AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File
For white-collar inmates eager to stay connected to the outside world, help is readily at hand — in the form of the ubiquitous contraband cellphone.
Despite the disciplinary risks and black market prices ranging into the thousands of dollars, illicit cellphones are a coveted accessory, according to corrections experts, defense lawyers, and people who were once incarcerated.
Sometimes the phones are smuggled behind bars the old-fashioned way by corrupt guards. But they can also literally fall from the sky.
"Particularly in the low-security camps, we hear drones are flying over and dropping contraband, including cellphones, behind the walls," said Craig Roth, a former inmate who now counsels clients on how to survive prison through his consultancy firm, Inside Outside Ltd.
Drone drops are cunning operations, said former New Jersey securities broker Joseph Degregorio, who served eight months at the federal prison in Devens, Massachusetts, for a $1.2 million investment scam.
Degregorio was held at Devens for only a week in November 2022 when word swept through his unit that a drone had dropped a box holding 50 miniature cellphones in the yard.
"They'd paint the box to look like grass, so when it falls, it's camouflaged," Degregorio, 48, told Business Insider.
That box was quickly intercepted by guards. But the next drone drop was successful a few weeks later, just in time for Christmas.
"The cellphones were going for $3,000," Degregorio said, explaining that the money changes hands on the outside through intermediaries. "And guys could rent them out on an hourly basis for two, three hundred dollars an hour," he said.
Over the years, smaller phones and ever-improving drones have made smuggling easier. The best drones have sophisticated cameras and two-hour flight capabilities over 18 miles of range, according to a National Institute of Justice report on drones and correctional facilities.
"It's incredibly prevalent and incredibly risky," said Justin Paperny, a former inmate whose consultancy, White Collar Advice, advises clients before and after sentencing.
"Two weeks ago, I got a call from a crying mother whose son got caught with a phone in Lewisberg," he said, referring to the low-security prison camp in Pennsylvania.
"Now, he's facing solitary, or adding a year to his sentence, or being moved, and why? Because he had to send that email or make that phone call," Paperny said.
Degregorio, who now works as a prison consultant at White Collar Advice, said he saw or heard about a couple dozen phones among the 1,000 people housed at FCC Devens, where there is a mix of security levels.
But the lower the security level, the cheaper and more prevalent cellphones become, experts say.
Contraband phones go for $1,000 or as little as a few hundred dollars, depending on supply, at minimum-security camps, the so-called Club Feds. (The play on "Club Med" reflects the relatively cushy accommodations — like the federal prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia, where Martha Stewart reportedly led yoga classes during her five-month insider-trading stint.)
"At the camps, you might have two guards over 200 guys, so there's leeway," Degregorio explained.
At the minimum-security camp at Leavenworth, Kansas, half the people he knew had cell phones, and some had more than one, said Scotty Carper, 49, of Sacramento, California.
Arrested on methamphetamine smuggling charges, Carper was released from Leavenworth in September 2023 after serving 11 months on a reduced charge of lying to federal officers.
Throughout his sentence, "I saw everything from people walking around with them in their pockets, which was pretty brazen, to people on them on social media all night in their bunks," Carper, who now also works at White Collar Advice, told Business Insider.
"It's the contraband of choice, surpassing cocaine and fentanyl, especially for guys who are used to 24/7 connectivity," said Ron Kuby, a veteran Manhattan-based defense attorney.
"I get calls from contraband phones periodically from prisons," said attorney Norm Pattis, whose clients have included InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, members of the extremist group Proud Boys, and white-collar criminals.
"I don't want to say more than that," Pattis added, "except that the demand comes from the prisoners, and the supply often comes from the guards, and they protect each other."
Contraband cellphones have been a part of the prison black market "for decades," as the Federal Communications Commission notes online — but it's a problem that's hard to quantify.
In Georgia, one of the few states to release statistics about cellphones in jails and prisons, officials say 8,074 contraband phones were confiscated in the state's jails and prisons last year, with 5,482 confiscated this year as of June.
When asked for statistics on confiscations, a federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson said it was against policy to provide "internal security" data.
The FCC and corrections officials have fought over how to solve the problem since at least 2010, when the FCC publicly rebuffed law enforcement requests that cellphone jamming be legalized at the nation's 7,000 jails and prisons.
Out of concern that jamming also interferes with public safety communications, the FCC has promoted alternatives, including systems that detect and block individual phones.
But many in law enforcement say only cellphone jamming can truly stop the problem.
Last year, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson led a consortium of AGs from 14 states urging that Congress pass legislation legalizing jamming. The stakes are particularly high for Wilson; his office continues to prosecute a violent, 90-defendant drug ring run by imprisoned people using contraband cellphones.
The Bureau of Prisons "has continued to make progress" against drone incursions, including spokesman Donald Murphy said in a statement. The bureau urges Congress to pass the Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Stopping Prison Contraband Act, which would upgrade the charge of smuggling contraband cellphones into a Federal prison from a misdemeanor offense to a felony, Murphy said.
"As with so many of the issues FBOP faces, funding for additional staffing is also important to make sure we have enough officers on duty to identify, prevent, and remove contraband," he added.
Nationwide, people incarcerated in jails and prisons are using cellphones to order hits and orchestrate kidnappings, Georgia's AG, Christopher Carr, wrote the FCC in June.
White-collar criminals tend to put their contraband phones to more benign uses.
"I know a guy who was in on a white collar crime, and he bought a phone because he didn't want to talk to his children on a prison phone," said Degregorio.
"He hadn't told his children where he was," he explained.
People held in federal prisons are allowed 510 hours of free use each month on the prison wall phones. But there's no privacy, no Internet access, and calls are recorded and limited to 15 minutes. Inmates are also barred from conducting business over the phones.
"A couple of people I just consulted with, they wanted to still run their businesses," Degregorio said. "But you can't even tell your wife to sell stock."
Other white-collar criminals "just want it to want it," he said with a laugh.
Still, the risks are high.
"Getting caught with a phone, that's a level-100 disciplinary infraction, the same level as if you assaulted another inmate," Degregorio said.
Just being friends or neighbors with someone who has a phone can get you in trouble, said Rothfeld, of the Inside Outside prison consultancy.
"I've had three clients in the past nine months who spent more than 100 days in solitary confinement after sweeps" for contraband cellphones at two federal prison camps, he told Business Insider.
"And they didn't even have cellphones," he said.
Getting caught with a phone is a misdemeanor, and can lengthen an inmate's sentence by subtracting the days they have coming for good behavior, and it can get them transferred to a higher-security prison, said Paperny, of White Collar Advice.
"I tell my clients who are going in not to make things worse, and they say, 'How can it get any worse? I'm going to prison,'" Paperny joked.
"And then I tell them to stay away from cellphones," he said.
