VaxGate: “NFL Source” Told Reporter that Antonio Brown Allegedly Offered to Hook Other Players Up With Fake Vax Cards. How Many NFL Players Are Duping the League?
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Did Antonio Brown use a fake vaccine card to dupe the NFL? Tampa Bay Times Reporter Rick Stroud says he interviewed Brown’s former live-in chef who is fuming because Brown allegedly owes him $10,000 for his services and the chef wanted to out Brown for allegedly duping the NFL with fake vax cards.
In the article, the chef, Steven Ruiz, accuses Brown of having his girlfriend ask the chef to get Brown a fake vaccination card in exchange for a $500 payment. When Ruiz wasn’t able to, he says Brown ended up finding another way.
The chef claims Brown showed him the fake cards before they were photographed and sent to Bucs personnel, without anyone knowing they were fake. Allegedly Brown was worried about the vaccine negatively affecting his body, according to Ruiz.
The chef claims all of this went down back in July and Brown ended up testing positive for the virus a few months later in September.
Brown’s reps adamantly denied the claims today. His attorney Sean Burstyn told NFL Network Reporter Ian Rapoport, “Be Like Antonio Brown and get the vaccine.”
The Bucs issued a statement saying “All vaccination cards were reviewed by Buccaneers personnel and no irregularities were observed.”
A review by Bucs personnel doesn’t specifically mean that anyone checked with the locations to see if vaccines were in fact administered.
While the initial claim is shocking in and of itself, especially in light of the Aaron Rodgers controversy where the Packers Quarterback lied and claimed he was “immunized” when in fact he never took the vaccine, there may be an even bigger scandal here.
A tweet that fell under the radar from NFL Insider for Pro Football Network Adam Beasley insinuates that not only did Brown allegedly use fake vax cards but rumors are that he “offered his fake vaxx card hookup to others in the NFL community” and these rumors are allegedly heavily circulating in Florida.
If any of this is true, it could mean a shocking scheme where any number of NFL players are claiming to be vaccinated but are in fact not.
How is the NFL not investigating this? Isn’t it easy to verify whether players are vaccinated? Clearly the honor system did not work with Rodgers. The League and teams should be calling the vax sites and having them verify whether vaccines were actually administered.
Beasley writes that this purported fake vax card scheme rumor has been going on for weeks. It is shocking that while Aaron Rodgers was in every headline being called a liar, it was never brought up that this could be a league-wide scam involving multiple players.
Pro Football Network did not report the rumors, because the publication could not verify enough details, Beasley said. Beasley also said he had been told by “a league source” “weeks ago that several NFL players believed that Brown was not actually vaccinated and that he had left them with the impression that he could put them in contact with the person who provided his card.”
Mark Maske, the NFL Reporter for the Washington Post, said that Brown’s attorney asked Antonio, in response to the report from the Tampa Bay Times, “Antonio, are you vaccinated? He said, ‘Yes, I went to a drive-through [vaccination] site and I’m vaccinated.”
A drive through vaccination site? Okay sure, let’s take your word for it. The players, some of whom have felt distrusting of the vaccine, oppressed by regulations and defiant in the face of the vax or sit rule, would have no reason to not be forthcoming, right?
The Bucs full statement is below.
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