Lake County Jail inmate Larry Stone

An inmate confined to the Lake County Jail in Tavares, Florida, made a surprise discovery that he used to his advantage to bond himself out of jail.

32-year old Larry Stone was incarcerated since April of this year after being arrested on property-crime charges. On July 7^th, Stone discovered a glitch in the inmate fund accounts which he then used to accumulate enough money in his account to cover the price of his bond.

Stone placed a phone call using the jail’s payphones, a call that typically costs about $20 dollars to complete, but when the line went unanswered Stone hung up. Based on how the phone system is designed, whenever a call goes unanswered the money spent on the call is automatically deposited back into the inmate’s account. So Stone immediately dialed to check his balance, only to discover that he now had more money in his account prior to placing the call.

So Stone quickly dialed another phone number and then quickly hung up before it could be answered, and then he checked his account again and discovered that yet again there was now more money into his account.

77 calls later, Stone was able to pay his $1,200 bond himself and then walked out of the jailhouse not only as a free man but also with a check for $50.69 in his pocket.

The glitch in the system had accidentally begun refunding inmates for incomplete calls not once but twice, thereby doubling the call costs for each incomplete call placed. Global Tel*Link, the service provider for the jail’s inmate phone system, normally charges $2.58 from inmate accounts for local calls, $13.85 for long distance calls placed, and $23.86 for international calls.

Upon realizing there was a glitch, Stone placed a bevy of calls to a Canadian Narcotics Anonymous number dozens of times ? enough to buy his ticket to freedom.

But Stone’s freedom was short-lived, as officials discovered the phone glitch within a 24-hour period and immediately issued a warrant for his re-arrest.

The jail’s technology department noticed a high volume of incomplete calls coming from the inmate pay phones and investigated the matter. In the end it was discovered that the glitch had affected a total of 256 inmate accounts over a 24-hour period.

?The jail’s IT department noticed an unusual amount of calls being placed, all of which were incomplete,? said Lt. John Herrell, spokesman for the Lake County Jail. ?When we found out about it, we were shocked. We’re not really sure how the word spread, but it was definitely going around and people were jumping on the bandwagon.?

Fellow inmate Kevin Tomlinson, 18, was in the middle of placing his incomplete calls and building up his account balance with the hopes of paying off his $1,400 dollar bond when the jail investigators caught up with him. Tomlinson claimed he discovered the glitch on his own and didn’t tell anyone else about it.

Stone was the only inmate who was fortunate enough to parlay the glitch into a taste of freedom. The freedom was short-lived, as the next day he turned himself into prison officials after learning that a warrant had been issued for his arrest. He now faces additional charges of grand theft and scheming with the intent to defraud.

?It was clever and I think that what helped them is that they could check their balances instantly,? Herrell said.

Herrell said that five other inmates also took part in the scheme, and then they received checks after being transferred to other correctional facilities. All of the checks were recovered and Stone was the only inmate who actually cashed the check, the main reason why he is the only one currently facing charges for his actions.

Dorothy Cukier, executive director of Global Tel*Link, stated ?Following receipt of notification of the problem, the system was enhanced to prevent the duplicate operation of this program from ever occurring in the future.?

Officials said the system ran on two servers and both servers had mistakenly been turned on to manage the system’s transactions, instead of the normal single server.

The jail’s contract with Global Tel*Link expires at the end of August and they are exploring other options for their inmate phone service providers.