Families of Oklahoma inmates are being blackmailed by prison gangs

“Where's my damn money your son owes me?” the text read. “I'll tell him no matter where he is if you try to call (a prison official) and rat me out. I want the $250 I'm owed or I'll have him hurt.”

Cynthia was faced with a dilemma: pay or risk having her son attacked or perhaps even killed. Her son was incarcerated at the Lawton Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility at the time.

The extortion threats began in 2017 when her son was admitted to the Oklahoma County Detention Center. Cynthia suspects that gangs are orchestrating the extortion.

The first time it happened, the first week after he arrived in prison, Cynthia drove to Walgreens and spent over $500 on reloadable debit cards. She texted the card details, thinking paying would stop the threats. It didn't.

She said her son, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence, suffers from mental health problems and drug addiction and is in debt to the gangs that sell to him. When Cynthia refuses to send money, interest is charged and her son is attacked. He told her he had been raped.

Less than a month after the first threat, another inmate sent her a photo of her address and threatened to kill her.

Cynthia, a 65-year-old mother of two who lives in Oklahoma City, estimates she has spent at least $40,000 on reloadable debit cards and $10,000 on digital payment services in response to the threats.

Oklahoma Watch interviewed six people with nearly identical extortion stories; their names have been changed or withheld to protect them and their imprisoned family members from retaliation.

Many cases go unreported for fear of retaliation from gangs, according to more than a dozen Oklahoma corrections experts, prisoner advocates and prosecutors, making it difficult to determine the exact number of people affected.

Former Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh said prison gang extortion of family members was widespread during his tenure from 2016 to 2019, although the DOC does not prosecute those cases. He acknowledged he could not get a handle on the problem.

“This is another one of those things that gives me sleepless nights personally,” Allbaugh said. “I failed.”

Less than a month after her son was admitted to Lawton Prison in April 2023, Sylvia began receiving text messages from suspected gang members. His age – he was only 21 when he arrived – made him vulnerable, she said.

The 39-year-old Mississippi mother of three tried to ignore the calls from her son – about 20 a day – begging for money to pay the extortionists.

In May 2023, she relented and sent $180. Now she sends at least $100 weekly.

“My phone rings and when I see the name of the prison I throw up,” Sylvia said. “I'm a walking zombie, just a shadow of myself.”

Once her son was stabbed to death because she couldn't make a payment on time.

Although she has sent more than $13,000 since last summer, Sylvia said that if she falls behind on her payments, her son says inmates who work as food delivery men in the cafeteria withhold food from him. He is terrified to leave his cell because he is frequently attacked, even when he is escorted to the showers.

The problem is not limited to Lawton Prison, a sprawling 2,697-bed medium- to maximum-security facility that holds some of the state's most violent offenders. Interviewees were extorted by gangs at Mack Alford Correctional Center, Allen Gamble Correctional Center, Dick Conner Correctional Center and others.

Dorothy's son was incarcerated at the John Lilley Correctional Center, a minimum-security prison in Boley, when the extortion began. In July 2022, an alleged gang member threatened to attack her son if he did not receive $1,000.

Like Cynthia, she rushed to buy reloadable debit cards in response to the threat. Dorothy, a New Mexico mother of four who works two jobs, has since spent more than $8,000 through digital payment services to protect her son. She said his refusal to join a gang or do drugs made him a target.

One day last year, Dorothy ran out of money and couldn't transfer it in time. That night, her son was stabbed to death.

Cynthia, Sylvia and Dorothy reported the extortion to law enforcement, from the local sheriff's office to the Department of Justice and the FBI. But finding those responsible isn't so easy.

After Cynthia filed a complaint, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections Office of the Inspector General launched an investigation.

Investigators confiscated four smuggled cell phones, forensically examined them, and interviewed several inmates from across the prison system who denied any involvement. After two months, investigators still could not determine who sent the messages.

Instead, they concluded that her son was partially behind the extortion. An investigator emailed Cynthia and asked if she wanted to press charges against him. The investigator said that if she continued to send money, she could be violating several state laws, knowing the money would be used for drugs.

