Two years ago, some health care professionals across the country began to receive calls from individuals they believed were law enforcement, requesting that they pay a fine for failing to appear in court.
"Hello, this is Sergeant Christopher with the Pottawattamie County Sheriff's Office," one call said. "I have some legal documents that require immediate attention. So at your earliest convenience, contact me back."
The calls were not from law enforcement but were from scammers -- primarily targeting women health care professionals. The multistate fraud scheme, announced by officials in Iowa, was run by an inmate in a Georgia prison who ran a call center using phones delivered by drones.
"We were able to trace this all back to a person inside of the Calhoun State Prison in Georgia who was running the show," said Joseph Vogel, the detective who investigated the case.
Authorities say the scam, which robbed women in Iowa of more than $500,000, was fueled by an escalating security threat that is disrupting prisons and impacting everyday Americans: drones.
Organized crime groups are using drones to smuggle drugs, weapons, and cellphones into prisons nationwide at an unprecedented rate, officials told ABC News.
"We're under attack every single day when it comes to combating this issue," said Tyrone Oliver, commissioner for the Georgia Department of Corrections. "It's a threat from above."
Watch the ABC News investigation on ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis.
Last year, law enforcement officers in Georgia, investigating a stolen weapon during a traffic stop, found a drone packaged with drugs and cellphones inside the vehicle. After confiscating the device, officials downloaded its data to look at the GPS locations of where the drone had been.
"All of the prisons basically lit up," Gregory Phillips, a special agent for the Georgia Department of Corrections, told ABC News.
Believing the incident was not isolated, officials launched Operation Skyhawk, a major law enforcement investigation that dismantled a smuggling ring primarily utilizing drones. The operation led to the arrest of more than 150 individuals, including prison staff and inmates, and the confiscation of contraband with an estimated street value of over $7 million.
Yet despite the increased enforcement, the security breaches have become "a daily occurrence," Oliver said.
Last month alone, the Georgia Department of Corrections reported 71 drone incidents, the highest number ever. The threat is so common that during Oliver's interview with ABC News, he said a drone drop was reported just 30 miles away.
Oliver told ABC News that drone technology has advanced over time, allowing the devices to be flown as far as 100 miles away. Payloads, he said, are about 50 to 220 pounds. "It can actually lift a person up," Oliver said.
Officials told ABC News that drone drops are being flown by organized groups including Mexican cartels.
"These are organized groups, gangs, cartels," said Robert Green, executive director of the American Correctional Association. "We're talking about large sums of money, anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 a flight, bringing in this level of contraband."
Despite multiple layers of fencing and security, correctional facilities are essentially defenseless, officials told ABC News.
Under Federal Aviation Administration guidelines, drones are considered registered aircraft, which means prison staff cannot legally bring them down.
"We have all the fencing to protect people from getting in or, most importantly, getting out, but we don't have the protection of the airspace," Oliver said. "We have detection authority, but we don't have the mitigation authority to be able to safely bring those drones down."
Without the ability to intercept or bring the drones down, officials told ABC News that criminal groups have the upper hand.
"It's sure a lopsided venture for us that we can detect and we cannot stop it and mitigate it from coming in," Green said. "So I think when we start doing the ultimate outcome ... that's a drone that can carry a human being. How do we stop that and mitigate that?"
Green and corrections officials across the country have been advocating for mitigation authority -- the legal right to bring the drones down.
Drone mitigation authority has largely received bipartisan support, with congressional bills introduced by both parties.
This month, Congress will consider passing the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes historic language that would give correctional facilities the authority to detect, track, and counter drones that pose a threat to public safety.
"It is a serious, evolving, and not an imminent threat, it is immediate. We are in the throes of it right now," Green said.
Vogel, the detective in Iowa, told ABC News that "if we didn't have drones flying" into prisons, "there would be a lot less scamming."