If the phone rings and someone on the other end of the line says you have a collect call from the Harris County Jail, simply hang up.

Police Chief Joe Treviño said he had received a number of inquiries in recent days from residents reporting that they had answered their phones only to be asked if they would accept a collect call from the jail in Houston.

Fortunately, in each case, the person who answered refused to take the call.

Assistant Police Chief Kenneth Jefferson said the calls are a scam, an effort to get someone to agree to a conference call. If the person called goes along with the inmate on the other end of the line, he or she could find a number of hefty charges in the next phone bill.

One person who received a call from the jail said the words “pay phone” appeared on his caller identification screen. But when he answered the phone, he was told the call was from the Harris County Jail and the caller wanted to reverse the charges.

“If they call you and ask you to accept the call and you say yes, you aren’t getting the call,” Jefferson said. “The inmate is calling someone else and it’s being billed to you.”

“The best thing to do is not even answer it,” said Treviño.

“Those inmates are just phishing for somebody to pay the bill,” said Detective Lt. Rene Guerrero. “They’re calling from pay phones.”

Most county jails provide pay phones for inmates but they cannot use the phones for long-distance calls unless they can get someone to accept the charges.

“People are not being specifically targeted,” Guerrero said. “Inmates dial a random number and get a person to accept a collect call.”

The officers said the scam works because Harris County probably has the largest jail in the state and almost everyone knows someone who either lives in Houston or who travels through that city from time to time.

The general reaction is for someone to think a friend or relative has been stopped and thrown in jail for unpaid traffic tickets or something like that.

“The people at the Harris County Jail know about the problem,” Treviño said. “They even explain it on their web site.

According to a notice on the Harris County Sheriff’s Office web site what normally happens is that the recipient takes the collect call, thinking it is from someone he or she knows.

Then an inmate comes on the line saying he must have dialed the wrong number and he only gets to make one phone call.

The request from the scammer usually goes like this: “Please help me, I’ve been arrested for traffic tickets. I was supposed to pick up my children from school, this was my only phone call and I dialed the wrong number.”

Then he asks the recipient to push *72 on his or her phone and another number allowing the caller to make a conference call with his intended recipient.

After that, every time the caller punches in your phone number, the call automatically goes to the third party of the original conference call and the charges go to you, Guerrero said. Your phone will no longer ring and you will have no idea the calls are being made until you get your bill.

The jail web site recommends that anyone who has fallen for the scam once should immediately dial *73 and cancel “Call Forwarding” service. Then the victim should call his or her local telephone service provider and report the fraudulent charges.

Some phone customers may be able to get their service provider to automatically block all calls originating from the Harris County Jail.

Law enforcement experts in Beeville recommend that everyone who has the caller ID service just ignore calls from people they do not know. But for those who do not have the service, Guerrero said, “If you don’t know who it is on the other end of the line, just hang up.”