KIRKLAND, Wash. - Carol Lindros of Kirkland owns an auto body shop. But she believes someone behind bars is wrecking her credit.
"Unbelievable, they're stealing from me and nobody's been arrested or done anything to them," said Carol.
Earlier this month, Carol opened her credit card statement to find five charges to Debit Web. She called the 800 number on her bill and found out the $300 worth of charges went to Value Added Communications, a vendor that handles pre-paid phone charges for the state prison system.
"All this money was going into these prisoners' accounts at $50 a whack," she continued.
Our investigation shows that five inmates reaped the benefits from Carol's account. Three came from the Pierce County Jail in Tacoma, and one each from the Coyote Ridge facility in Connell and the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.
The inmates are serving time for various crimes including identity theft, burglary, illegal firearm possession and vehicular homicide.
"In fact, that's the case somebody did use those credit card numbers to set up this account," said Dan Pacholke, deputy orisons director for the Washington State Department of Corrections. That's where two of the suspected inmates are held.
"We've blocked both accounts. We contacted Value Added Communication which is the contractor for our phone company. They are pursuing a fraud investigation," Pacholke added.
Prisoners can make two types of calls - collect, or use a pre-paid account.
"And from time to time we run into a case where it could be somebody using a credit card number they don't own," he continued.
The thieves got Carol's information when her house was robbed last year. They got it all: Her credit cards, Social security card, and driver's license. And though she canceled her accounts, she opened up new ones with the same companies, so all the thieves had to do to obtain information on Carol's new accounts was to just ask for it.
"The gold standard for identity theft is a date of birth and Social Security number. Once you get those two things, the sky's the limit," said John Urquhart from the King County Sheriff's Office.
The King County Sheriff's Office is also investigating Carol's case.
"Usually in prison they pass smokes and food. Now they are passing stolen minutes to each other," said Urquhart.
This is not new. We found reported cases similar to Carol's all across the country. This April in Alabama, Mobile County Jail Inmate Curtis Williams got someone on the outside to put $1500 on his jail account using a stolen credit card number.
Last month, the head of California's prison system says stolen credit cards were used by inmates for prison credit.
Pacholke says the department had cases where the thief is outside the prison and crediting accounts for people inside.
Carol's fortunate. She noticed the charges and got new accounts right away and she's asking for additional security features. But she wants the people responsible for her stolen accounts brought to justice quickly.
"They have all the leads, but nothing's been done," she said.
But late Wednesday afternoon, the Pierce County Sheriff's Office said they are on the case.
"After Jesse called, we took a good look at our jail and who these people were and what they were doing inside our jail. We did some background on them and listened to their phone calls. We found out they were teaching people to do criminal activity on the outside. We are putting a case together and we'll hopefully get them charged," said spokesman Ed Troyer.
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