Remember the good old days of going to the video store and renting a movie?

I can remember when I was a kid before Blockbuster or Movie Galley were around going to a store called Brookside Video where I could go and browse the movies that they had to rent. They had video games as well where I could rent Nintendo games. That’s right, not Sega, not Super NES, but regular Nintendo NES games.

Then Blockbuster came to town and they ended up going out of business because as a small mom and pop spot, they had no way of competing against the big box brand.

Today, there are still places like Redbox where you can rent DVDs, but for the most part, people just rent through an online streaming service or don’t even have to rent anything since there are plenty of movies included in their current services like Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, or many others.

So we really don’t have to worry about late fees like we once did, but imagine having rented a VHS movie 20 years ago and never returning it. Well, that’s apparently what happeend to a Texas woman and ended up finding out that there was a warrant out for her arrest for, get this…felony embezzlement.

“I went to change my driver’s license, during this (forbidden illness) thing you had to make an appointment, and so, I sent them an email (and) they sent me an email and they told me … that I had an issue in Oklahoma and this was the reference number for me to call this number and I did,” McBride said.

The number connected her to the Cleveland County District Attorney’s Office.

That was when she learned that all these years she had been wanted by the law.

“The first thing she told me was felony embezzlement, so, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack,” McBride said.

“She told me it was over the VHS tape and I had to make her repeat it because I thought, this is insane. This girl is kidding me, right? She wasn’t kidding,” McBride said.

The charge of felony embezzlement of the rented property was filed against her in March 2000.

Thankfully, prosecutors dismissed the charges on this ridiculous charge, especially since the video store company isn’t even in business anymore.

I can’t even imagine how this got to the point that it was deemed a felony embezzlement charge.

Sources:
Western Journal