How smuggled mobile phones are used by prisoners to commit crimes from their cells



The most valuable commodity inside Britain's prisons is now the mobile phone. Smuggled inside books, milk cartons and shoes, they are used to organise drug deals, plot assassinations and intimidate victims via Facebook

Over the past five years mobile phones have become by far the hottest commodity behind bars

George Moon sat back on his bed, made himself as comfortable as he could on the thin mattress and flipped open his dog-eared address book. The 62-year-old career criminal slowly ran a finger down the long list of numbers - each belonging to other members of his gang - before finding the one he wanted. He then dialled.

It took only a few seconds for the call to connect and then, keeping his voice low so as not to be overheard, Moon went into business mode. This call, like most of the others he made each day, was to a number in Panama where his colleague, Leo Morgan, had established strong links with a local cocaine cartel. Thanks to this well-placed connection, Moon was able to buy virtually pure cocaine at bargain-basement prices.

The operation itself was relatively modest - half a kilo or so at a time - but in the space of eight months Moon had already earned more than £300,000. What made the enterprise truly remarkable was that Moon was running the whole thing from his prison cell at HMP Lindholme in Doncaster. Morgan was also behind bars, doing ten years for drug offences in the Central American republic's notoriously tough El Renacer prison in Gamboa, about 20 miles from Panama City.

Moon had already been jailed three times for drugs offences and was in Lindholme, a medium-security prison, serving a 14-year term imposed in 2003. Thanks to a smuggled mobile phone, he soon discovered that being in prison was no longer a bar to continuing his criminal ways. With his cell door closed and prison guards none the wiser, Moon would spend hours on the phone each day to Morgan, originally from Birmingham, who had also smuggled a phone into his cell.



Together the pair arranged the importation of 12 half-kilo packages of cocaine from Panama and Venezuela to Britain and Ireland. Morgan placed orders with a local drugs cartel. The drugs were then hidden among engineering parts and sent to Ireland by couriers including Royal Mail Parcel Force, DHL and TNT, none of whom had any idea of the true contents.



The 1,800 mobile phones confiscated since 2006 at the state prison in Vacaville, California

Using a fake name, Moon contacted a landlord in Cork, Ireland, arranged to rent storage space and persuaded him to accept deliveries. In order to make his cover story seem plausible, Moon invented three bogus firms - Ryan Pat Engineering, Angel Toys and FDFC Foods - to which the drugs shipments were sent, all of which he was able to arrange over the phone. He paid using credit card numbers belonging to friends on the outside.

Once in Ireland, the packages were collected by other members of the gang who brought them to mainland Britain by ferry and then distributed the cocaine among dealers in the northwest of England.

During the day, Moon kept the phone hidden in a space inside his mattress. In order to keep the battery topped up, he cleverly adapted his shaver - one of the few electrical items prisoners are allowed to keep in their cells - into a charging unit. He also used a notebook to store all the telephone numbers he needed, kept a spare SIM card to hand and carefully recorded the tracking numbers of the drug-filled packages being sent out.

An X-ray reveals a phone hidden within an inmate's body

His cunning scheme was eventually discovered after officials from the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) intercepted a parcel sent to Moon marked 'Legal Privilege Material'. Suspicious that the package was being sent rather than delivered by a solicitor and that it was stamped, not franked, it was opened and found to contain two SIM cards and a quantity of heroin, which Moon had planned to sell inside the prison, all hidden between fake legal documents.

When police officers then raided his cell, they caught him red-handed. He was found sitting on his bed, speaking on his mobile with his address book in his hand. Originally due for release this year, George Moon will now remain in prison until at least 2019.

Over the past five years mobile phones have become by far the hottest commodity behind bars.

Statistics compiled by NOMS show that the authorities found 4,461 mobiles and 4,325 SIM cards in prisons in England and Wales between February 2009 and January this year. This is a four-fold increase on the number found three years earlier.

Prison Officers Association spokesman Glyn Travis believes the situation is rapidly getting out of control.



'We believe that, nationally, there is one phone, charger and SIM card for every ten prisoners, which is ridiculous,' he says.

Some experts believe the situation is far worse. Harry Fletcher, of the National Association of Probation Officers, calls the figure for phones found in the past 12 months 'implausible', claiming instead that the true number of phones is likely to be at least double that.

Justice minister Maria Eagle says, 'The figures understate the actual number of finds, because they don't include items retained by police for evidential purposes or not submitted for other reasons.'

In Ireland, the problem has reached epidemic proportions, with an estimated two phones for every three inmates at some jails.