Cynthia said she felt completely abandoned.

Contraband cell phones are the primary means inmates use to extort money from other inmates' families, said Jacob Wheeler, inspector general of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

In 2022, the Department of Corrections admitted 5,247 of these inmates across all prisons.

“The people who bring them in are subjected to all sorts of threats and coercion,” said Chuck Sullivan, district attorney for Pittsburg County, where the Oklahoma State Penitentiary is located. “Girlfriends outside are hiding cell phones in orifices and bringing them in, and that's what you see most often.”

Phones are also smuggled into prison yards in duffel bags over fences or flown in by drone. Alternatively, correctional officers may be bribed or coerced into smuggling the phones in.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections is prohibited from using cell phone jammers, a technology that blocks all cellular signals in the area, because they are banned by the Federal Communications Commission. The commission considers jammers a threat to public safety because they disrupt cellular signals outside the area where they are installed.

In 2020, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections launched a pilot program using cell phone detection bracelets. The program failed after gang members threatened to attack anyone wearing the bracelets.

The other problem is staffing. According to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, there are 45 percent fewer correctional officers in Oklahoma today than there were six years ago. The number of prisoners has only dropped by 20 percent during that time.

Given rampant staffing problems, it is extremely difficult for correctional officers to monitor the influx of contraband, says Shad Hagan, a former case manager at the Dick Conner Correctional Center.

According to Department of Corrections records, Dick Conner Correctional Center employed 89 correctional officers in 2017. In July, the number was 43. With 1,209 inmates, Dick Conner is at 99% capacity.

The Federal Communications Commission legalized a possible alternative to jammers in 2021: Contraband Interdiction Systems. The systems identify and disable illegal phones but do not interfere with cellular signals from phones outside the prison.

Two prisons in Oklahoma, the Dick Conner Correctional Center and the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, have received approval from the Federal Communications Commission to install these systems.

But the technology is expensive. A system to combat contraband can cost between three and four million dollars, says Todd Craig, former head of security at the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections invested in lower-cost technology at the North Fork and Mack Alford prisons in 2020, with a $420,216 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance. According to U.S. Department of Justice reports, SIM card detectors and a small anti-contraband system that does not require approval from the Federal Communications Commission were purchased.

These systems are inadequate in some areas. SIM cards are being phased out in newer cell phones. Craig, an expert on contraband interdiction systems, said he is not aware of any data proving that SIM card detectors reduce the number of phones entering prisons. The small contraband interdiction system installed by the department is portable, so its ability to monitor the flow of contraband is limited.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections is confiscating fewer phones each year from facilities that use this technology.

North Fork Correctional Center seized 659 phones in 2021 and 481 in 2022, a 22% decrease. Mack Alford Correctional Center saw a similar trend with 664 in 2021 and 592 in 2022, a 11% decrease.

Craig said the multi-million dollar interceptor systems are the most effective technology, but states have been reluctant to adopt them because of their high cost.

South Carolina bucked the trend in August, allocating $11 million to implement a cellphone wiretapping system in several state prisons. The funding came after years of negotiations between the director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections and federal and state lawmakers.

“To get the job done, it requires the commitment of the director and his staff working with all of these external stakeholders,” Craig said.

Technological advances offer hope, but for Cynthia the damage has already been done.

This year she hit rock bottom. She ran out of money. In February she sold her retirement home and had to pay her family's medical bills while being blackmailed from a prison 145 kilometers away.

When she called her son on the prison phone, she heard inmates screaming in the background, demanding money. Cynthia stopped calling.

She hasn't hugged her son in seven years and is now too afraid to even speak to him. Her son is still accumulating debts, but she can't pay him anymore because she knows it will probably harm her son. She now spends every day in panic that he won't make it out alive.

If he does, she fears that the psychological and physical abuse he has suffered will turn him into someone she no longer recognizes.

“His humanity is not lost,” she said. “But if he's in there much longer, it will be.”