More than half a dozen customers of a national rental car company were arrested after their vehicles were mistakenly reported as stolen, WPVI reported.
Hertz is being forced to pay thousands of dollars to customers after they were jailed despite being paying customers with no delinquent accounts.
Pennsylvania resident Kelly Grady was driving her rented Chevy Yukon from Hertz when the lights flashed and sirens went off.
"I thought, it's got to be a mistake," Grady told WPVI.
It wasn’t. Several Pennsylvania state troopers pulled her over.
"They were yelling over the loudspeaker for us to turn the car off, put our hands out," Grady said. "Turn the car off put the keys out the window."
When Grady and her passenger exited the vehicle, she said troopers "were screaming and yelling."
“All of them were pointing guns literally to the back of our head,” Grady told WPVI.
Hertz, had reported her Yukon stolen in 2013. Grady showed troopers her contact, and they called Hertz who admitted the error.
And a month later, Grady was pulled over in New Jersey and was arrested for grand theft auto, WPVI reported.
"I was in jail for 12 days. It was humiliating. It was scary. It was horrible. It was degrading,” Grady told WPVI. “I was sexually assaulted and gang beaten.”
Hertz filed criminal charges, but a judge threw them out, WPVI reported.
"It's been four years and it still affects me to this day," said Grady, who sued Hertz and was awarded $100,000 by a civil jury.
Civil attorney Francis Alexander said that Hertz has a pattern of wrongly reporting vehicles stolen. He cites cases in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Texas, and Indiana where his client, Ramanda Vanpay, was pulled over for auto theft in late 2016.
Vanpay also spent time in jail, Alexander told WPVI
"I mean I was scared. I cried,” Vanpay told the television station. “I told the officers that there's no way.”
Vanpay said her rental car from Green Bay got a flat tire. She returned it to an Indianapolis Hertz branch for a new one. She claimed the company failed to update its computer system and reported the initial rental car stolen. Eventually, the charges were dismissed.
"I just want everybody to be careful because it could happen to anybody," Vanpay said.
Hertz declined comment, WPVI reported.
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