Phones hidden in the soles of a pair of shoes

The phones get into the prisons through a variety of ingenious methods. Some are carried in underwear or hidden internally by visitors. Others have been baked into loaves of bread, hidden inside packets of washing powder, concealed inside the soles of shoes or inside books or legal papers. Many are thrown over prison walls so that inmates can pick them up during exercise periods. On one occasion, a phone was said to have been fired over a prison wall using a crossbow. In some cases friends of inmates use detailed satellite maps from the internet to work out the best place to throw the items so they won't be spotted by guards.

Earlier this year, milkman Paul Donachy was arrested for attempting to smuggle mobile phones into Perth prison. It is claimed he inserted waterproofed phones into cartons of milk, which he then resealed. The cartons were delivered directly to the prison kitchen, where inmates with trustee status would be able to retrieve them.

In January a haul of 13 mobiles, 24 SIM cards, several chargers and a quantity of drugs and alcohol were discovered hidden inside tins of baked beans and soup destined for HMP Frankland, the top-security prison that houses the Soham killer, Ian Huntley. The package was delivered in a sealed prison bag and made to look as if it belonged to an inmate who had been transferred from another institution.

Former prison officer Lisa Harris, who was jailed for smuggling phones to an inmate

Once inside, inmates hide the phones in their cells, often inside items of clothing, bedding or hollowed out electrical items. At HMP Verne in Dorset, two prisoners built matchstick models with special hidden compartments to store their phones. Inmates also attempt to hide phones by cutting out pages of thick books - most commonly Bibles or prayer books, in the hope that guards will not look at them to avoid causing offence.



As well as using the phones themselves, many inmates charge others to use them at an extortionate rate. It's a lucrative business. Sentencing a teenager who attempted to take a mobile phone into a youth detention centre last month, Judge Mark Rogers said, 'On the face of it, bringing a telephone into prison may seem relatively trivial, but they can often be regarded as a form of currency in prison.'

Inmates may simply want an easier way to contact their families, but former prisoner Bobby Cummines, who runs a charity offering support to ex-offenders, is concerned that this might not always be the case.

'What worries me is that some people want to get hold of phones for darker reasons. There are those who want to carry on committing crime, intimidate witnesses and even predatory paedophiles who might use phone and internet access to attempt to groom children while they are continuing to serve sentences.'

Last year, David Blakey, former Chief Constable of West Mercia Police, carried out a detailed study on the problem. 'The number of mobile phones circulating in prisons is astonishing... the cost of a mobile phone to a prisoner, I was repeatedly told, was from £250 to £800.

George Moon, who ran a drug empire from his cell

'Prisoners would rather have their own or a shared mobile phone. The reasons are apparent. Mobile phones can receive calls as well as making them, they cost less per call, they can be used at any time, they can take photographs and do other clever things. Prisoners also like mobile phones because they are not routinely monitored and so can be used for criminal purposes and in particular for drug trafficking.'

When low-level drug-dealer Jordan Moore found himself behind bars in Lewes prison he soon realised he had a captive market of addicts and quickly worked out a way to take control and cash in. Until his incarceration he had been part of a small but lucrative heroin and cocaine distribution ring based around the seaside town of Worthing. Once inside, he continued to run the business, issuing instructions to his foot soldiers by mobile phone, but he also expanded his operations to include the prison itself.

Packages of drugs were hidden in socks and thrown over the prison walls to be collected by inmates at prearranged times. With prices up to ten times higher behind bars than on the streets, Moore found his profits soaring and lavished gifts on his girlfriend, who was helping to look after his cash while he served his time.

Estimates from NOMS suggest drugs worth at least £100 million are being traded inside British prisons every year.

There is also a second prison black market in phones. What's being traded in this situation, however, is not the ability to make calls but rather the information contained on the SIM card and within the handset itself.

The most successful dealers have phones that receive orders for drugs on a near constant basis. It means the numbers themselves are incredibly valuable. New arrivals at prisons across the country sell their SIMs to those nearing release. Depending on the size of the customer network on offer, the cost of such an exchange can easily run to more than £10,000.

According to one inmate, who asked to remain anonymous, 'If you're a dealer, your mobile phone is the single most important thing you own.

'We're talking about a phone that rings constantly. Not so much during the week perhaps but night and day at the weekend. If you get nicked the first thing you need to do is make sure someone else takes over your customers. Think of it like buying a business franchise.'



Murphy, the UK's first mobile phone detector dog making a routine sweep in Norwich prison, Norfolk

Instead of making money, others use their smuggled mobiles for more menacing purposes. One seized phone contained, in the words of observers from an independent welfare organisation, 'the most graphic and violent images, including forced sex and stabbings'.

It's claimed there have been cases of camera phones being used to take photographs of prison officers so that those on the outside can target and intimidate them. Similarly, video phones are said to have been used to call relatives and show live footage of inmates being tortured in order to extort money or drugs.

Last year, gang leader Nigel Ramsey was jailed for organising, from his cell at HMP Wolds in Humberside, the cold-blooded murder of 17-year old Tarek Chaiboub. There have been at least three other cases of murders being arranged from prison cells in the past two years.

