Georgia Inmate Gets 8 Years in Florida Prison for Selling Fake Hunting Leases to Florida Hunters From His Cell, FWC Says

A Georgia prison inmate who sold fake hunting leases to Florida hunters from behind bars has been sentenced to eight years in a Florida prison, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said. Rodney E. Smith, 39, of Chatsworth, Georgia, pleaded guilty to four felonies and was sentenced on Oct. 28 in Gilchrist County, according to the FWC, which announced the outcome on Nov. 6.

Investigators say Smith used smuggled cellphones inside Macon State Prison in Oglethorpe, Georgia, to advertise hunting land he did not own or control, negotiate lease terms with hunters and collect their deposits. The victims were spread across 15 Florida counties, and the scheme took thousands of dollars from them, the agency said.

How the scheme worked

According to the FWC, Smith ran the scheme from July 1, 2025, through April 30, 2026, while he was serving time in Georgia on false imprisonment and other charges. He used multiple online aliases, social media profiles and dozens of phone numbers to post the fake leases, the agency said in August, when it first announced the charges.

Hunters who answered the ads negotiated terms and paid deposits for access to land, but never got that access, FOX 35 Orlando reported at the time, citing the FWC. The agency has not released the number of victims, the total amount taken or the names of the 15 counties where victims lived. It also has not said how Smith obtained the phones inside the prison.

The charges and the plea

FWC investigators from the agency's Statewide Investigations and Intelligence Section filed the charges in Gilchrist County, a rural county west of Gainesville. Smith pleaded guilty to all four counts:

• Fraudulently offering property for sale or lease, a first-degree felony
• Scheme to defraud of less than $20,000, a third-degree felony
• Illegal use of a two-way communication device, a third-degree felony
• Cheating, a third-degree felony

The Florida Attorney General's Office of Statewide Prosecution helped the FWC with the investigation and the prosecution, the agency said. Statewide Prosecution handles cases that cross judicial circuit lines, which fits a fraud with victims in 15 counties. Earlier coverage also credited the Georgia Department of Corrections and the Dalton, Georgia, Police Department with assisting.

Timeline of the case

The case moved from charges to sentencing in under six months, according to dates released by the FWC.

What the FWC said

When the charges were announced in August, Lt. Col. Randy Bowlin, the FWC's deputy director of law enforcement over investigations and intelligence, said Smith "stole from Florida citizens, but also damaged the trust between hunters and landowners," according to FOX 35.

In the sentencing announcement, Maj. James Barrow of the agency's Statewide Investigations and Intelligence Section said, "The FWC recognizes the important role hunting leases play in Florida's outdoor economy." Barrow also said the agency would keep working with its partners to protect landowners' ability to manage their property, according to the release.

Why hunting leases matter in Florida

In a hunting lease, a private landowner rents hunting rights on a property to an individual or a club, often for a full season. The FWC says Smith exploited that market by advertising leases online and collecting deposits on land he had no right to rent.

The sentence comes as general gun season opens across much of the state. FWC's 2026-27 general gun season for antlered deer opened Nov. 7 in Zone C and runs on these dates in the state's four hunting zones, according to the agency's season calendar:

Wildlife management areas set their own schedules, and the FWC's statewide dates do not apply on those lands.

A pattern of scams run from Georgia prisons

Smith's case is one of several in which Florida authorities say people locked up in Georgia have used contraband phones to target Floridians. The Volusia County Sheriff's Office has arrested roughly two dozen people over the past year in impersonation scams that Sheriff Mike Chitwood says are run out of two Georgia prisons, Calhoun State Prison and Wheeler Correctional Institution, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in September. Investigators say the callers pose as deputies and tell victims they have missed jury duty or face a warrant, then use accomplices outside the prison to collect and move the money.

In October, after a DeLand woman sent $15,000 to callers posing as Volusia deputies, Chitwood said the inmates "just keep on scamming up there in these Georgia prisons, and we're going to keep on bringing them back," FOX 35 reported. Most of that woman's money was recovered, the sheriff's office said. Deputies extradited Vera Faust, 43, of Athens, Georgia, to Volusia County on a fraud charge in that case, a little more than a week after arresting Annie Ashley, 61, in a similar fake jury duty scam, according to FOX 35.

Georgia's attorney general asked the Federal Communications Commission in 2024 to let prisons use cellphone jamming technology, which federal rules bar. Georgia reported finding 8,074 contraband cellphones in its prisons in 2023, according to news coverage of that request.

What's next

Smith will serve his eight-year sentence in the Florida prison system. The FWC has not said whether he must also return to Georgia to finish the sentence he was already serving there, or whether victims will be ordered repaid.

The FWC asks anyone who suspects a fraudulent hunting lease or other wildlife violation to report it through the Wildlife Alert Hotline at 888-404-3922, the FWC Wildlife Alert app or online at MyFWC.com/WildlifeAlert.