On October 14, two men from Calhoun State Prison stood in front of a federal judge in Albany. Both were already serving time on Georgia sentences. One walked out with 200 more months to serve. The other walked out with 120. 1
Those months don’t begin until Georgia is done with them. The judge ordered both sentences to run after any state sentence, and the federal system has no parole. Together, that’s 26 years and 8 months of new prison time, stacked on top of the old.
From inside Calhoun, the two men used contraband cellphones to call strangers around the country. They said they were police officers. They told the people who answered that they had missed jury duty. In January, a jury convicted them of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. 2
Earlier this month, GPS made the case that Georgia can’t block its way out of prison phone scams, and that monitored phones should be allowed in. This story looks at the other end of those calls, and at what the calls cost the men who make them.
What the Calls Did to People
The calls showed up on caller ID as the victims’ own local police departments. The callers pulled that off with internet calling. Sometimes they used the names of real officers from the victim’s town.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office described what came next:
The victims were told they had one or more warrants for their arrest due to missing jury duty. The defendants, posing as police officers, informed the victims that the warrants would be cleared through payment of a bond over the phone and, if not paid, the victims would immediately be arrested.
Victims were told they were under a “gag” order and couldn’t talk about it until they paid. Most were told to buy gift cards and read off the numbers on the back. Some were also told to go into a Target restroom, undress, and record a cavity search on themselves before they could “verify” their signature at the police station. Some of them later got sexually explicit messages and violent threats. The scheme mostly went after women with professional profiles online. 3
The government counted more than $464,920 in documented losses, spread across 119 victims. It said the true number of victims is likely much higher. Many cases go unreported, the office noted, or stay hidden because people are too embarrassed to come forward.
Each of those 119 is a person who picked up a phone and heard a voice on the other end say it was the police.
Not the First Time, and Not Only Calhoun
For years, that same script has come out of Georgia prisons. It has added time for other people who used it too.
- Autry State Prison, 2016. In January 2016, the U.S. Attorney in Atlanta announced charges against 15 current or former Autry correctional officers, 19 current or former inmates and 17 other people in fraud and bribery schemes run from the prison in Pelham. Inmates used contraband phones to find victims online, then called them claiming to be law enforcement and saying they’d missed jury duty. The U.S. Attorney said: “Since September 2015, we have charged 75 people with criminal conduct that is initiated from within state prisons.” 4
- One victim, one more year. In November 2017, a man at Autry used a contraband phone to call a resident of Metairie, Louisiana, posing as a Deputy U.S. Marshal over a jury-duty warrant. 5 He was sentenced to 12 months in federal prison, to be served after his state sentence, and ordered to pay the victim $5,500. 6
- Two victims, ages 75 and 78. Another man began running the jury-duty scheme while serving time at Autry in 2015, and kept at it through July 2020. Two of his victims were 75 and 78. A federal judge in Louisiana sentenced him to 33 months in prison and ordered $9,797.95 in restitution. 7
How the Time Adds Up
A consecutive sentence doesn’t start until the earlier one ends. For a man with years left on a Georgia sentence, a federal sentence stacked on top doesn’t run alongside it. It waits at the end.
Georgia adds time on top of that. Under O.C.G.A. § 42-5-18, a person inside who has a phone without the warden’s permission commits a felony. That charge carries one to five years.
Phones can cost you time at parole, too. In a story published through Tell My Story, one writer said the Parole Board has “a policy of denying two years for cellphones” and wrote, “I really can’t understand why I’m being punished for a cellphone.” (The Nature and Circumstances)
How the Phones Get In
None of this works without a phone. In Operation Ghost Guard, the FBI’s investigation of Georgia prisons, the bureau said corrupt guards typically earned $500 to $1,000 for smuggling one cellphone in to a prisoner. 8
The phones keep arriving. GDC’s own annual report says its Digital Forensics Unit processed and analyzed 17,991 cellphones in fiscal year 2025. 9 Our earlier story sets out the officers, the drones and the throw-overs behind that count.
What You Can Do
If this was worth your time, share it with someone who should read it.
