GEORGIA — The FBI’s Atlanta Division announced the results of an investigation into widespread public corruption within the Georgia prison system that uncovered extensive crimes carried out by inmates with the help of corrupt guards—crimes whose impact was felt well beyond prison walls.
Nearly 50 former and current Georgia Department of Corrections officers were indicted for accepting bribes in exchange for protecting what they believed to be drug shipments. Last month, 15 corrections officers, 19 civilians, and 19 inmates were also indicted, and a large amount of contraband—including drugs, weapons, and, in particular, cell phones—was recovered.
Today’s indictments focused on correctional officers who were willing to sell their badges—to use their law enforcement credentials to protect what they believed to be drug deals involving large shipments of methamphetamine and cocaine. In a series of FBI undercover operations, more than 45 officers agreed to protect the supposed drug deals in exchange for thousands of dollars in bribes. During the undercover deals, the officers often wore their official uniforms or displayed their badges to avoid law enforcement scrutiny.
Operation Ghost Guard, undertaken in collaboration with the Georgia Department of Corrections, revealed that corrupt guards typically earned $500 to $1,000 for smuggling a single cell phone to a prisoner. Between 2014 and 2015, more than 23,500 contraband phones were seized throughout Georgia prisons—which house 50,000 inmates—and those phones were used for a variety of crimes that put prison security and public safety at risk.
Contraband phones were used to organize drug trafficking inside prisons and to perpetrate identity theft and phone scams that raised “tens of thousands of dollars,” said Special Agent Dan Odom. Odom supervises the FBI’s public corruption squad in Atlanta and helped coordinate the Operation Ghost Guard investigation through the FBI-led Atlanta Public Corruption Task Force, which combines the resources of numerous state and local law enforcement agencies in Georgia.
Operation Ghost Guard began in May 2014, shortly after a kidnapping that was set in motion by a prisoner with a contraband phone. The prisoner, serving a life sentence in North Carolina, wanted revenge on the prosecutor who helped put him there.
Using that contraband phone, the prisoner enlisted the help of fellow gang members in Atlanta who were not incarcerated to kidnap the prosecutor’s father in North Carolina and drive him to Atlanta, where he was to be tortured and killed. The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team was able to rescue the man before gang members killed him, “but the risk of life to this individual was very real,” Johnson said. “All because of a cell phone in a prison.”
That incident served as a catalyst for Operation Ghost Guard. It also prompted the FBI’s Public Corruption Unit in Washington, D.C., to launch the nationwide Prison Corruption Initiative.
