An article highlighting the money to be made by corrupt prison employees meeting the demand for contraband prison cell phones. This also highlights the need for a demand-side strategy to the problem of smuggled cell phones in prison.

A federal grand jury has indicted a California prison worker on charges that he accepted bribes from prisoners in exchange for cell phones and cigarettes.

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy says medical office technician David Zamudio has been charged with committing honest services wire fraud during his employment at Calipatria State Prison in Imperial County.Zamudio is accused of wrongly taking in more than $33,000 in bribes from Feb. 2009 to Oct. 2010.

Authorities say he smuggled in the phones and tobacco products and received payment through MoneyGram or Western Union in return.

Source

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Perhaps Bexar County Jail should re-examine its policy on allowing guards to bring in food, a judge suggested this week as two ex-jailers were convicted in separate courtrooms for smuggling contraband.

State District Judge Sid Harle made the comment Monday as he sentenced former jailer William Douglas Hemphill, 33, to five years’ deferred adjudication for smuggling a cell phone to an inmate in a box of ramen noodles.

Two months earlier, Harle had sentenced ex-jailer Robert Falcon to six years in prison for trying to smuggle heroin to inmates in barbacoa tacos. And jurors Tuesday convicted former jailer Alfred Casas of aiding an escape attempt by smuggling hacksaw blades in tacos.

These are older incidents just now getting adjudicated, said Deputy Chief Roger Dovalina, who oversees the jail. The few bad apples have been fired and arrested, he said, and he doesn’t remember any new cases arising in the past couple of years.

“We are looking at different options, but it has been difficult” to bar jailers from bringing their own food because they don’t get lunch breaks like regular employees, Dovalina said.

Accepting bribes is a second-degree felony, punishable by up to 20 years in prison. But in exchange for an earlier no-contest plea, prosecutors Monday instead pursued a lesser charge against Hemphill of possessing a prohibited substance in a correctional facility. Hemphill, who now works for a box manufacturer in Louisiana, can’t work in law enforcement in Texas again.

Jailers searched inmate cells in July 2008 and found the phone in the cell of Nathan Knowles, 28, who was awaiting trial on drug and theft charges.

“Another inmate told me that if I get cool with Officer Hemphill, he would bring me a cell phone,” Knowles said in a written statement.

In a letter of resignation, Hemphill admitted bringing the phone but said it was only after Knowles threatened the jailer’s family and his girlfriend.

“I started to blow it off until he started naming my parents’ street and the details of my car,” he wrote.

If there was a threat, Hemphill never reported it, as jail policy requires, authorities said.

A smuggled phone could be used to threaten witnesses or for ongoing criminal conduct, said Adriana Biggs, chief of the district attorney’s white-collar crimes division.

Source

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Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would be toughening the conditions of imprisonment for terrorists but some jailors, it seems, did not “get the memo.”
According to the Yisrael Hayom newspaper, two jailors have been caught smuggling cell phones to imprisoned terrorists. A third reported being offered a bribe for a similar action.

One jailor was arrested recently and questioned by the Unit for Investigating Jailors on suspicion he smuggled cell phones to Hadarim Prison.

Another jailor, a former officer at the Ketziot Jail, has begun serving a jail sentence after confessing and being found guilty of smuggling cell phones to terrorists.

In addition, a jailor at Ne’er Sheva Prison reported that a certain security [i.e. terror, Ed.] prisoner offered him a sum of 150,000 shekels for assistance in smuggling in a cell phone.

Israel Prisons Service Commander Lt.-Gen. Aharon Franco has recently said that he intends to show zero tolerance toward personnel who collaborate with the smuggling.”

The terrorists have other creative means to get their hands on cell phones. In recent weeks, IPS has successfully stymied an attempt to smuggle 50 cell phones, 50 chargers and 50 SIM cards inside a delivery of vine leaves for terror prisoners at Ketziot.
A family recently visiting a terrorist tried to smuggle two cell phones in the undergarments of the prisoner’s wife. Two matching batteries were placed in the belt buckles of his sons.

Another woman, aged 67, was caught at the gate to Ramon Prison with a cell phone in her brassiere.

Since January, a total of 76 phones, 55 chargers, 51 memory cards and 435 SIM cards were caught at the entrances to the prisons.

The IPS has instructed staff to carry out thorough checks on whoever enters the jails and is currently evaluated more advanced machines for scanning people who wish to enter.

Source

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