Spread the Word: It Takes One Click
If someone calls and says you missed jury duty, then asks for gift cards or a payment to clear a warrant, hang up. Look up your county’s clerk of court yourself. Call that number.
If someone you love is inside and has a phone, they should know what one of these calls can cost. Years that don’t start until the sentence they’re serving now is over.
And ask your legislators: should Georgia let people inside use phones that are registered and monitored, so a scam gets caught on tape instead of a year later in another state?
Call to Action: What You Can Do
Awareness without action changes nothing. Here’s how you can help push for accountability and real reform:
Join the GPS Advocacy Network: Sign up at https://gps.press/become-an-advocate/ and we’ll advocate on your behalf every week. GPS identifies your state legislators, crafts personalized letters on the most pressing prison issues, and sends them directly to the representatives who represent you. You receive a copy of every letter. It takes two minutes to sign up, and we handle the rest.
Send a 60-Second Message: Pick an issue, get a ready-to-edit message with the verified facts already in it, and email your state House representative and senator directly from your own inbox at https://gps.press/send-a-message/. No signup, nothing stored. It takes about a minute.
Tell My Story: Are you or a loved one affected by Georgia’s prison system? GPS publishes first-person accounts from incarcerated people and their families. Submit your story at https://gps.press/tellmystory and help the world understand what’s really happening behind the walls.
Contact Your Representatives: Your state legislators control GDC’s budget, oversight, and the laws that created these failures. Find your Georgia legislators at https://gps.press/find-your-legislator/ or call Governor Kemp at (404) 656-1776 or the GDC Commissioner at (478) 992-5246.
Demand Media Coverage: Contact newsrooms at the AJC, local TV stations, and national criminal justice outlets. More coverage means more pressure.
Amplify on Social Media: Share this article and tag @GovKemp, @GDC_Georgia, and your local representatives. Use #GAPrisons, #PrisonReform, #GeorgiaPrisonerSpeak.
Message the Board of Corrections: The citizen board that oversees the GDC publishes no contact details for its members. GPS built the missing front door: pick a board member and a policy message and send it from your own email at https://gps.press/write-the-board/.
File Public Records Requests: Georgia’s Open Records Act gives every citizen the right to request incident reports, death records, staffing data, medical logs, and financial documents. Start with the GPS Action Toolkits at https://gps.press/toolkits/. The Open Records Toolkit walks you through what to ask for, gives you ready-to-file request templates, and tells you what to do when the state says no. File directly with GDC at https://georgiadcor.govqa.us/WEBAPP/_rs/SupportHome.aspx.
Attend Public Meetings: The Georgia Board of Corrections and legislative committees hold public meetings. Your presence is noticed.
Contact the Department of Justice: File civil rights complaints at https://civilrights.justice.gov. Federal oversight has forced abusive systems to change before.
Support Organizations Doing This Work: Donate to or volunteer with Georgia-based prison reform groups fighting for change on the ground.
Vote: Research candidates’ positions on criminal justice. Primary elections often determine outcomes in Georgia.
Contact GPS: If you have information about conditions inside Georgia’s prisons, reach us securely at GPS.press.
Further Reading
Georgia Can’t Block Its Way Out of Prison Phone Scams. Let the Phones In, and Listen.
GPS’s case for registered, monitored phones inside Georgia’s prisons, built on the state’s own arrest reports and the DOJ’s findings.
Five Board members vote on Georgia parole cases, but staff build the file they read.
What’s Really Behind Georgia’s Prison Crisis?
The root causes of the crisis inside Georgia’s prisons.
Two Commanders Say Georgia Hides Its Prison Staffing Crisis
Two former GDC commanders say Georgia hides how short-staffed its prisons really are.
GPS Intelligence System
The GPS Intelligence System maintains living research profiles that aggregate data, news, settlements, and analysis on Georgia’s prisons and the issues defining them. The profiles below provide deeper context for the issues raised in this article:
The prison the two men were held in when they ran the jury-duty scheme.
Contraband and the Staff Supply Chain
GDC’s own arrest reports, read for what they say about who brings contraband in.
Explore the Data
GPS makes GDC statistics accessible to the public through several resources:
- GPS Statistics Portal: Interactive dashboards translating complex GDC reports into accessible formats, updated within days of official releases.
