Quinn signs bill cracking down on jail phone scam

A new Illinois law cracks down on inmates who run phone scams from jail.

It comes after Cook County officials said they uncovered a scam last year where inmates pretended to be police and made about $50,000 worth of illegal calls by hijacking telephone numbers.

The law makes it a felony for inmates to run a phone scam from jail.

Gov. Pat Quinn signed the bill Friday, with Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart nearby, at a boot camp on the county jail campus.

Quinn says there are all sorts of "unscrupulous characters" who try to scam the system and he wants to prevent that from happening.

At Cook County jail, officials said inmates made thousands of calls by tapping into people's phones. The victims would hear clicking or beeping when they tried to use their phones.