Investigators trace prison-based fraud across state lines
Inmates inside U.S. prisons are running phone scams against victims across the country using contraband cellphones, scripts and web-based apps that mimic local numbers, The Wall Street Journal reported. Prisoners in Alabama, Florida, the Carolinas and California have been charged with directing phone swindles from behind bars, with Georgia appearing to be an epicenter.
Investigators cited by the Journal described the playbook this way: inmates smuggle in phones — or have them brought in by relatives, guards or drones — then dial randomly or scour websites that publish the names of the recently jailed. Pitches often pose as bail-bond agents, court-diversion workers or sheriff’s-office staff, threatening arrest over “missed jury duty” or offering help for relatives who have just landed in jail. Web-based apps let the calls appear to come from numbers mirroring the local sheriff or a real bonding company, and operators set up convincing voicemails when targets ring back.
Retired Columbia, S.C., nurse Sylvia Brooks summed up the puzzle families face. “How in the world do prisoners get all this information when they’re supposed to be locked up?” she asked after a caller posing as a court-diversion worker talked her out of $1,368.
In & Out Bail Bonds owner Donna Jowers, whose Charlotte, N.C., company has been impersonated for two years, said the operators exploit panic. “These guys are good,” she said. “When you’re desperate and somebody that you love is in a situation, you’re not even thinking.”
The Journal’s account centers on 68-year-old retired engineer Art Monk of Columbia, whose adult child is incarcerated. When the calls and texts began from someone identifying himself as an In & Out Bail Bonds employee, Monk’s first reaction was swift and harsh. Their relationship had been fractured for years, and Monk was in no mood to get involved in the latest crisis.
“Not my problem,” Monk texted back. “He wished me dead. So I am.”
But Monk soon softened. “He truly needs to be in a hospital. Not jail,” he later texted the caller. The 28-year-old had faced mental-health challenges and identifies as female, and Monk thought, “He’s not gonna survive in jail.” A caller identifying himself as “James” — whose polite Southern drawl and professional concern inspired trust — persuaded Monk over days of texting that his child needed bail, rehab and psychiatric medication. James texted at one point: “Sir I’m not going to lie he started crying after I told him how much you spent for him to go to this rehab.” Monk sent $11,939 through Cash App — money he had set aside for taxes. “He wasn’t some foreigner,” Monk said of James. “He had a Southern accent and I speak that language.”
Monk’s ex-wife had not bought the pitch when James tried her, and she told Monk he had been conned. “There were so many red flags,” Monk later recalled. “I felt really stupid.”
Investigators later traced the calls to Washington State Prison, a medium-security facility in Davisboro, Ga., that earlier this year made headlines for a gang-related fight that killed four inmates. The man posing as James was incarcerated there.
Richland County Sheriff’s Department investigator Markus Johnson has issued warrants against more than two dozen inmates across at least eight Georgia prisons, including three connected to the Monk and Brooks cases. “Georgia prisoners seem to have practically unlimited access to phones,” Johnson said.
The reach extends well beyond the Carolinas. In Kansas, Prairie Village Detective Ryan Warkentin is tracking similar cases, including a jury-duty scheme he said netted nearly $600,000. “These Georgia prison scams are a problem for jurisdictions across the country,” he told the Journal.
Federal convictions have begun to land. William Keyes, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, said his office this year secured convictions against two inmates — nicknamed “Apes—t” and “C-Port” — who used bootleg phones to pull off a nationwide jury-duty racket that took at least $465,000 from 119 victims. “It can be noisy. It can be chaotic,” Keyes said of the prison environment that helps scammers work.
Phones reach inmates through drones, relatives and guards, investigators told the Journal. Georgia’s Department of Corrections, which has faced severe staffing shortages, called the contraband-cellphone problem a national one it is working to fix. The agency said it has confiscated cellphones by the thousand and drones by the dozen, and has arrested 18 staff members and 92 civilians for smuggling this year — on top of 102 open cases against scammers. Officials said new federal tools are helping limit the flow and use of phones.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is pressing Washington for additional tools. He wants federal authorization to jam cellular signals inside state prisons and to shoot down drones operating over them. The Federal Communications Commission said it is working on a final rule that would let state prisons block cellular signals. An FAA official said another rule in the works would let prisons apply to ban drone flights near their property; only Congress, however, can grant authority to shoot down aircraft, manned or not.
Johnson, 32, spent four years in the Army and earned a master’s in aeronautics before joining the sheriff’s department in 2020. He started on road patrol, then last year moved to financial crimes, where he began cracking cyber scams considered almost hopeless. He favors a trench coat and fedora and operates out of a satellite office where a note stuck to his cubicle reads, “I WILL NOT INSULT THE FBI ON A RECORDED LINE.”
Monk and Johnson got off to a rocky start. When Johnson called to follow up, Monk, by now feeling distrustful of everyone, suspected he was another phony and demanded to see a badge. Johnson sent a deputy to vouch for him.
Once a rapport was established, Johnson moved fast. He secured a search warrant for the web-based phone numbers used in the scam. The numbers’ connections, he said, all originated at a cell tower in Georgia despite South Carolina area codes; he also obtained the texts sent and received on those numbers and other customer data tied to them. From there he issued warrants to Google, Verizon and Zelle, eventually identifying the inmate he believed was the one who fleeced Monk and half a dozen other inmate scammers, charging one as an accomplice. Unearthing the entire digital trail took over a month.
“These guys are really bad at this,” Johnson said. “It feels like playing hide-and-seek with a 4-year-old.” Chase Foss, a North Carolina Department of Insurance investigator who has learned from Johnson, isn’t so sure. “Johnson makes it sound easy because it’s easy to him,” Foss said.
Before filing arrest warrants, Johnson likes to contact alleged fraudsters to see if panic will make them slip up. In March, he emailed the inmate he had pinpointed in the Monk case with the subject line “Hey, Scammer!” “Seriously, you need to get a new hustle,” Johnson wrote. “Maybe doing laundry…or trading Pokémon cards. This scamming thing? You just aren’t good at it. Let the rest of the fellas know as well.” The inmate did not respond.
Monk, who did not recover his money, turned advocate after realizing he had been conned. He contacted the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, wrote to the president and U.S. governors, and wrote back to the crook. “I told the guy, ‘You just messed with the wrong hombre,’” Monk said.
In May, Monk stood alongside Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott at a news conference announcing charges against nine Georgia inmates accused of defrauding more than 100 people of more than $100,000. Once their current sentences end, they face extradition to South Carolina on the new charges.
Lott, first elected sheriff in 1996, said scams have never been worse — and said callers impersonating his department recently targeted his own daughter. “She played with them for a little while,” Lott said, “and finally said, ‘I’ll just call my daddy. He’s the sheriff.’” Lott, praising Monk’s willingness to speak publicly, said many victims never come forward. “So many victims are too embarrassed to let us know,” he said. “He’s made it a mission to (raise) public awareness.”
Lott blames cellphones for the surge. “There’s more money being stolen with that phone than there’s ever been with a gun,” he said.
The broader landscape underscores the scale investigators are confronting. The FBI logged more than $20.9 billion in reported cybercrime losses last year, the Journal reported, with a surprising share of complaints tracing back inside U.S. prison walls — and Georgia prisons in particular.