Jason Pope couldn’t believe what he saw on his ViaPath prison tablet inside South Carolina’s Kirkland Reception and Evaluation Center in October 2024: Someone had placed $230 worth of fraudulent orders from his prison account. A week later, he lost another $106.
“I woke up one morning, and my money was gone,” he told me in the summer of 2025.
Through the same kind of tablet, in June 2023, Jermaine Mayweathers lost about $175.
“It completely drained my account,” he said. “I was broke for a while after that.”
Mark Wilson’s family sent him $38 to buy food and hygiene supplies. Instead, a fraudster spent it on movies and games. Wilson said he could not remember the exact month or year, but that it happened within the last two-and-a-half years. He wished something bad would happen to “whoever did this.”
None of the men have received refunds for the stolen money.
For people in custody of South Carolina’s corrections department, our small electronic tablets aren’t as spiffy as iPads, but they’re even more important to us. Made by a prison telecommunications company called ViaPath Technologies, formerly Global Tel Link, our tablets let us send and receive email, buy entertainment subscriptions and speak on the phone, though not freely roam the internet.
Through an apparent security flaw, unauthorized users seem to be winning access to other people’s accounts — and money. And even though federal regulators have paid attention to the company in previous years, problems persist.
All that’s protecting a user is a six-digit inmate number, easily found on uniforms and ID cards, and a four-digit PIN. Without multifactor authentication, or even limiting the number of incorrect PIN guesses, the tablets lack basic security. In my building alone, incarcerated people have lost thousands of dollars to fraud on tablets.
When I asked Mayweathers what he thought the company should do, he said: “I want a refund.” But ViaPath has a no-refund policy. And the South Carolina Department of Corrections considers issues related to tablets to be “non-grievable.”
ViaPath, the prison communication company, is big business: It closed a $1.5 billion refinancing deal in 2024. The company is backed by a private equity firm called American Securities.
The Federal Trade Commission took action in November 2023, saying Global Tel Link failed to “implement adequate security safeguards to protect personal information,” enabling “bad actors to gain access.” According to the FTC, the company “waited approximately nine months to notify” some affected customers. Back then, the company promised to implement a comprehensive data security program. A year later, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that Global Tel Link and its subsidiaries “engaged in unfair acts or practices” and “engaged in abusive acts or practices,” in other matters unrelated to the security breaches.
I’ve seen problems linger.
South Carolina’s Turbeville Correctional Institution is a more than 70-mile drive from me here inside Kirkland. But my understanding is that, in September 2024, someone there used a tablet to crack my PIN, log into my account and place more than $400 worth of unauthorized orders with my money. That might not seem like a big deal to someone on the outside. But it’s a lot of money in prison. The South Carolina Department of Corrections doesn’t pay me to work, and what little money I get comes from family and friends as donations. Since my account was targeted, I no longer keep that much money in it. It doesn’t feel safe there.
I’ve written to ViaPath and to state officials to alert them to the fraud, requested refunds and software updates from ViaPath through the corrections department, and have reached out to ViaPath with questions about its software security and no-refund policy. The company has not responded.
