How Inmates With Contraband Phones Are Scamming Families Across America

U.S. cybercrime complaints topped $20.9 billion in reported losses last year. A surprising number of fraudulent calls come from inside American prisons.

COLUMBIA, S.C.—When Art Monk began getting calls and texts from In & Out Bail Bonds saying his adult child was in jail and needed help, Monk’s first reaction was swift and harsh.

Art Monk at home with his wife, Kathie Monk, in Columbia, S.C.

Their relationship had been fractured for years, and Monk was in no mood to get involved in the latest crisis.

“Not my problem,” the 68-year-old retired engineer texted back. “He wished me dead. So I am.”

But soon, Monk softened. “He truly needs to be in a hospital.

Monk handed over nearly $12,000. He would have been better off staying out of it.

Art Monk at home with his wife, Kathie Monk, in Columbia, S.C.

His grown child was indeed incarcerated, and In & Out Bail Bonds is a real business. But James wasn’t a bondsman. He was an inmate himself, locked up two hours away at Washington State Prison in Davisboro, Ga.

Monk had been duped, according to charges later laid out in arrest warrants secured by the local sheriff’s department.

‘How in the world do prisoners get all this information?’

Fraud is becoming the unpleasant background noise of American life. Federal Bureau of Investigation cybercrime complaints topped $20.9 billion in reported losses last year. Many originate overseas, but a surprising number come from inside the walls of U.S. prisons.

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“How in the world do prisoners get all this information when they’re supposed to be locked up?” asked Sylvia Brooks, a retired nurse in Columbia. When her grandson landed in jail, a caller—traced to a Georgia prison—contacted her posing as a worker for a court-diversion program and talked her out of $1,368.

Prisoners need little more than contraband cellphones and well-honed scripts passed inmate to inmate, investigators say. They at times dial randomly, threatening arrest if fines aren’t paid for “missed jury duty,” or they scour websites that publish the names of the recently jailed, and then cold-call relatives with fake offers of assistance. They typically use web-based apps to make calls from numbers that mirror a local sheriff’s office or bonding agency, according to authorities, and even set up convincing voicemails for when targets ring them back.

A voicemail

Prisoners in Alabama, Florida, the Carolinas and California have been charged with directing phone swindles from behind bars. Georgia appears to be an epicenter.

“Georgia prisoners seem to have practically unlimited access to phones,” said Markus Johnson, an investigator with the Richland County Sheriff’s Department in South Carolina, who has issued warrants for more than two dozen convicts across at least eight Georgia prisons, including three inmates linked to the Monk and Brooks cases.

In Kansas, Prairie Village Detective Ryan Warkentin is tracking similar cases, including a jury-duty rip-off that netted nearly $600,000. “These Georgia prison scams are a problem for jurisdictions across the country,” he said.

Inside prisons, the environment can work in the scammer’s favor. “It can be noisy. It can be chaotic,” said William Keyes, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, whose office this year secured convictions against two Georgia inmates—nicknamed “Apes—t” and “C-Port.” They used bootleg phones to pull off a nationwide jury-duty racket that pried at least $465,000 from 119 victims.

The phones often arrive via drones, relatives or guards, investigators say.

Georgia’s Department of Corrections, which has faced severe staffing shortages, calls the contraband-cellphone problem a national one it is working to fix.

This year alone, it has arrested 18 staff and 92 civilians for smuggling contraband—on top of 102 open cases against scammers. It confiscates cellphones by the thousand and drones by the dozen. Officials say new federal tools are helping limit the flow and use of phones.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr wants more help from Washington, including authorization to jam cell signals and shoot down drones. The Federal Communications Commission said it is working on a final rule that would let state prisons block cellular signals. Another new rule in the works would let them apply to ban drone flights near their property, an FAA official said, although only Congress can grant authority to shoot down aircraft, manned or not.

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‘I felt really stupid’

Back in Columbia, Monk was learning all this the hard way.

One morning in February, he got a call that appeared to come from In & Out Bail Bonds, despite a spam blocker on his phone.

James, masquerading as an employee there, called him “sir” and put him at ease. “He wasn’t some foreigner,” Monk said. “He had a Southern accent and I speak that language.”

Donna Jowers, owner of the real In & Out Bail Bonds, in Charlotte, N.C., has been fielding calls about such impostors for two years. “These guys are good,” she said. “When you’re desperate and somebody that you love is in a situation, you’re not even thinking.”

James claimed he was handling the case of Monk’s incarcerated adult child. The 28-year-old had faced mental-health challenges and identifies as female. “He’s not gonna survive in jail,” Monk thought. He sent $11,939 to James, money he had set aside for taxes.

Unbeknown to him, James had also tried Monk’s ex-wife, who hadn’t bought the pitch.

She told Monk he had been conned.

“There were so many red flags,” he recalled. “I felt really stupid.”

Instead of retreating, though, Monk turned crusader. He contacted the Richland County Sheriff’s Department and his file landed on the desk of Investigator Johnson.

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.

Markus Johnson, an investigator with the Richland County Sheriff's Department, in his office cubicle.

Once a rapport was established, Johnson moved fast. He secured a search warrant for the web-based phone numbers used in the scam. What came back was a long list of numerals representing the phones’ connections to the network—all of which originated at a cell tower in Georgia, despite the South Carolina area codes. He also got 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. Sifting through emails and associated email accounts, Johnson said he found the man posing as James: an inmate in Georgia at Washington State Prison, a medium-security facility surrounded by fields and woods, which made headlines earlier this year for a gang-related fight that resulted in four inmate deaths.

Unearthing the entire digital trail took over a month. Johnson also identified half a dozen other inmate scammers, charging one as an accomplice.

“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. So in March, he emailed the inmate he pinpointed as the one who fleeced Monk. “Seriously, you need to get a new hustle,” Johnson wrote him, subject line: “Hey, Scammer!”

“Maybe doing laundry…or trading Pokémon cards,” Johnson wrote. “This scamming thing? You just aren’t good at it. Let the rest of the fellas know as well.” He hasn’t received a response.

While Johnson built his case, Monk wrote to the president and U.S. governors, pushing for more attention to prison-based scams. He even wrote back to the crook: “I told the guy, ‘You just messed with the wrong hombre.’ ”

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 over $100,000. Once their current sentences end, they face extradition to South Carolina on the new charges.

Monk didn’t recover his money, but he showed he was taking control of the narrative.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott in his office.

Lott praised Monk from the podium. “So many victims are too embarrassed to let us know,” he said. “He’s made it a mission to (raise) public awareness.”

Lott, first elected sheriff in 1996, later said from his office, decorated with the heads of animals he has killed and eaten, that scams have never been worse. Callers impersonating his department even 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.’ ”

He blames cellphones, saying, “There’s more money being stolen with that phone than there’s ever been with a gun.”

Write to Joe Barrett at Joseph.Barrett@wsj.com