The ruse was up when airport officials noted the misspelling of Moderna. Photo: TND/Getty
A US woman submitted a fake COVID-19 vaccination card to visit Hawaii with a glaring spelling error that led to her arrest: Moderna was spelled “Maderna”, according to court documents.
To bypass Hawaii’s 10-day traveller quarantine, the 24-year-old Illinois woman uploaded a vaccination card to the state’s Safe Travels program and arrived in Honolulu August 23 on a Southwest Airlines flight, the documents said.
“Airport screeners found suspicious errors … such as Moderna was spelled wrong and that her home was in Illinois but her shot was taken at Delaware,” Wilson Lau, a special agent with the Hawaii attorney-general’s investigation division, wrote in an email to a Delaware official.
The official confirmed there was no record vaccination record for the woman under her name and birth date.
She was charged with two misdemeanour counts of violating Hawaii’s emergency rules to control the spread of COVID-19.
She had been in custody on $US2000 ($A2700) bail until a judge released her at a hearing on Wednesday (local time) and scheduled another hearing in three weeks.