Steven R. Brandenburg, 46, of Grafton, Wisconsin, was sentenced to 36 months’ imprisonment for tampering with COVID vaccine doses at the hospital at which he worked. Brandenburg will also be required to spend three years on supervised release following his prison sentence and was ordered to pay approximately $83,800 in restitution to the hospital. Brandenburg pleaded guilty on February 9, 2021, to two counts of attempting to tamper with consumer products with reckless disregard for the risk that another person would be placed in danger of death or bodily injury. According to court documents, Brandenburg purposefully removed a box of COVID-19 vaccine vials manufactured by Moderna—which must be stored at specific cold temperatures to remain viable—from a hospital refrigeration unit during two successive overnight shifts in late December 2020.
According to his plea agreement, Brandenburg stated that he was skeptical of vaccines in general and the Moderna vaccine specifically. Court documents indicate that Brandenburg had communicated his beliefs about vaccines to his co-workers for at least the past two years. Brandenburg acknowledged that after leaving the vaccines out for several hours each night, he returned the vaccines to the refrigerator to be used in the hospital’s vaccine clinic the following day. Before the full extent of Brandenburg’s conduct was discovered, 57 people received doses of the vaccine from these vials.
