It is a federal crime for inmates to possess a cell phone in prison. The reasons are self-evident, but here’s a good example of why: in 2015, 9 inmates were indicted for coordinating the murder of Lt. Osvaldo Albarati in Puerto Rico. More recently, 22 State Attorneys General sent a letter to Congressional Leadership urging the banning of contraband cell phones in prisons. The examples cited in the letter range from coordinated attacks and the murder of seven inmates in South Carolina, to the conviction of 69 defendants in Oklahoma involving an interstate drug trafficking operation. The letter goes on to describe scam calls that were made while sending pictures of bloodied pictures of inmates’ relatives demanding monetary payment. Another example details a gang enforcer ordering a double homicide hit using a contraband cell phone sitting in a prison cell. Senators Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced The Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Stopping Prison Contraband Act in April of this year, which would increase the punishment of possessing a cell phone in prison to at least five years.
Inmates receive the contraband cell phones through several ways. Drones can drop them into the prison yard, phones are thrown over the fence, or corrupt prison guards sell or trade them – often many times over. A recent Forbes article reported that “BOP corrections officer told me accumulate in a secured area. In laughing about the extent of the problem he told me, ‘In the old days we would have looked at those confiscated phones as evidence, but some corrupt correction officers look at them as inventory to resell to inmates.’” The problem has become prolific. Markets for cell phones emerge within prisons – an inmate caught with a cell phone will have to pay, somehow, for the phone taken out of the surplus of usable phones. One less cell phone means the cost of all phone’s increases. Payment for contraband cell phones can reach inmates families outside of prison, often times blackmailed for payment or threatened with violence.
Finding contraband cell phones has never been easier. ShadowDragon’s OSINT platform allows analysts and investigators to geoestimate and geolocate users based on publicly available information in a geographic area. Prisons offer a unique advantage for this feature – they’re static. ShadowDragon’s team found an inmate using a contraband cell phone by monitoring the facility’s location name, which the inmate tagged in a selfie on social media.
Common hashtags (#PrisonTok or #PrisonLife) have been used by inmates to disseminate short videos lamenting about conditions in prison or post ‘how-to’ videos (how to make prison wine, or ‘Pruno’, for example). The same hashtags and keywords can be used to monitor prison facilities, alerting authorities to investigate further if suspicious keywords, usernames, or hashtags are used to implicate a crime or usage of contraband cell phones.
Contraband cell phones in the hands of inmates allows criminal networks to continue from within the prison walls. In 2022, a multi-agency and law enforcement effort spanning three years uncovered a vast drug trafficking and firearm exporting network all pointing back to two men, coordinating international drug and firearms trade from within an Oklahoma state prison. Once the investigation and trial concluded, 21 defendants received sentences of more than 187 years while law enforcement seized approximately 46 pounds of methamphetamine and heroin, more than 50 firearms, and $35,000 in drug proceeds. ShadowDragon’s geoestimation and geolocation capabilities allow authorities to identify inmates utilizing publicly available information and prosecute them according to current federal laws.
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