disciplined DeVuono because pediatric immunization records she submitted for seven children in 2019 lacked basic information such as dosage amounts, the manufacturer and expiration dates.

To close that case, DeVuono accepted a "censure and reprimand," paid a $500 fine and did not contest the charges. The 2021 settlement agreement makes no reference to vaccine fraud or the complaints filed by doctors in 2020.

The State Education Department fined DeVuono $500 in 2021 for incomplete vaccine paperwork.

Connors, the Education Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality.

The Health Department said it referred complaints about DeVuono to the Education Department for potential discipline because it did not yet have its own investigations bureau until the fall of 2023, several months before it filed administrative charges against DeVuono alleging fraud.

Vaccine and public health experts found fault with both the state regulators, for failing to stop DeVuono sooner, and with the district attorney's office, for not pursuing a criminal investigation into alleged pediatric vaccine fraud.

Brian Dean Abramson, a vaccine law professor at University of Houston Law Center, said two physicians separately accusing a nurse of falsifying immunization records should immediately raise red flags and be viewed as credible.

"It would be very surprising if that sort of accusation were to arise and there was nothing actually supporting it," he said.

After receiving the complaints, the Education Department should have at least tried to stop DeVuono from continuing to submit vaccination records until it could investigate further, he said.

State law allows the department to temporarily bar a provider from practicing before the resolution of a case if "the public health, safety or welfare imperatively requires emergency action."

Abramson said vaccine fraud fits that description.

"Pediatric vaccine fraud is one of the most pernicious crimes that can occur in our society, because we vaccinate children to protect them from diseases that are known to be deadly," he said.

Abramson also said that the allegations of pediatric fraud were "ripe for an investigation" by Tierney’s office.

New charges would have discouraged other unscrupulous providers from falsifying records, Abramson said. "It's rare for it to be caught and rarer still to be prosecuted criminally," he added.

Even if a district attorney’s office has the same evidence as a state agency, prosecutors could decline to file criminal charges because its burden of proof is much higher than administrative cases, said John Quinn, a professor at the Touro University law school in Central Islip.

In addition, taking away a defendant’s ability to practice medicine "might be enough to satisfy [his] goals," said Clayton Masterman, a University at Buffalo law school professor.

'Lives that could be endangered'

The state senator who sponsored a 2019 bill that ended religious and other nonmedical exemptions for school vaccination requirements following major measles outbreaks said getting DeVuono to surrender her licenses wasn't enough.

"The book should be thrown at anyone who is so reckless as to intentionally fabricate a record that is meant to protect the public health," said Brad Holyman-Sigal, now the Manhattan borough president. "There are literally lives that could be endangered as a result."

Falsification of pediatric vaccine cards affects more than unvaccinated children, said Dr. Jennifer Duchon, a Manhattan-based pediatric epidemiologist for the Mount Sinai Health System.

Children — especially those with weakened immune systems and babies too young to get vaccines — can get severely ill from vaccine-preventable diseases, she said.

State records show DeVuono only began administering childhood vaccines after the state ended nonmedical exemptions in 2019.

She reported giving children more than 7,500 vaccines over a two-year span — after 17 years of having never reported administering a vaccine.

Customer dispute leads to police call

DeVuono might still be practicing today if she didn’t call the police in October 2021 to remove an "unruly" customer from her office, tipping the authorities off to her lucrative COVID-19 vaccine card scheme.

The customer, identified in records as Thomas Laviano, of Sag Harbor, told police he had paid DeVuono $200 a month earlier to receive the COVID card with the first dose listed, without ever receiving the shot. He didn’t expect to be asked to pay another $220 when he returned for the second appointment in October 2021.

That led to an argument that got so heated DeVuono called police to have him removed from her office.

When an Amityville village officer arrived, records show, DeVuono explained that she had been administering COVID-19 shots "along with a holistic way that rids the body of the vaccine" and charges patients $220 each time. According to the police report, Laviano would not pay, and they argued.

In a telephone interview with Newsday in March, Laviano, 71, said, "she charged me twice, and I was arguing with her that it's not right, and then she called a cop on me because I got a little agitated."

But Laviano also expressed sympathy for DeVuono, saying, "she helped a lot of people" by allowing them to receive COVID-19 cards without getting the vaccine at a time when many workplaces and indoor events required proof of vaccination.

"My hat’s off to her," he said.

