23 indicted in alleged schemes to smuggle drugs, phones into Georgia prisons with drones

STATESBORO, Ga. (AP) — Federal prosecutors have indicted 23 people, most of them current and former inmates, in what authorities said Wednesday were schemes to smuggle drugs and cellphones into Georgia state prisons using drones.

Indictments in two similar cases were unsealed Tuesday in U.S. District Court after being handed down by a grand jury last month. The indictments allege inmates used contraband cellphones to coordinate drone deliveries with defendants outside the prisons.

Drones were used to drop marijuana. methamphetamine and contraband phones into the yards at Smith State Prison in Glennville, Telfair State Prison in McRae-Helena and others over a five-year period beginning in 2019, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Jill Steinberg’s office.

Each of the defendants faces federal drug charges, and all but six were imprisoned at some point during the smuggling incidents outlined in the indictments, federal prosecutors said.

The indictments described text and Facebook messages between defendants, including aerial images of prisons and photos of packages in vacuum-sealed bags.

One message sent by an inmate in August 2021, according to the indictments, said: “Friday gotta be after dark won’t be able to get it until kitchen help go out for breakfast.”

Another inmate’s message from January 2023 said: “We can do 2 on one battery and 2 on another battery. ... I just need to know when you taking off and when the pack drop.”

Authorities seized 10 drones and 21 firearms during the drone smuggling investigations, prosecutors said.

The two prisons named by federal prosecutors in the drone smuggling cases have been tarnished in recent years by inmate violence and corruption.

The warden at Telfair State Prison was stabbed by an inmate with a homemade weapon in March as staff conducted a shakedown for contraband. He wasn’t seriously injured, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

A state investigation into a contraband inside Smith State Prison resulted in the arrest and firing of its warden, Brian Adams, in February 2023. Since then, two staff members have been killed in inmates. A correctional officer died at a hospital last October after being assaulted at the prison, corrections officials said, and in June a kitchen worker was fatally shot by an inmate with a firearm who also killed himself.