New York Midwife Pleads Guilty to Distributing Fraudulent COVID Vaccination Cards

A health care worker displays a COVID-19 vaccination record card during a vaccine and health clinic at QueensCare Health Center in a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles on Aug. 11, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

A New York midwife pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiring to defraud the United States by issuing fraudulent vaccination record cards to unvaccinated people, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Kathleen Breault, 66, of Cambridge, New York, admitted to providing COVID-19 immunization record cards to unvaccinated individuals while working at Sage-Femme Midwifery, an authorized COVID-19 vaccine administration site in Albany.

These unvaccinated individuals included minors who were ineligible to receive vaccines at the time and Canadian citizens who were not in the United States when they were purportedly vaccinated.

Ms. Breault also admitted to destroying more than 2,600 COVID-19 vaccines, for which she has agreed to pay more than $37,000 in restitution, the DOJ stated in a press release.

In addition, prosecutors said that Ms. Breault and her co-conspirators submitted more than 2,600 false entries into a New York state database used to track the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines across the state.

Ms. Breault was indicted in April 2023 alongside her colleagues Sherilyn Pellitteri, a licensed practical nurse at the clinic, and Kelly McDermott, the owner of Sage-Femme Midwifery, on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

The charges were filed in a federal court in Brooklyn as part of a nationwide COVID-19 enforcement action.

“Even though Sage-Femme was a small midwife practice, the defendants’ fraud turned it into one of the busiest Johnson & Johnson vaccination sites in New York State, outpacing large, state-run vaccination sites,” the DOJ stated.

Midwife Says She Was Following Conscience

Ms. Breault had previously requested the dismissal of the charge, stating that she had “acted out of [her] conscience” to help those who did not want to be vaccinated obtain immunization cards.

“Those who sought me out did not want to be subjected to the vaccines, because of sincerely-held religious beliefs which prevented them from being vaccinated, and, even more often, due to medical conditions imperiled by the vaccinations. Some simply did not trust those sponsoring this program,” she wrote in an October 2023 affidavit.

“However, the government provided no alternative and they feared severe consequences if they followed their conscience, such as loss of their jobs, incomes and homes.”

In her affidavit, Ms. Breault claimed that she had been “wrongfully” prosecuted by the DOJ.

“I strongly believe that I am simply a scapegoat for deep and abiding public rejection of the vaccine mandates, which the legislature of my home state of New York had outlawed in no uncertain terms,” she stated.

Ms. Breault is set to be sentenced on Sept. 18, the DOJ stated in a separate press release. She faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.