Hope you had a good weekend! — Dan

If you're old enough to remember VHS tapes, you probably also remember the small anxiety that came with renting one. You'd pick up a movie, watch it, and then — ideally within a day or two — return it to the store. If you forgot, you'd rack up late fees. Annoying, sure, but not the end of the world. The worst that could happen was a few extra dollars tacked onto your account, maybe a stern look from the clerk next time you came in.

It’s not going to make you unemployable… right?

Unfortunately for a woman named Caron McBride, that’s exactly what happened.

In 2021, McBride — having recently married — moved from Oklahoma to Texas with her new husband. She went to the Texas DMV to change the name on her driver’s license, but was told that Texas couldn’t do that. Per USA Today, she was told she had to “fix an issue in Oklahoma first” and “was given a case number and a phone number to the courthouse.” When she called the Oklahoma court, she was told the bad news: she was a wanted criminal.

The crime? Failing to return a VHS tape of "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" that records indicate she rented from a Norman, Oklahoma, video store called Movie Place back in February 1999. The tape was due back on February 16th. She never returned it. And in March 2000, prosecutors in Cleveland County, Oklahoma, charged her with felony embezzlement of rented property — a crime that, at the time, was punishable by up to a year in prison and a $5,000 fine (!). McBride told Fox 25, a local Oklahoma news channel, that, upon hearing the news, "I thought I was gonna have a heart attack."

McBride insists she never even rented the tape. "I have never watched that show in my entire life, just not my cup of tea," she told the local news. She believes a boyfriend she lived with at the time, who had two young daughters, must have rented it in her name. "I mean, I didn't try to deceive anyone over Sabrina the Teenage Witch," she added. "I swear." (In some interviews, she mistakenly called the show "Samantha the Teenage Witch," which perhaps underscores her unfamiliarity with the material.) And to make matters even more ridiculous, the video store — Movie Place — closed down in 2008, more than a decade before McBride even knew she had committed an alleged crime.

Oklahoma didn’t think that the dastardly deed required sending out a search party, so McBride wasn’t incarcerated when this all came to life. But she didn’t get off scot free — hardly. McBride had been living with a felony embezzlement charge on her record without knowing it. And over those years, as the Guardian reported, she had been let go from several jobs without explanation. "When they ran my criminal background check, all they're seeing is those two words: felony embezzlement." She told USA Today she had sometimes worked two or three jobs at once, struggling to make ends meet, when she knew she was capable of earning more. The unreturned tape — one she claims she never even rented — had quietly been sabotaging her career for years.

Ultimately, reason prevailed. When the tale of McBride’s “crime” hit the news, the Oklahoma DA’s office reviewed the case and dismissed it. But the damage had already been done. As McBride, then in her 50s, told USA Today, "It's hurt me tremendously, and my family. It makes me madder and madder the more I think about it."

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Today’s Bonus fact: In November 2021, inmates in an Oklahoma prison sued the state, arguing they were being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. As NBC News reported, inmates were allegedly required to stand for three to four hours in “stress positions” while listening to “Baby Shark” on loop. The inmates prevailed: two jail guards were fired for this and ultimately pled no contest to misdemeanor cruelty charges for their actions.

From the Archives: The Speed Trap That Trapped Itself: Speeding enforcement was so out of control, the state eliminated the police department.

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And thanks! — Dan