I’m one of those people who are terrible at remembering to return books. I sometimes suspect my overdues fines were secretly funneled off into a luxury retirement scheme for the local library staff.
Thankfully for me, the library has since abolished overdue fines, but I really must return that book I’ve had out since January… one day.
Still, a friend of mine in the dim, dark 80s once held onto a VHS copy of Predator for so long that the video store actually felt sorry for him and wrote off his accumulated fine as a purchase. I wonder if he still has that cassette?
But some video stores are – or were: the video store having since gone the way of the dodo and a sense of humour – far less forgiving.
And some miscreant video renters are finding that their wicked ways will catch up with them, no matter what.
A woman in Texas received a nasty shock while trying to update her married name. She was a criminal — for a crime she didn’t even remember committing. In fact, she was guilty of a crime most people of a certain age have probably committed. Twenty years ago, she forgot to return a VHS tape.
The wheels of VHS vengeance, like the gods, grind slowly but they grind small indeed.
Caron McBride, 52, made the discovery during a trip to the DMV. The former Oklahoma resident had moved to Texas and gotten married and needed to update her information.
That’s when the ghosts of video stores past served their vengeance up cold.
McBride was floored to learn that she was a wanted felon.
“The first thing she told me was felony embezzlement, so, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack,” McBride said. Then she learned what “crime” she had committed.
“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.”
They weren’t kidding.
In 1999, someone had rented a copy of Sabrina the Teenage Witch in McBride’s name from an Oklahoma video store called Movie Place. When no one returned the VHS cassette, charges were filed.
According to court documents, McBride was charged in March 2000 for felony embezzlement of rented property. The charges stated that McBride: “Did willfully, unlawfully, and feloniously embezzle a certain (one) video cassette tape, sabrina the teenage witch, of the value of $58.59.”
To really rub salt into the wound, she doesn’t even like Sabrina the Teenage Witch. What appears to have happened is that a roommate at the time rented the tape for his kids, using her membership. But that’s not the only mystery in Caron McBride’s life solved by the VHS felony discovery.
In fact, the more McBride thought about it, the more other parts of her life seemed to suddenly make sense. Since 1999, she had been fired from a handful of jobs. Her employers had never given her a reason.
Now, she thinks that her “criminal background” is why.
“When they ran my criminal background check, all they’re seeing is those two words: felony embezzlement,” McBride said.
Fortunately, the local DA has announced that they will dismiss the charges, but McBride still needs legal intervention to have the felony charges cleared from her record.
Yet, despite the virtual disappearance of VHS as a format and the closure of nearly all video stores (the world’s last remaining Blockbuster store is in Oregon – and available for slumber parties), McBride is not the only person finding their cassette-misappropriating past catching up with them.
In 2016, a North Carolina man was arrested for failing to return a VHS cassette he rented in 2002, Freddy Got Fingered.
That man was arrested after being pulled over for a busted taillight.
All That’s Interesting
“The officer said, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this but there’s a warrant out for your arrest from 2002. Apparently, you rented the movie “Freddy Got Fingered” and never returned it.’ I thought he was joking,” said the man.
Imagine going to jail for inadvertently stealing a copy of Freddy Got Fingered. That won’t earn you much cred on the Group W bench.
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