Image from website purporting to have coronavirus “vaccine”
A Texas federal court issued a temporary restraining order against a website purporting to have a vaccine for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), says The Department of Justice.
The website URL is “coronavirusmedicalkit.com,” but you can’t go there anymore as of Sunday night. Law&Crime managed to take a few screenshots before it was taken down. The page even featured an embed of a TODAY segment about coronavirus fears and testing challenges.
The website claimed that the World Health Organization was “giving away vaccine kits.” Readers only had to pay $4.95 for shipping.
“You just need to add water, and the drugs and vaccines are ready to be administered,” said the site.
But there’s a problem.
“In fact, there are currently no legitimate COVID-19 vaccines and the WHO is not distributing any such vaccine,” said the DOJ. “In response to the department’s request, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman issued a temporary restraining order requiring that the registrar of the fraudulent website immediately take action to block public access to it.”
Law&Crime could not reach the site administrator(s) as of press time. You can see the prosecutors’ screenshots of the full website here.
According to the DOJ complaint, the website was registered March 3. Authorities suggest that the defendant–identified in documents as a John Doe–was possibly fishing for people’s credit card and personal info for identity theft and “fraudulent purchases.”
“The purpose of the website is to induce victims to pay Doe and those working in concert with him or her $4.95 for such non-existent kits, and/or to obtain credit card and other personal information from victims for purposes of engaging in fraudulent purchases and identity theft,” federal prosecutors wrote.
[Screengrab via coronavirusmedicalkit.com]
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