You hear all the time about sneaking cell phones, tobacco, food, drugs and other contraband into prison. Sometimes they get away with it. But sometimes they’re caught and punished. That’s what happened to one formerly incarcerated person at Fort Dix FCI in New Jersey. Now he’s paying a big price. He must go back to prison.

At first glance, the smuggling plan seems pretty smart. Once he’d been released from prison, Jason “Juice” Arteaga-Loayza used a drone to fly items into the facility, according to the Department of Justice. Arteaga-Loayza teamed up with two other men on the outside, and one man still incarcerated inside, federal prosecutors say. The group worked together to drop “cell phones, cell phone accessories, tobacco, weight-loss supplements, eyeglasses, and various other items” inside Fort Dix. The man inside the prison took orders and sold the contraband to fellow prisoners for profit.

Arteaga-Loayza and the other men involved took careful steps to avoid getting caught flying contraband into the prison. They “planned drone drops during the late evening hours or at night, when the drones were less likely to be seen,” the DOJ press release says. They flew the drones from the woods around the prison, where it was easy for them to hide. And they covered drone lights with tape so that correctional officers couldn’t see them.

The Takeaway:

If you’ve been to prison, you know they have rules there that don’t seem fair. But sneaking contraband into prison is risky, no matter how smart the plan seems to be. If you’re caught, you could end up with another prison sentence. Or, like Arteaga-Loayza, you could end up in prison again after having been released.