If you have rented a car from Hertz recently, you probably have a warrant for your arrest.

[redrumloa]

Yahoo Finance: If you’ve rented a car from Hertz, there could be a warrant out for your arrest​

Paula Murray wasn’t thinking about the car she’d rented from Hertz in 2016 when she walked into a State Police station in January of 2021 to finalize her new job as a dispatcher.

She’d filled out the paperwork for the required background check without hesitation. She’d even brought her grandchildren along to see her launch her new career.

Instead, the children watched their grandmother be handcuffed; arrested for allegedly stealing a car she’d in fact returned to Hertz five years earlier.

The job offer was gone and Murray spent the next three months trying to get answers from the car rental company, headquartered in Estero, Florida, before her charges were dismissed on March 30.

She’s now one of 230 plaintiffs suing Hertz for false arrest and in some cases prosecution. The lawyers for this cohort say they know there are more cases out there – warrants for arrest that people who rented from Hertz years ago don’t even know exist, like ticking time bombs waiting to explode their lives at any moment.

In recently unsealed court documents, Hertz admitted it files an average of 3,365 police reports about stolen vehicles involving its customers each year. That means over the past seven years since false theft report cases have been known to occur, theft charges have been levied against more than 23,000 people. How many of them were innocent paying customers is unknown.

“What we know is that 230 is not the majority. … It's the tip of the iceberg,” said Francis Alexander Malofiy, the lead attorney for the claimants, based in Pennsylvania.

“You're talking 20,000 people who were stuck in the criminal justice system because they had a dispute or an issue with their rental, or that (Hertz) couldn't find their car.”

It just gets worse and worse from there.