Two Georgia Inmates Get Federal Time for Spoofed "Police" Calls Over Missed Jury Duty

Sounds crazy when you say it out loud, right? It worked on at least 119 people. And the guys making those calls were already in prison.

So what happened?

On October 16, 2026, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia, part of the Department of Justice (DOJ), announced that two Georgia inmates have received federal prison sentences for running a phone scheme from behind bars. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) handled the investigation.

• Lance Riddle was sentenced to 200 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
• Joey Amour Jackson was sentenced to 120 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

Both sentences run consecutively to any state sentence. Senior U.S. District Judge W. Louis Sands presided over the sentencing hearings on October 14. The court will determine restitution for both defendants in 90 days. And there's no parole in the federal system.

A jury found both men guilty on January 9 of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, after a five-day trial that began January 5.

How the scam worked

According to court documents and statements referenced at trial, inmates at Calhoun State Prison, including Jackson and Riddle, used contraband cell phones and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to call victims from numbers that mirrored the numbers of their local police departments.

Read that again. The caller ID looked like the local cops.

The script, according to the release, went like this:

• Victims were told they had one or more warrants for their arrest for missing jury duty.
• The caller, posing as a police officer, said the warrants would be cleared if the victim paid a bond over the phone, and that the victim would be arrested immediately if they didn't.
• Victims were told they were under a "gag" order and couldn't discuss the matter until the bond was paid.
• Payment was almost always gift cards, with victims reading the numbers off the back. Sometimes it was wire transfers.

The inmates impersonated both made-up people and real officers from the victims' local jurisdictions. Some victims were also pushed into humiliating "security" procedures and later received sexually explicit messages and violent threats. Prosecutors said the scheme mostly targeted female professionals with prominent online profiles.

Co-conspirators outside prison handled the money, which went to pay off house and vehicle loans and to buy drugs. Documented losses topped $464,920 from 119 victims nationwide, and the release says the true number of victims is likely much higher because many cases go unreported.

"Even from prison, the defendants preyed on citizens through threats and deceit," said U.S. Attorney William R. "Will" Keyes.

Why should you care?

Look, I get it. You don't run a phone scam from a prison cell. You run a dialer, a call center or a pay per call outfit. So why am I writing about this on TCPA.com?

Because this is exactly the kind of abusive call that undermines the channel for everybody else. Every time someone gets a spoofed call from the "police," the IRS or their bank that turns out to be a scam, it gets harder for legitimate callers to get through.

Carriers keep getting more aggressive with spam labeling. When your clean, consented calls get flagged, answer rates drop and your cost per acquisition goes up. It's simple math.

It also shows how big a weak spot caller ID spoofing is. A phone, a VoIP account and a spoofed caller ID. That's all it took to run this whole thing.

What to do about it

If you run a calling platform or sell voice access, a few boring habits keep you on the right side of this:

• Know your customers. If you resell VoIP or numbers, verify who you're onboarding. Anonymous accounts paying in weird ways are a red flag.
• Never let customers display numbers they don't control. Caller ID that matches a police department is not a "marketing choice."
• Sign your traffic. STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication exists to make spoofed calls stand out. Use it, and attest honestly.
• Train your people. Your reps should never threaten arrest, demand gift cards or claim to be the government. DO NOT let a script drift there.
• Review your own campaigns for impersonation. If an affiliate's script mentions warrants, fines or courts, kill the campaign and ask questions later.

I've seen a lot of shady stuff in this business, but running a fake police department from a prison cell is a new level of suck. The lesson for the rest of us is simple: trust is the lifeblood of the phone channel. Protect it.

Pro tip: real police don't take bond payments in gift cards. Tell your parents. Tell your team.

You can read the full DOJ press release on the Georgia jury duty call scheme or the original release.