Now that an increasing number of mobile phones offer internet access, many prisoners are even able to update the pages of their social-networking sites while behind bars.



A new body-scanning chair that can detect mobile phones concealed inside body cavities

Last year, 21-year-old Kane Barratt, part of a gang jailed for leading a violent crime spree across Manchester, published photographs of himself in his cell on his Facebook page and posted a series of messages about his sentencing. One said: 'They can put me behind my door but they can't stop time.' Barratt also completed a quiz, had his fortune told and took an IQ test online.

With prison numbers at a record high, resources are being stretched thinner than ever before. Under rules introduced last year, anyone caught with a mobile phone inside a prison faces a two-year jail sentence, but the smuggling shows no signs of slowing down. Instead, the authorities are focusing attention on trying to detect smuggled mobiles and prevent them from being used.

In Norwich prison, staff have begun using Murphy, a springer spaniel that's been trained to sniff out phones. The dog is even able to detect devices hidden away in the human body or wrapped in plastic. After undergoing extensive tests with his handler, Mel Barker, Murphy's final task before starting work was to detect a SIM card located among 5,000 seats in a football stadium. Following Murphy's success, two further dogs are being trained by the prison service.

However, much of this good work is being undone by the fact that dozens of corrupt prison officers and support staff - many of them female - have been involved in smuggling phones to inmates. Earlier this year, prison officer Cara Wright was sacked after smuggling in a mobile phone for a killer serving time in Addiewell prison in Scotland. She was caught after the inmate, David Allan, could not resist bragging about what she had done for him.

In January Lisa Harris, a prison officer at Pentonville in north London, was jailed for smuggling two mobile phones to an inmate she had become attached to so that the pair could text and call one another even when she wasn't at work. At Long Lartin prison near Evesham, 29-year-old prison officer Lucy Reynolds was paid £600 by prisoners for smuggling drugs and mobile phones into the prison. Reynolds began her crime wave after a brief relationship with an inmate who was then moved off the wing where she worked. But other prisoners saw she was 'amenable to this sort of trafficking' and began ordering phones and SIM cards.

Eight staff at Wakefield prison, one of the country's top-security jails, have been suspended while authorities investigate allegations of phone smuggling. There are currently 19 former prison officers serving jail sentences for attempting to smuggle contraband.

The risks are high but with smuggled mobile phones offering so many potential benefits, it's little wonder that some inmates will go to extraordinary lengths to acquire one. When officers at Swaleside prison began a routine cell search of one inmate, they couldn't help but notice how incredibly uncomfortable he seemed during the procedure. It turned out that he had attempted to hide a mobile phone and charger up his backside.



A phone hidden in a brush

In recent months, body orifice security scanner chairs, which can detect small metallic objects such as phones, knives and gun components without the need for intrusive strip searches, began to be rolled out through the prison system.

This month, Feltham jail in Middlesex and Brixton and Wandsworth prisons in London will begin trying out a hi-tech scheme designed to jam calls to and from mobile phones within the prison walls. The signal-blocking equipment has been installed at a cost of £2 million and if the trial goes well, the system is likely to be rolled out across every prison in the country.

A Prison Service spokesman said: 'We are currently trialling a range of signal denial technologies in a number of establishments. However, denying signals in prisons is not a quick, simple or cheap option. It is technically challenging, given the nature of the different fabric and layouts of prisons and the need to identify technology that is effective at denying signals within prisons without adversely affecting signals outside.'

One public-awareness group, the Wireless Association, says that in any case, jammers are not particularly precise, have a history of malfunctioning and that, in order to be truly effective, they have to also block frequencies used by emergency services, something that could have a devastating effect on public safety.

In the U.S., where jammers have also been introduced following an incident in which a man on death row used a smuggled mobile to call a senator and recite the names and addresses of the man's daughters, inmates have devised ways to shield their phones from jamming signals using sheets of tinfoil. Satellite phones, which are unaffected by traditional jammers and are now almost as small as regular mobiles, are also being used.

But even if prisoners are denied mobiles, they may still have other lines of communication open to them. According to Bill Hughes, director general of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, some inmates have been able to use gaming consoles to connect to the internet and then communicate with the outside world using chat rooms or online games.

'One of the issues if you are locked up is how you communicate,' says Hughes. 'What we've been highlighting is that it's not just about mobile phones. We've seen examples of people using PlayStations to pass messages.'

Harry Fletcher of NAPO, the probation officers' professional association, says a lasting solution has yet to be found: 'The Prison Service is unable to tackle the problem effectively because it simply doesn't know the true scale of it. Until they do, this problem won't go away.'







'Gang Land' by Tony Thompson is published on May 13 by Hodder & Stoughton, priced at £16.99



