Judge shows mercy to Columbia nurse who lied to FBI about fake COVID vaccination cards

Federal Judge Terry Wooten is known for giving tough sentences — especially when a violation of public trust is involved.

But Tuesday in a Columbia courtroom, Wooten showed mercy and gave 18 months of supervised release — a non-prison sentence akin to probation — to a Columbia nurse who lied to federal agents about creating fake COVID-19 vaccination record cards. Lying to federal investigators is a felony.

“There are not too many defendants in federal court who don’t wind up with a period of incarceration,” Wooten told nurse Tammy McDonald.

McDonald, 54, whose supporters in the courtroom included her four daughters and her mother, could have gotten up to five years.

“I know that my conduct has caused pain, shame and sadness,” a tearful McDonald told Wooten. “There’s no justification for what I did. I know better... I want to apologize to the nursing community.”

McDonald was originally charged with making false COVID vaccination cards as well as lying to federal agents. But the fake COVID card charges were dropped in return for her agreeing to plead guilty to lying to the two federal agents who came to interview her. One was from the FBI and the other from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Factors for not sentencing McDonald to prison, Wooten said, included her regret, her lack of any criminal record, her drive as a single mother to become a nurse and that she has been unable to work as a nurse after pleading guilty in June to lying to agents.

And, Wooten said, McDonald did not not falsify COVID vaccination cards to make money, but as a favor for family members.

But, said the judge, “This is a serious matter, to make false statements to law enforcement.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Derek Shoemake, who prosecuted the case, told the judge that when COVID cards were falsified in 2021, “we were still in a pandemic. We had a nurse violating her oath in a pandemic.”

And the government wanted to send a message to health care professionals that violating a public trust is a serious matter, Shoemake told the judge.

But, Shoemake said, the government was not taking a stand on whether Wooten should give McDonald prison or probation.

Shoemake told the judge that one person for whom she fixed a sham vaccination card was a football player. Shoemake did not identify the player or the football team.

McDonald’s attorney, Jim Griffin, told Wooten, “This is not a person who has engaged in a life of crime. She has devoted her whole life to others.”

As a result of her guilty plea, McDonald has been unable to work as a nurse and the state nursing licensing board is aware of the federal proceedings, Griffin said.

As a traveling nurse, McDonald made a good living, earning up to $85 an hour, Griffin said at an earlier court hearing in the case. McDonald also had been director of nursing at a major Columbia rehabilitation center.

McDonald’s mother, friends and four daughters — a Columbia area high school student, a University of South Carolina student in a graduate program, a dental hygienist and a registered nurse — also testified.

Together, they gave a portrait of a caring, single mother who raised four daughters while getting a nursing education and working as a nurse, who organized and went on a mission medical trip to Mexico, and whose concern for others included such things as helping a man whom she noticed had a broken wheelchair while she was at Columbia’s street market, Soda City.

The judge also sentenced McDonald to 80 hours of community service and noted that she had served two days in county jails after she was arrested.

A tipster provided initial information in McDonald’s case, filing a complaint with the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control that she was giving false COVID vaccination cards to others.

McDonald’s guilty plea in June was the first such plea in South Carolina in a case involving phony COVID vaccination cards.

COVID-19 vaccination cards were issued in response to proclamations in 2020 declaring the highly contagious airborne disease a national emergency.

Since 2020, more than a million people in the U.S. — and 6.3 million worldwide — have died because of COVID-19.

Vaccines developed in late 2020 are credited with helping to prevent more deaths and hospitalizations. Vaccination providers are required to give anyone getting a COVID-19 shot a card showing the patient’s name and date of birth, what kind of vaccine it is, the vaccine’s lot number, the date of the shot and the location where the shot was given. The cards are used to identify people who have been vaccinated and can be useful in various situations, such as travel.