Plastic Surgery Clinic Ran a Vaccine Scam Where They Poured Shots Down the Drain, Injected Kids With Saline, Feds Allege

An indictment against a Utah doctor and three co-defendants was unsealed this week, alleging that they engaged in a scheme to issue fake vaccine cards while squirting real vaccine doses down the drain. Federal prosecutors allege that Dr. Michael Kirk Moore, Jr. and his co-defendants at the Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah gave falsified vaccine cards to people in exchange for their donating $50 to an unnamed organization, one which exists to “liberate the medical profession from government and industry conflicts of interest.” As part of the scheme, Moore and his co-defendants are accused of giving children saline injections so that they would believe they were really being vaccinated. 

Court records show that Moore and his co-defendants were first indicted on January 11; the records were unsealed a week later. The other co-defendants are Kari Dee Burgoyne, an office manager at the Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah; Sandra Flores, the office’s receptionist; and, strangest of all, a woman named Kristin Jackson Andersen, who according to the indictment is Moore’s neighbor. Andersen has posted copious and increasingly conspiratorial anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Instagram; Dr. Moore himself was a signatory on a letter expressing support for a group of COVID-skeptical doctors whose certification was under review by their respective medical boards. The letter expresses support for ivermectin, a bogus treatment for COVID. 

According to the indictment, the Plastic Surgery Center of Utah was certified as a real vaccine provider and signed a standard agreement with the CDC, which among other things requires doctor’s offices not to “sell or seek reimbursement” for vaccines. 

Prosecutors allege that when people seeking falsified vaccine cards contacted the office, Burgoyne, the office manager, referred them to Andersen, Dr. Moore’s neighbor. Andersen, according to the indictment, would ask for the name of someone who’d referred them—it had to be someone who’d previously received a fraudulent vaccine card, per the indictment—then direct people to make a $50 donation to a charitable organization, referred to in the indictment only as “Organization 1.” Each vaccine card seeker was required to put an orange emoji in the memo line of their donation, which is certainly very subtle. 

After making a donation to the unnamed charitable organization, prosecutors allege, Andersen would send a link to vaccine card seekers to enable them to make an appointment at the Plastic Surgery Institute. (Two different undercover agents communicated with her in this way, according to the indictment.) With adult patients, Moore would allegedly use a real COVID vaccine dose in a syringe, but squirt it down the drain. Flores, the office’s receptionist, gave an undercover agent a note, reading "with 18 & younger, we do a saline shot," meaning that kids were injected with saline instead of a vaccine. Prosecutors allege they disposed of at least 1,937 doses of COVID vaccines. 

All four people are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to convert, sell, convey, and dispose of government property; and conversion, sale, conveyance, and disposal of government property and aiding and abetting. Their first court appearance is scheduled for January 26 and court records do not indicate whether any of them have retained an attorney. Court records indicate that the government is not seeking to keep the defendants in jail before trial; they are, however, being ordered to surrender any vaccine cards in their possession to the Utah Department of Health.