Before Amityville police left the scene in 2021, records show, an anonymous bystander told the officer that people often line up outside DeVuono’s office, and one of them told her they were there getting fake vaccine cards.

Amityville police referred the case that day to Suffolk police and the district attorney's office, records show.

A day later, Laviano provided a statement to a Suffolk detective detailing how he scored an appointment with DeVuono.

Having learned of DeVuono’s sham vaccine-card operation from a friend, he said he expressed his interest by texting her with the code word: "Smilari 62." The records do not explain the significance of the code word.

Weeks later, DeVuono told a client in her office, "We found out that there is a file with our name on it on the desk of the Suffolk County D.A., and they are planning to send someone out undercover." She said she thought about stopping, but decided to limit her practice to "known people."

That exchange is caught on video — by an undercover police detective sitting a few feet away in the waiting room.

Charges never came

Suffolk police arrested DeVuono in January 2022 for the COVID vaccine fraud, three months after her 911 phone call.

It was a Thursday night. Three days later, on a Sunday, state health investigators emailed Suffolk prosecutors "flagging the issue of non-covid vaccination fraud."

Another 20 months passed before DeVuono agreed to the plea deal with Tierney’s office. Giovannetti said in a statement provided by a Health Department spokeswoman that the department's investigations bureau "actively encouraged the DA’s office to include [pediatric vaccination fraud] in its charges."

Those charges never came.

"We obtained no legally competent evidence with which to initiate an investigation," Tierney spokeswoman Tania Lopez said in a statement.

Authorities also alleged DeVuono prescribed thousands of oxycodone pills at Long Island pharmacies between 2016 and 2021 in the names of two family members who lived in different states — unbeknownst to them, they said — and her grandmother, who died in 1980. Tierney's office said in a statement that there was no evidence she was selling oxycodone. DeVuono was undergoing substance abuse treatment at the time of her sentencing, court records show.

In December 2023, three months after DeVuono pleaded guilty, Newsday reported the Health Department was investigating her for pediatric vaccine fraud. In that story, the Suffolk district attorney’s office said, "There was no evidence that anyone received non-COVID fake immunization cards" from Wild Child.

That statement shocked state health investigators.

Its director of investigations, Giovannetti, who also is an attorney, wrote in an email to prosecutors, "The statement implies that the question was investigated by your office and a determination made."

In an interview, Tierney said his office’s 2023 statement to Newsday that they had "no evidence" of non-COVID vaccine fraud referred to "evidence that we could use" in a criminal case.

The issue emerged at the start of DeVuono's June 2024 sentencing hearing when Suffolk state Supreme Court Justice John Collins said he received a presentencing letter from the Health Department.

Noting that the letter alleged DeVuono falsified 226 childhood vaccine records for "at least" 26 children in 2020 and 2021, the judge asked prosecutors if they "intend to undertake an investigation of those allegations," according to a transcript of the proceedings obtained by Newsday.

Assistant District Attorney James Bartens said, "Of course we will look at whatever evidence they have come about, but as of this point we are not privy to their investigation as far as what evidence they have procured."

The judge stopped him midsentence, and asked, "Did you get the same paperwork I got?" Bartens initially said he didn't think so — "Come on," the judge said, incredulously — before Bartens found it on his desk.

Then he said: "This was not a complete shock and we have been aware of the Department of Health’s investigation into this matter."

Tierney told Newsday in the recent interview he remains open to prosecuting DeVuono for pediatric vaccine fraud — if he has enough evidence. But, he said, prosecutors would need an informant or other witness who was in the room with DeVuono and the child patient as she was committing a fraudulent act, such as administering a "false vaccine."

Abramson, the vaccine law professor, said although someone who witnessed DeVuono committing a fraudulent act in the room with patients would strengthen a case, it wouldn’t be necessary for a successful prosecution.

Under the plea deal Tierney's office reached with DeVuono in the COVID-19 case, she surrendered her nursing licenses, was required to forfeit more than $1.25 million and promised to serve 840 hours of community service, in lieu of six months' jail time.

Giovannetti, who the health department said was not available for an interview, said in the statement that although the agency was unsuccessful in its efforts to convince Tierney to file pediatric vaccination fraud charges, "There is no doubt that the DA’s Office protected public health and safety in Long Island by ensuring that Julie DeVuono will never practice medicine in New York again."