I just got a call from the same # and the only1 I know is in pasco county jail in washington but its the same thing when I call back as ever1 else its busy....
I got a call from the Oak Park (near Detroit, MI) jail ... several, in fact. All of my friends and even all but one of the "iffy's" are accounted for. If it's him, he's not 'blood', we're not close and the problem would be drugs. So, even if I had the money to bail him out, I probably wouldn't.
This is a phone service run under contract. The jails don't care how much it costs you, only how much it makes them (after all, from a phone that hasn't been mucked with, you can place a collect call simply by dialing "0" and telling the operator that you'd like to make a collect call ... which will be charged to the account you are dialing on a minute-by-minute basis -- no need to make an advance deposit.)
When I check voice mail, I get the start of a message that cuts off after the "1-800" part of the number. I got called at 3:39 pm yesterday, 4:38 pm and 5:59 pm (x2) today.
I think that it's a scam using a robot dialer to call every kind-hearted person in the country (most folks are) and give them just enough information to make them think that a friend has ended up in the pokey and is in need of help.