I have said it before and I will say it again: the American legal system is not fit to fight the epidemic of phone scams. But even I was amazed at the story of a Florida Sheriff who is tackling scam calls made by criminals already incarcerated in prisons within the neighboring state of Georgia.

Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood took to Facebook to share his frustrations at the ‘huge’ scam being operated by inmates of Calhoun State Prison and Wheeler Correctional Institution, both in Georgia. Chitwood spoke on the matter after arresting 61 year old Annie Ashley, a resident of Atlanta, Georgia, and an alleged accomplice of the prison scam gang. He greeted Ashley by observing:

I think it’s ironic that you’re part of a scam that’s telling people they have an arrest warrant and yet we have an arrest warrant for you.

One of the victims was scammed out of USD15,000. Half of this money was traced to Ashley’s account. Luckily, USD12,000 has since been recovered.

According to Chitwood and reporters at CBS News, the scam involves making phone calls that impersonate law enforcement. Recipients are told they are in trouble because they skipped their jury duty. Messages sent to the victims include bogus arrest warrants that appear impressively authentic. They also include instructions for how to pay the fines using bitcoin ATMs, supposedly because the government no longer accepts other methods of payment ‘to stop the spread of contagious diseases’. In reality, bitcoin ATMs are a gift to criminals because of the absence of any checks over the identity of users.

The criminals want to keep their identity obscured but the scam would not work if they were unable to gather information about prospective targets. So how are prisoners able to research their targets, create credible-looking arrest warrants in their names, then bombard them with calls and messages? Chitwood explained:

Cease to resist, giving my goodbye
Drive my car into the ocean
You’ll think I’m dead, but I sail away
On a wave of mutilation

This is the final Commsrisk article. The website will continue to host the Commsrisk Global Fraud Dashboard under the stewardship of James Greenley, the software engineer who created it, for as long as he can find financial backers to support that work. Presenting reams of objective data compiled from varied international sources is the best way to build on the platform constructed during the first two decades of this website. Facts and figures need to rule; words are too messy and too easily twisted. My regular narratives about the communications sector end now, not with regret, but with pleasure. I am glad to be released to live a different life to the one that has consumed so much of me.