By City News Service
An osteopathic doctor with a practice in Montrose pleaded no contest on Tuesday to issuing fake COVID-19 vaccination cards and injecting some of his patients with blood plasma he received from donors.
Dr. Donald Plance, who lives in the Sunland-Tujunga area, was sentenced to two years formal probation and was ordered to perform 200 hours of community service for his pleas to a felony charge of making a forged government seal and a misdemeanor charge of having a filthy, putrid or decomposed substance on a medical device, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
Plance’s probation terms include the condition that he not practice medicine.
Plance was accused of making his own vaccination cards and giving them to his patients between August and November 2021, according to the district attorney’s office, which said the cards appeared to be genuine and bore seals from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Health and Human Services.
Plance also injected his patients with blood plasma from donors who purportedly previously had COVID-19, claiming that the procedure would protect his patients from contracting the virus, according to the district attorney’s office.
First published in the June 17 print issue of the Glendale News-Press.
