Seattle Covid 'vaccine' peddler gets probation, must pay restitution

Johnny T. Stine, a microbiologist who claimed to have created a Covid "vaccine," was sentenced in federal court Tuesday to five years of probation and was ordered to pay $246,986 in restitution.

Stine, 57, had pleaded guilty federal misdemeanor charges of introducing a misbranded drug into interstate commerce last August.

Stine came under fire after publicly advertising injections of his supposed Covid vaccine on his Facebook page. He wrote in March 2020 that he would inject the first 100 people to contact him about the "vaccine" for $400 each.

Stine said in an interview with KUOW that he had downloaded the coronavirus’s genome sequences from a Chinese database to create his "vaccine." Doing so "literally took half a day to design,” he said. Stine, who owns a company called North Coast Biologics, said he had created the substance in his warehouse lab in Redmond.

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Stine eventually landed on the radar of federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Washington State Attorney General's Office.

Stine entered a consent decree with the state in June 2020, requiring him to repay any customers if they request a refund. The agreement also imposed a contingency fine of $30,000 for noncompliance.

But Stine continued to market the unauthorized "vaccine," according to court records, and traveled to Idaho in August 2020 after agreeing to inject an undercover agent with the substance. Federal law enforcement officers seized the materials he'd brought with him.

Stine was arrested in January 2021 on federal misdemeanor charges of introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce, after authorities say he continued to peddle his purported vaccine despite multiple warnings. He later pleaded guilty to those charges.

“He truly preyed on those who were desperate for any glimmer of hope, injecting people with unapproved substances developed in his rented garage, with no assurance of safety or purity,” said U.S. Attorney Nick Brown in an email statement following Stine's sentencing.

Stine has maintained that his purported vaccine was "scientifically sound," despite not undergoing rigorous clinical trials.

"However, I regret that I administered them to others without following FDA regulations," he said in a prepared statement provided to KUOW. "This pandemic has revealed that we need more flexible means of vaccine development, rather than relying on lengthy industrialized approaches. Going forward, I hope to continue my work to develop safe, effective, and FDA-approved treatments for diseases."

Stine also said he was "inspired to set forth a legal approach that is legal and expeditious" for developing vaccines during a pandemic.

Federal officials have also accused Stine of misbranding vaccines to cancer patients, collecting approximately $200,000 in the process. Stine said he did not charge those patients, but that some had donated to him.