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Smooth used his own tablet, one of the contraband ones that ran on a smuggled cellular chip, not the monitored prison Wi-Fi. He logged onto the GTL website using a prepaid Visa card bought on the outside by his girlfriend. He didn’t need Carmen’s permission to make an “advance pay” deposit. The system only required an inmate’s full name and ID number. It was a feature, not a bug. GTL’s terms of service, all 12,000 words of fine print, stated that any third party could fund an account. The company had no incentive to stop it. In fact, they loved it. Every deposit, legitimate or predatory, came with a non-refundable $3.95 processing fee.

Smooth used Marcus’s PIN to call not a lawyer, but a burner phone in the parking lot of a strip mall outside Atlanta. On the other end, his girlfriend, Keisha, waited. “Dial this number,” Smooth told Marcus, who stood beside him, listening in confusion. “It’s my legal team’s conference line.” global tel link advance pay