- GPS Lighthouse AI: Ask questions about Georgia’s prison system and get answers drawn from GPS’s investigative archive and data analysis.
- GPS llms.txt: A single machine-readable index of every GPS data resource, published using the open llms.txt standard. Point any AI tool (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) at this URL and the model can navigate to facility profiles, intelligence briefs, mortality records, statistics, and the full investigative archive, with no other configuration needed. It is the fastest way to ground an AI conversation in verified GPS data.
- GPS Public MCP Server: For AI tools that support the Model Context Protocol (Claude, ChatGPT, and others), connect directly to GPS’s data: read-only tools covering population, facilities, mortality, parole, the Georgia Code, settlements, and more. Every answer arrives with its source link and citation built in.
For a walkthrough of how to put these resources to work with AI, see How to Use GPS Data with AI Tools: a step-by-step guide for researchers, advocates, families, and journalists analyzing Georgia prison conditions, statistics, and policy with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Contact GPS at media@gps.press for access to underlying datasets used in this analysis.
About Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS)
Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS) is a nonprofit investigative newsroom built in partnership with incarcerated reporters, families, advocates, and data analysts. Operating independently from the Georgia Department of Corrections, GPS documents the truth the state refuses to acknowledge: extreme violence, fatal medical neglect, gang-controlled dorms, collapsed staffing, fraudulent reporting practices, and unconstitutional conditions across Georgia’s prisons.
Through confidential reporting channels, secure communication, evidence verification, public-records requests, legislative research, and professional investigative standards, GPS provides the transparency the system lacks. Our mission is to expose abuses, protect incarcerated people, support families, and push Georgia toward meaningful reform based on human rights, evidence, and public accountability.
Every article is part of a larger fight: to end the silence, reveal the truth, and demand justice.
The Architecture Is the Evidence
Across the 32 state prisons whose original design figures we hold, Georgia built for 15,737. They hold 33,805 — 215% of design capacity.
Dorms tripled. Cells double- and triple-bunked. Medical, kitchens, libraries — unchanged. Every facility, every design figure, every source.
See the receipts →- U.S. Attorney’s Office Middle District of Georgia, Georgia inmates sentenced for police impersonation jury-duty call scheme, Oct 16 2026, https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdga/pr/georgia-inmates-sentenced-police-impersonation-jury-duty-call-scheme [↩]
- U.S. Attorney’s Office Middle District of Georgia, Georgia inmates found guilty in nationwide jury-duty call scheme, Jan 12 2026, https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdga/pr/georgia-inmates-found-guilty-nationwide-jury-duty-call-scheme [↩]
- U.S. Attorney’s Office Middle District of Georgia sentencing release, https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdga/pr/georgia-inmates-sentenced-police-impersonation-jury-duty-call-scheme [↩]
- U.S. Attorney’s Office Northern District of Georgia, More than 50 individuals charged in massive corruption fraud and money laundering schemes, Jan 21 2016, https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/more-50-individuals-charged-massive-corruption-fraud-and-money-laundering-schemes [↩]
- U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of Louisiana, Georgia inmate pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in grand jury scam, https://www.justice.gov/usao-edla/pr/georgia-inmate-pleads-guilty-conspiracy-commit-wire-fraud-his-role-grand-jury-scam [↩]
- U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of Louisiana, Georgia inmate sentenced to 12 months in prison after pleading guilty to his role in grand jury scam, https://www.justice.gov/usao-edla/pr/georgia-inmate-sentenced-12-months-prison-after-pleading-guilty-his-role-grand-jury [↩]
- U.S. Attorney’s Office Western District of Louisiana, Former prison inmate in Georgia sentenced for defrauding victims out of over $9,700, https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdla/pr/former-prison-inmate-georgia-sentenced-defrauding-victims-out-over-9700 [↩]
- FBI Operation Ghost Guard archived, https://web.archive.org/web/20260327095203id_/https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/-operation-ghost-guard [↩]
- GDC Annual Fiscal Report 2025, https://gdc.georgia.gov/document/gdc-annual-fiscal-report/gdc-annual-fiscal-report-2025/download [↩]