Two companies, ViaPath (the old Global Tel*Link) and Securus, control roughly 80 percent of the phone and video market inside American jails and prisons. If you are loading money onto an account to talk to someone inside, you are almost certainly dealing with one of them, or with the smaller runner-up, ICSolutions. They are not a law unto themselves. The money you load is handled by a licensed money transmitter, which answers to a state banking regulator. The phone rates answer to the FCC. The seizure of your balance answers to a federal consumer agency that has already caught these companies doing exactly that. Below is how to reach each one.
A note before you start: a regulator's job is to act on patterns. One complaint is a data point. A hundred identical complaints is an investigation. You filing this is not a long shot, it is a brick in a wall other people are already building. Keep copies of everything. Write down the date and time of every call you make and the name of anyone you speak to. That record is your evidence.
Get the contract. It is public.
The single most powerful document in this fight is the contract between the facility and the phone company. It names the kickback, the "commission" the jail or prison takes from every dollar you spend. It is a public record in almost every state, and a basic open-records request will pull it into the light. This is how the Alabama sheriff who pocketed inmate food money got caught: a reporter asked for the records.
You do not need a lawyer or a fee. You send a short written request to the records custodian of the county or state agency that runs the facility, under your state's open-records or public-information law.
"Under [your state]'s Public Records / Open Records Act, I request a copy of the current contract and any amendments between [the county or agency] and its inmate telephone, video, and electronic-messaging provider, including all schedules showing commission or site-commission rates. I request these records in electronic form. If any fee applies, please tell me the amount before processing."
Search [your state] public records request inmate phone contract to find the right office and the exact name of your state's law. Many states require a response within a set number of business days.
The CFPB: they already caught these companies.
The money you deposit is held by a licensed money transmitter, and that makes it a consumer financial product the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can act on. This is your strongest single shot, because the CFPB has already done it. On November 14, 2024, it ordered Global Tel*Link / ViaPath and its subsidiaries Telmate and TouchPay to return money and pay a penalty for seizing the balances of roughly 575,000 accounts that went inactive, the exact practice in their fine print.
If your balance was taken after a period of inactivity, if you were forced to deposit far more than the cost of what you were buying, or if you were charged for a message that was never delivered, that is the conduct the CFPB already found unlawful. A fresh complaint that it is still happening tells the regulator the company has not stopped.
How to file
- Go to the complaint portal: consumerfinance.gov/complaint
- Choose the product category for money transfers / virtual currency / money services.
- Name the company. For ViaPath-family accounts, the money is handled by TouchPay Holdings, LLC (it shares the federal license number NMLS #967396 and is owned by Global Tel*Link / ViaPath). For Securus-family accounts, name Securus and its payment arm. Name the brand on your account screen too (for example, "GettingOut").
- Tell the story plainly with dates and dollar amounts: what you were required to deposit, what you actually spent, what was taken, and when.
The company must respond, and the complaint becomes part of a public database regulators and reporters read.
Your state's money-transmitter regulator.
Holding your deposited money is a regulated activity called money transmission. The company needs a license in every state where it does it, and the regulator that issues that license can examine the company's books, which is power a customer-service line does not have. Every state has this office. It is usually called the Department of Banking, Department of Financial Institutions, or Department of Financial Regulation.
Find your regulator and the company's license
- Look the company up on the national license database: nmlsconsumeraccess.org — search the company name or, for ViaPath/TouchPay, the number 967396. This shows every state where it is licensed and the regulator for each.
- Find your state's complaint channel: search [your state] money transmitter complaint or [your state] department of banking consumer complaint.
- Most of these regulators require you to contact the company first, then escalate. The runaround you have probably already gotten on the phone satisfies that step, so write down when you called and what they told you.
"I am filing a complaint against [company], a licensed money transmitter (NMLS #______), for [seizing my account balance after inactivity / forcing a minimum deposit far above the cost of service / refusing to refund unused or undelivered-message funds]. I contacted the company on [date] and [describe the response or runaround]. I am asking the department to examine this practice. Amount at issue: $____."
The FCC: for the call and video rates.
The price per minute is the FCC's territory, under the Martha Wright-Reed Act. If you believe you or your family member has been overcharged for calls from a jail or prison, the FCC takes informal complaints for free, with no legal procedure and no fee.
How to file
- Go to consumercomplaints.fcc.gov
- Choose Phone, then issue Billing, then sub-issue Incarcerated People.
- Or call 1-888-225-5322 (1-888-CALL-FCC).
- Describe the rate you were charged, the facility, and the provider.
The provider is required to respond in writing, to you and the FCC, within 30 days when the complaint is served on them.
Unclaimed property and the Attorney General.
Two more state-level levers, both free.
Unclaimed property
When a company holds money it cannot return to you, the law generally requires it to turn that money over to the state, which holds it for you to reclaim. It does not get to keep it. If your balance was "forfeited," that money may be owed to the state's unclaimed-property fund, or the company may be illegally keeping it. Search the national database for money already waiting for you, and report a company you believe is keeping what it should be turning over.
- Search for money owed to you: missingmoney.com (the official multi-state database).
- Report unreported property: search [your state] unclaimed property report a holder — run by your state Comptroller or Treasurer.
State Attorney General — consumer protection
Every state Attorney General has a consumer-protection division that takes complaints about deceptive business practices, such as a company publishing one refund promise on one page and "no refunds" on another. Search [your state] attorney general consumer complaint.
Stack them.
Do not pick one. The federal channels (CFPB, FCC) work for anyone in any state and should go out first. The state channels (banking regulator, unclaimed property, Attorney General) require you to find your own state's office, and the lookups above tell you how in two searches. The open-records request feeds all of them, because the contract is the proof.
None of this requires money you do not have. It requires a record, a few plainly written complaints, and the refusal to accept that the toll on a phone call home is a law of nature. It is not. It is a business model, and business models answer to regulators when enough people make them.