Manlius pediatrician, who draws vaccine skeptics, faces felony over her kid’s vaccine records

Manlius, NY – A pediatrician already on New York’s watch list for vaccine fraud has been charged criminally with faking her son’s vaccination records to try to get him into public school.

Dr. Shareen Ismail, 49, of DeWitt, was arrested Dec. 3 and charged with tampering with a public record, a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison, according to court records.

Ismail, who opened the Alexandre Centre for Children’s Health in Manlius earlier this year, is accused of faking her son’s vaccination records in an attempt to enroll him mid-year at Jamesville-DeWitt’s Tecumseh Elementary School.

A month earlier, state health officials had put Ismail on its “school vaccination fraud awareness list.“ That move suspends Ismail’s ability to record vaccinations in a state database and directs school districts to reject vaccination verifications from her office.

In turn, Ismail sued the state, arguing health officials are weaponizing her openness to vaccine skeptics by falsely accusing her of criminal vaccine fraud.

UPDATE: Manlius doctor on vaccine fraud list drops lawsuit against NY, plans to fight criminal charge

In an extensive interview this week with syracuse.com | The Post-Standard, Ismail said her son was properly vaccinated to attend school.

When asked if he’d had the required vaccines, she responded: “All of them.”

Ismail accused state health investigators of targeting her son because they didn’t like her Alexandre Centre and her openness to vaccine skepticism.

“The moment I opened this office, he had a target on his back,” Ismail said. “So, you know, they went after him to get to me.”

The two legal cases – one a federal civil rights claim and the other a local criminal complaint – pit a state government with little patience for vaccine avoidance against a provider and some parents who are wary of government vaccine mandates.

In the criminal case, Ismail is accused of providing faked documents from a Cortland clinic to enroll her child at Tecumseh, according to a criminal complaint. She was arraigned in DeWitt Town Court last week.

But Ismail insisted to syracuse.com she’d never faked anything.

“Totally not,” she replied when asked if she forged vaccination records or medical exemptions.

A week and a half before Ismail’s arrest, she had filed a civil rights lawsuit against the state, accusing health officials of unfairly placing her name on a state webpage of vaccine fraudsters. That website, called School Vaccination Fraud Awareness, includes Ismail’s name among 17 doctors statewide suspected or convicted of fraud.

Her civil lawyer, Chad Davenport, has repeatedly denied those allegations, arguing that the state had no proof that Ismail had ever committed vaccine fraud on behalf of her child or any other child in her practice. He demanded that Ismail’s name be removed from the list.

“We unequivocally reject the (Health) Department’s unfounded assertions and implications of ‘fraud and misuse,’ ” Davenport wrote to state investigators in an email included in court papers. “The facts demonstrate good-faith actions within a flawed system, not fraudulent intent.”

State health officials declined comment to syracuse.com. But investigators responded Tuesday in court papers that their questions into the vaccine status of Ismail’s son provided plenty of concern that she was engaging in fraud involving her own patients.

Nine days after her lawsuit, Ismail was arrested after a DeWitt investigator wrote she was seen on video camera delivering vaccination records to Tecumseh Elementary School.

The head of a Cortland-area pediatrics office identified in the boy’s vaccination records told police that the records were fake, according to court documents.

“Review of the records the Defendant offered for filing to Tecumseh Elementary School, were reviewed by the Chief Medical Officer of the Family Health Network, who confirmed them to be fraudulent and did not match the practices (sic) own records for the Defendants Child,” DeWitt Police Investigator Jeffrey Conrad wrote.

Ismail said her first trouble with authorities began in September when her son was excluded from the private Montessori School of Syracuse, in DeWitt, over questions surrounding his vaccination records.

But state investigators say red flags started earlier than that. In July, a Montessori school administrator reported Ismail to [email protected], a tip line for suspected vaccine fraud, according to court papers.

On July 8, the tipster reported that Ismail had previously declined to enroll her son at the Montessori school because of the school’s immunization requirements, which comply with state law, according to a summary in court papers. She later changed her mind and submitted immunization papers in 2022 to enroll her son.

In October 2024, Ismail submitted updated immunization papers that the school believed showed inconsistencies in the administration dates of multiple vaccines, the tipster added.

In the state vaccination system, many of the child’s vaccines were administered by the Pediatric Urgent Care of Rochester, state investigators wrote. Ismail previously worked at that urgent care.

But investigators say that when they visited that urgent care, workers told them that, as an urgent care, they didn’t provide routine vaccines, had no record of the boy being a patient there and no evidence that anyone — including Ismail — had been authorized to add the boy’s vaccinations to the system.

The records Ismail later submitted to J-D included a different pediatric office, in Cortland, authorities say. Not only did the medical director of the Cortland office also say those records were forgeries, but that the records from Rochester and Cortland were inconsistent with one another, state investigators say.

For now, Ismail remains open for business at the Alexandre Centre, 8016 E. Genesee St., nestled in a scenic gully across the street from Green Lakes State Park. She said she knows of no effort to challenge her medical license. Ismail remains free while her criminal case is awaiting possible grand jury action.

While denying forgery, Ismail is unapologetic in offering a place where she says parents have total control – within reason, she adds – of their child’s care.

“Parents entrust us to their children’s health, because we do offer them discretion and we do offer them a choice, to decide what they want to do for their own children,” Ismail told syracuse.com.

She estimated at least half of her parents are against giving their children the regular schedule of vaccines that is mandated by many pediatricians. She doesn’t take insurance, giving her freedom to make unconventional choices about treatment. And, while she maintains that she’s clear with parents about what vaccinations are required for school, she also thinks that parents’ wants should come first.

State investigators point to that approach, as well as a Facebook ad for “vaccine detoxification,” as proof that Ismail is anti-vaccine and medically dubious, evidence that her vaccine records are suspect. They call the office’s embrace of holistic medicine, among other things, as a “dog whistle” for vaccine fraudsters.

Ismail acknowledges that the state’s interest is to have everyone vaccinated. After all, that’s what public health officials say offers the best protection for society as a whole.

But Ismail, a trained pediatric emergency doctor who graduated from Colgate University and earned her medical degree at Ross University in Barbados, says she’s found a calling by standing up for parents’ choice, even if that breeds trouble.

“You have to stand up for your families or roll over,” she said. “I’m just like, I choose to be a doctor and I choose to stand up for the health choices of my families. That was my choice.”