That was the hook.
is a prepaid calling account designed for the friends and family of incarcerated individuals. Instead of being billed for collect calls through your local phone provider, you deposit funds into a dedicated account linked to your specific phone number. When an inmate calls you, the cost is automatically deducted from this balance.
: Set up automatic deposits when your balance is low, or receive text alerts so you never miss a call.
Three days earlier, in a cinder-block common room at Northfork, a man named Darryl “Smooth” Withers had been working his angle. Smooth was in for wire fraud, a white-collar criminal among blue-collar thieves. He didn't lift weights; he lifted information. He paid a corrupt data entry clerk in the admin office $50 a month for a weekly export of new inmate numbers and their “preferred contact” lists—the phone numbers of mothers, sisters, girlfriends, and grandmothers. global tel link advance pay
“I can’t keep doing this, Marcus,” she said, her voice breaking. “That was grocery money. I’m behind on the electric now.”
That evening, Marcus approached him in the rec yard. “Yo, Smooth. You know anything about a church donation on my phone account?”
She stared at the message. She hadn’t authorized any of it. But her phone number was attached to Marcus’s account as the “responsible party.” In GTL’s byzantine billing system, that made her liable for any overages, any premium calls, any "feature use" fees. When she finally got through to a customer service representative in the Philippines, the woman’s voice was polite but immovable. That was the hook
Smooth used his own tablet, one of the contraband ones that ran on a smuggled cellular chip, not the monitored prison Wi-Fi. He logged onto the GTL website using a prepaid Visa card bought on the outside by his girlfriend. He didn’t need Carmen’s permission to make an “advance pay” deposit. The system only required an inmate’s full name and ID number. It was a feature, not a bug. GTL’s terms of service, all 12,000 words of fine print, stated that any third party could fund an account. The company had no incentive to stop it. In fact, they loved it. Every deposit, legitimate or predatory, came with a non-refundable $3.95 processing fee.
“Just one more time? Can you put fifty on the advance pay so I can call you next week? I got no other way.”
For convenience, you can opt-in to automatic deposits through the ConnectNetwork online portal or by phone. Benefits of Using AdvancePay ConnectNetworkhttps://web.connectnetwork.com AdvancePay Phone Account - ConnectNetwork When an inmate calls you, the cost is
The call connected. But instead of a lawyer, Keisha patched through a number of her own—a premium-rate chat line that cost $9.99 per minute. The call lasted forty-seven minutes. Smooth talked to Keisha about the weather, about dinner, about nothing. By the time Marcus realized the per-minute rate wasn’t a flat fee, the damage was done.
She called the facility. After forty-seven minutes on hold, a disinterested corrections officer confirmed the payment. “Says here it was an online deposit, Ms. Diaz. Credit card. Last four digits 4412.” Carmen’s credit card ended in 9981. Her stomach clenched. “Can you reverse it?” she asked, already knowing the answer. “You’d have to take that up with GTL,” the officer said, and the line went dead.
Carmen closed her eyes. In the background of the call, she heard a guard yell, “Time’s up!” A beep. The line went dead.
