Former Napa naturopath Juli Mazi gets 33 months in prison in COVID-19 fraud case

Juli Mazi was sentenced to 33 months during a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The sentence capped her arrest in what authorities called the nation’s first case of faking vaccination cards during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mazi, who had faced a 20-year maximum, was sentenced to the same amount of prison time for each of the two felony charges for which she pleaded guilty this year — wire fraud and making false statements about a health care matter. She will serve the sentences concurrently, starting no later than Jan. 6, followed by three years of probation, according to court documents.

Judge Charles R. Breyer ordered Mazi to pay a $200 assessment but did not issue further fines, which he said she was unable to pay.

Mazi did not immediately respond to phone calls and an email by The Associated Press seeking comment.

After her arrest in July 2021, Mazi pleaded guilty in April to federal counts of wire fraud and making false statements in a health care matter. Afterward, however, she fired her attorney and represented herself, and then sought to back out of her plea agreement while filing a motion challenging the laws by which she was arrested.

“There were no laws broken,” Mazi read from her motion during a virtual hearing in August. “Can you provide the laws that allow you to disregard the procedures that a naturopathic doctor is licensed to administer?”

Unmoved, Breyer refused to let Mazi withdraw her guilty plea, saying she had not contested any facts outlined in her plea deal.

Before Tuesday’s sentencing, Mazi again battled prosecutors and the court arguing in a handwritten affidavit filed earlier Tuesday that her “sovereign immunity” as a self-described “First Nation” person insulates her from prosecution by federal authorities.

The U.S. Department of Justice described Mazi’s case as the first federal prosecution linked to forgery of COVID-19 vaccination cards, which are issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Prosecutors said Mazi, who opened a naturopathy practice in Napa after moving from Santa Cruz, provided faked inoculation cards to at least 200 people to enable them to falsely claim they had received a Moderna-produced vaccine against the coronavirus.

Mazi also sold homeopathic pellets she claimed would provide lifetime immunity against COVID-19 by using trace amounts of the virus to prompt an antibody response, according to the Justice Department. The “homeoprophylaxis” remedy has not been recognized by the Food and Drug Administration as a defense against the virus.

In addition, Mazi also offered the pellets as a substitute for childhood vaccinations required for school attendance and sold at least 100 fake immunization cards that said the children had been vaccinated, knowing the cards would be submitted to schools, federal officials alleged.

The investigation into Mazi started in April 2021 after someone sent a tip to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, the Justice Department reported earlier.

Federal prosecutors also have charged three others as alleged accomplices with Mazi in the COVID-related schemes: Jason Dean Costanza of El Campo, Texas; Jaimi Jansen, a Santa Cruz resident; and Ranna Shamiya of Ukiah.

Jansen, the founder of a Santa Cruz wellness center, sold the pellets developed by Mazi and provided the falsified vaccination cards to customers, while Shamiya, a pharmacy director at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley hospital, provided genuine lot numbers for COVID-19 vaccines to be used in the scheme, the Justice Department said in indicting them on suspicion of making false statements related to health care.

Jansen and Shamiya pleaded guilty June 3 in U.S. District Court to misdemeanor false-statement counts and were sentenced Sept. 28 to three years of probation each, according to court records.

Costanza was accused, as Mazi’s office manager, of conspiracy and making false statements in helping her to sell the pellets and provide the false immunization cards, according to prosecutors. He entered a not-guilty plea April 26 and his trial remains pending, with his next hearing Dec. 7, court records show.

Mazi continues to hold a California license to practice naturopathy, though she is currently under investigation by state officials that could result in it being revoked.

A 2020 state directive allows such practitioners to provide COVID-19 vaccines if they complete a training course, follow all state and federal record-keeping rules, and provide one of the federally authorized vaccines. Only three vaccines — from Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson — have received either approval or emergency use authorization in the U.S.

In a 2019 interview with the Napa Valley Register, Mazi said naturopaths receive extensive training in botanical medicine, homeopathy, nutrition, nutraceutical medicine, intravenous and injection therapy, hydrotherapy, lifestyle coaching, counseling, and Functional Medicine.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.