THEY PREY ON ADDICTS' KIN

This scam is beneath contempt because it preys upon a mother's love for her
heroin-addicted, 21-year-old son - and her desperate fear that, if he can't
kick the habit, he will die.

This scam is beneath contempt because, police say, it may come from inside
the city prison system, where its perpetrators have access to private
information about inmates and their families.

Here's what happened last month to a woman I'll call Mrs. C., honoring her
request to protect her family's identity.

While her imprisoned son awaited sentencing by Municipal Judge Seamus P.
McCaffery for violating probation - he walked away from a court-ordered
drug treatment program - Mrs. C. said she received a phone call from a
woman who claimed to be an administrator of a drug rehab that had an 85
percent success rate.

The woman called Mrs. C.'s unlisted phone number. And Mrs. C. said the
woman knew a lot about her son, including the ID number in his police photo
and his probation officer's name.

The woman offered to meet that day with Judge McCaffery and said she
expected him to set bail at $5,000. She said she was sure McCaffery would
agree to send the defendant to the "drug rehab program" she said she ran in
Frackville.

Mrs. C. would have to put up $500 - the required 10 percent of bail.

The caller cautioned Mrs. C. not to tell her son's probation officer, who
might disapprove and ruin the arrangement.

"She was good," said Mrs. C., "because she fooled me and I don't consider
myself dumb. Even when she asked about my job and I told her that I worked
for the federal government and she asked if I had the power to arrest, it
didn't click. I went to the bank that day and wrote a $500 check out to
myself and cashed it. I put five $100 bills in my sock."

The woman called again and told Mrs. C. that bail had been set and that
Mrs. C. should go to the Margaret and Orthodox SEPTA police station, where
a man named Martin would have the bail paperwork to take to the Criminal
Justice Center.

"I'm grasping at straws at this point with this kid, so everything sounds
good to me," Mrs. C. said. "You grab at anything. Anything. Because you
don't want to lose your kid.

"My brother lost a kid," she said. "His son's been dead for 10 years, but
my brother will never get over it. It's not normal to bury your child."

Her son was "always a loner, always a different type of kid" who smoked pot
throughout high school, got hooked on heroin two years ago and found
himself standing in front of Judge McCaffery after shoplifting Tylenol to
sell in North Philadelphia to support his heroin habit.

Last fall, McCaffery put him under house arrest and into a drug treatment
program on the Boulevard, where the kid lasted one day. He walked in,
walked out and went home.

His mother turned him in for violating his probation.

"That was one of the worst things I ever had to do," she said, "but I had
to hang him out to dry. They came to the house in the middle of the night
and locked him up. I don't want to see my kid in jail, but it's better than
him being dead."

Feeling uneasy about carrying $500 in cash to the meeting at the SEPTA
station, Mrs. C. had the good sense to have her older son drive her to
Margaret and Orthodox.

The man named Martin clearly was not happy about that.

He told her son to wait in the car while he and Mrs. C. climbed the stairs
to the station platform, where he said the papers would be waiting in a
SEPTA office.

As Martin started walking, Mrs. C. said, her son worried: "Mom, I don't
like this. This guy looks crazy."

Mrs. C. agreed, but in her desperation, she started climbing up to the
platform. Martin asked if she had the $500. Although she had it in her
sock, she told him she would have to get it from an ATM machine.

Martin's face fell. He told her to continue up to the platform and meet a
uniformed officer named Pete, Mrs. C. said.

Then he disappeared into the night.

On the platform, there was no Pete. Mrs. C. called her son on her cell
phone and said, "Get up here. We're getting out of here."

She wrote to Judge McCaffery, who paroled her son to a legitimate drug
treatment program and warned him that if he walked away this time, he would
spend 23 months in jail.

"This smacks to me of a real serious inside caper," McCaffery said. "They
know about drug rehab, know the prison system, know the bail system.
Whoever's behind it is pretty slick, preying on the weakness of a parent
whose child is incarcerated and who would do anything to help her kid."

Major Crimes detectives agreed that this looks like an inside job, and
expressed hope that other victims would come forward after reading about
Mrs. C.

"I figure these people were too professional to just make $500," Mrs. C.
said. "I figure there's somebody else out there who may have been caught up
in this and was afraid to say anything. Luckily, I didn't lose any money or
get hurt. Maybe I can prevent this from happening to someone who won't be
so lucky."

If you have information that may help Philadelphia police make an arrest,
please call the Major Crimes Unit: 215-685-9487.