Georgia prisoner summoned for impersonating officers of RRPD from his cell

James McConnell, 35, of Tennessee, has a warrant out for his arrest in Rio Rancho for 11 counts of fraud and 15 counts of impersonating a peace officer from October 1 last year to January 11 this year.

According to a report filed by Rio Rancho Police Department, McConnell would contact victims via cell phone and tell them he was an RRPD officer. He would say the reason he was calling was to inform the victims that they needed to pay a fine for missing court or a bench warrant would be issued for their arrest.

Several of the victims paid large amounts, ranging from $100 to over $1,000. In total, the victims paid about $9,000 to McConnell via payment apps like Apple Pay and Venmo. In some cases the victims didn’t pay anything because they suspected a scam.

During the course of the RRPD officers’ investigation they were able to identify the suspect was using two local numbers to make the calls: (505) 750-2825 and (505)303-0590. Both numbers returned to one phone based with the company Grasshopper Group LLC. Officers served the company with a search warrant.

That was returned and officers identified the suspect as McConnell. The way the bandwidth for the phone numbers worked was the personal numbers stay private while the receiving end gets a random number.

Attached to McConnell’s account was his email. Officers searched that too. During their search they found photos of a laptop with several Cash App transactions. In the search bar of the laptop was “City of Rio Rancho” and other tabs confirming the fraudulent calls were made by McConnell. One of the screenshots showed a “find my device” location which showed a location off of Cherokee County Highway 48. There were also photos of McConnell holding a phone and driver’s license in a prison cell, his Social Security card and accounts with Venmo, PayPal and Chime.

Officers looked up McConnell in their systems and discovered he was incarcerated in Dooley State Prison in Georgia. They called the Deputy Warden and told him about the photographs, which were sent to the prison.

RRPD learned from the deputy warden that they didn’t find a cell phone but did find out that one had been used. They could not identify who had the phone now. Officers issued the warrant once that was confirmed.

Later, they found out McConnell was using crash reports systems to pick victims.

McConnell will face an additional 75 or more years if he is convicted.