How To Find Someone In Prison In Georgia

Dozens of onetime and current corrections officers and inmates at a Georgia prison house have been charged in a scheme that used smuggled cellphones to milkshake down civilians who believed they were in problem for not reporting to jury duty.

The performance at Autry Land Prison was highlighted in an NBC News investigation into the soaring number of cellphones in cellblocks and how they were beingness used for extortion and fraud.

There were more 23,500 phone seized from Georgia prisons betwixt 2014 to 2015 — and officials said many are smuggled in by prison employees.

Prosecutors found that inmates used the phones to go on the Cyberspace and collect information nigh fraud targets. Posing equally law enforcement officers, they called the victims and threatened to have them arrested for missing jury duty unless they paid fines.

The victims were instructed to buy pre-paid cash cards and turn over the account numbers to wire money into a pre-paid debit account. Accomplices outside the prison were used to wash the money.

Image: Confiscated cell phones — Cellphones confiscated from prisoners by the Georgia Department of Corrections. Georgia Medico

Addis Thompson, 78, told his story to NBC News in March 2015.

He got a call a man who said he was an officeholder at the sheriff'south office in Macon but was actually a cocaine dealer serving 30 years at Autry. He convinced Thompson to fork over $734 for a supposed jury duty fine.

"Beingness an old man, I don't want to go to jail," Thompson said.

Thompson said he had never even received a jury duty summons, simply the caller was very convincing as he explained how Thompson needed to buy a "Greenish Dot" reloadable cash card to avoid arrest.

"Honey flowed out of that person's mouth like information technology was nil," Thompson said.

County sheriff's investigators figured out who had hoodwinked Thompson and three people were charged in that case.

At present xv corrections officers, 19 inmates and 17 other people have been indicted in federal court for other scams, on charges that include smuggling contraband, bribery, coin laundering and wire fraud.

"Since September 2015, we have charged 75 people with criminal conduct that is initiated from within country prisons," said John Horn, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.

"The unfortunate common denominator to this criminal conduct is the pervasive availability of contraband cellphones, which allows likewise many prison house inmates to continue victimizing our communities while serving their sentences."

Lisa Riordan Seville

Lisa Riordan Seville is a reporter and producer with the NBC News Investigative Unit of measurement.