Feds arrest CA homeopath for selling COVID pellets, fake CDC vaccine cards

Enlarge / Vials containing pills for homeopathic remedies are displayed at Ainsworths Pharmacy on August 26, 2005, in London. (credit: Getty | Peter Macdiarmid)

Federal prosecutors have arrested a homeopathy practitioner for an alleged scheme involving sham COVID-19 immunization pellets and falsified COVID-19 vaccination record cards, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

Juli Mazi, 41, of Napa, California, allegedly sold unproven and potentially dangerous vials of pellets for $243 in some cases that she fraudulently claimed could provide "lifelong immunity" to COVID-19. What the pellets actually are or contain is unclear. One person who spoke with federal investigators said they became ill after taking the pellets. In Mazi's sales pitches, she said that the pellets contain a "very minute amount of this [COVID-19] disease," while fraudulently claiming that FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines contain "toxic ingredients."

Along with the mystery pellets, Mazi allegedly provided customers with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccination cards, which she either partly filled out or left blank. She instructed customers to write on the card that they had received a Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and then date the immunization as the time they took their pellets-or a date that would otherwise not raise suspicion. Mazi even provided customers with Moderna vaccine lot numbers, which the CDC confirmed were real lot numbers for Moderna vaccines. The lot numbers corresponded to vaccine supplies distributed in the Napa area, of which none were allocated to Mazi, who is not federally authorized to receive or administer COVID-19 vaccines.

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