Prison time no problem for identity thieves with cellphones

Inmates at two Georgia prisons have been indicted on charges of prison-based drug trafficking, contraband rings, and identity theft. Law enforcement officials identified cellphones as the smoking gun.

Smuggling smart phones into Georgia prisoners is almost an industry: More than 7,000 have been confiscated in the past year from inmates or prison workers trying to pass them to prisoners. Georgia Department of Corrections Commissioner Homer Bryson said more than 1,000 have been seized since July.

Prisoners used the smuggled phones to tap into various crime networks, linking the prisons to gang friends and contacts on the outside. In one instance a phone became the means of ordering an execution.

“The one commonality that runs through it all is the ready access to and use of cellphones and smartphones by the inmates that allowed them to continue their victimization of citizens and the community even while they were behind bars,” U.S. Attorney John Horn said.

Georgia is not the only state to struggle with cell phones in prisons. In 2008, even after Texas’ 2003 ban on prisoner cell phones, state Sen. John Whitmire endured a death-row inmate’s threats to his family—by cellphone. In 2011, California dealt with its contraband cellphone crisis by making it a misdemeanor to use or bring an unauthorized phone into a prison facility.

Texas also has seen escapes coordinated by illicit phones. But after it also boosted K-9 units trained to sniff for phones as well as adding surveillance of guards themselves, phone contraband decreased dramatically to well below Georgia’s current crisis level.

Even a single phone creates a huge opportunity for prisoners to enact identity theft scams. Georgia inmate Mims Morris posed as a fraud specialist working for a credit card company and tried to trick people into revealing personal information. One woman provided details he then used to authorize a $2,200 transfer to his credit card, and from there he was able to apply for additional cards.

Working with a friend on the outside, Morris posted ads on Craigslist for fake construction and roofing jobs, listing his prison cellphone as the contact number. He planned to get job applicants’ personal information and use it to open debit cards in their names. Besides identity theft, Morris and two other members of the Ghostface Gang used phones to traffic drugs while at Phillips State Prison in Buford, Ga.

So far, the web of nefarious entrepreneurs in Georgia amounts to more than 50 people, including 22 corrections staff members arrested since February while trying to bring contraband into prisons, Bryson said. One of the resulting indictments revealed Donald Howard Hinley as the phone-lord of a drug trafficking network inside Valdosta State Prison. He routinely brokered major drug deals not only around the Atlanta area but across Georgia. Hinley even used the phone to put a hit on an inmate at Telfair State Prison to keep him from testifying against Hinley’s girlfriend in another drug trafficking case.

Officials first discovered the prison-based crime rings because police in metro Atlanta’s Cobb and Gwinnett counties followed up on reports of fraud filed by citizens. They traced the criminal activity to state prisons, said Special Agent Britt Johnson, who heads the FBI’s Atlanta field office. Victims who fell prey to the prisoners’ scams were shocked to learn the perpetrators already were behind bars, where they should have been incapable of harming the general public.

While prison officials try to block inmates’ access to the outside world, the number of educational and recreational activities offered to inmates make it hard to control the flow of people and devices coming into prisons. The human element also is hard to predict. Stories of prison officials and guards who fall into temptation abound, and sometimes the slide into criminal activity begins with a simple pack of cigarettes procured for a prisoner.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.