ATLANTA/DES MOINES — Four inmates orchestrated a nationwide fraud operation from inside a Georgia state prison using cell phones delivered by drone, targeting healthcare workers across multiple states including Iowa, federal prosecutors said.
Russell Tafron Weatherspoon, 26, led the sophisticated scam while serving a sentence for aggravated assault at a Georgia correctional facility, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. A drone was used to fly over the prison and drop cell phones into the yard, which inmates then used to make fraudulent calls between March 2022 and April 2024.
The four men — Weatherspoon, Karl Andre Dieudonne, 23, Demonte Tequis Brazil, 32, and Gregory Lamar Scorza, 25 — were sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa on Sept. 18, 2025, the Justice Department announced.
How the scam worked
The inmates posed as law enforcement officers and used phone-spoofing applications to make calls appear as though they came from local police departments, according to federal court documents.
Victims — nearly all employed in the medical profession — were falsely told that arrest warrants had been issued for failing to appear as expert witnesses in court. The callers invoked legal language about subpoenas and contempt charges and warned that failure to pay a bond would result in immediate arrest.
None of the victims had been subpoenaed or had valid warrants, prosecutors said.
“These are people who hold jobs in healthcare, people who were targeted specifically,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement accompanying the sentencing announcement.
Sentences handed down
U.S. District Court Judge imposed the following sentences:
- Weatherspoon: 130 months in prison
- Dieudonne: 36 months in prison
- Brazil: 51 months in prison
- Scorza: 72 months in prison
Each defendant also received three years of supervised release following their prison term.
Growing national problem
The case highlights a rapidly escalating threat facing correctional facilities nationwide as drones become increasingly sophisticated tools for delivering contraband.
In Georgia alone, 362 civilians were arrested for contraband in fiscal year 2025, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections. Some confiscated drones are “powerful enough to lift a human,” state officials said at a budget hearing this week.
Federal data shows drone incidents at Bureau of Prisons facilities surged from 23 in 2018 to 479 in 2024, according to FBI testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Christopher Hardee and Michael Torphy, testifying before the Senate committee, reported that drone incursions delivering drugs, cell phones, weapons, and fentanyl have been linked to overdose deaths and orchestrated violence inside prisons.
Federal response
The Bureau of Prisons is deploying drone-detection systems at 64 of its 121 federal facilities and pursuing counter-unmanned aircraft system technology to block threats at high-risk institutions, officials told Congress.
The Federal Communications Commission has also proposed new regulations to authorize radio frequency jamming solutions in correctional facilities for the first time, though implementation faces technical and legal hurdles.
