(BOP) - TRUGRAM, the Bureau of Prisons inmate electronic funds transfer service, will be suspended effective April 1, 2017. The current service provider, MoneyGram, has notified the Bureau of Prisons it is terminating support of the TRUGRAM Program.
TRUGRAM is an electronic funds transfer service that allows inmates to disburse funds, for a fee, to an individual outside of the institution. The TRUGRAM service will be deactivated and any TRUGRAM transactions that have not been claimed by the intended recipients by April 1, 2017 will be refunded to the inmates based on the current 30-day schedule.
With this change, inmates will no longer be able to use the TRUGRAM service to make withdrawals from their Deposit Fund accounts; however, they may continue to use a Request for Withdrawal of Inmate's Personal Funds form (BP-199), per the Bureau of Prisons Program Statement Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual. It will take longer for funds to be transferred using the BP-199, usually 5 - 7 days, since the transactions are made via a United States Treasury check and sent through the United States Postal Service instead of transferring funds electronically.
This change only affects an inmate's ability to send funds via TRUGRAM, it does not affect the public's ability to send an inmate funds using MoneyGram or any other approved method.