(PatriotWise.com) — The Georgia Department of Corrections is investigating allegations that inmates extorted another inmate’s family from inside prison using contraband phones, Fox5 in Atlanta reported.
Last weekend, Kimberly Industrious, whose son Charles Williams is in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, said she received a call from her son asking for $500 for breaking another inmate’s contraband phone.
Industrious said she sent her son $250 but received another call on Monday, December 4, from inmates who said they would hurt her son if she failed to pay the balance.
Williams was convicted in 2016 of aggravated assault and cruelty to children and was placed in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison after a parole violation in late November.
According to his mother, the other inmates sent her photos of her son tied up in a cell along with the demand for the full $500. Her family recorded the phone call, in which someone could be heard saying that her son would lose a tooth every ten minutes if he didn’t get the money.
Fearing that the inmate might kill her son if she didn’t pay up, Industrious said she and other members of her family made the full payment using the Cash App.
After the money was sent, Industrious didn’t hear anything from her son or the other inmate for a couple of days.
According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, Williams had been hospitalized and treated for unspecified injuries before being released.
An angry Industrious told Fox5 that she didn’t understand why the inmates were able to “take over this place” without corrections officers intervening.
In a statement last Friday, the Georgia Department of Corrections said it was investigating the incident and described contraband phones in prisons as a “serious challenge” that allow inmates to commit crimes from behind prison walls.
The department said it is “continuously seeking ways to render cellphones inoperable in our facilities.”
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