How rental company Hertz falsely accused its own customers of auto theft

On 13 January 2021, a swarm of police officers with guns drawn suddenly surrounded Saleema Lovelace in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, and asked the 45-year old local community activist to exit the Nissan Sentra she was driving.

Her elderly father who was also in the car was also detained by the police, as shown in body-cam footage obtained by Atlanta Black Star.

As Lovelace began hyperventilating in the patrol car, a police officer proceeded to tell her that they were responding to an auto theft call. The Nissan Sentra that Lovelace had been driving for half a year after getting into a car accident had been reported stolen by Hertz, the car rental company.

But that was not true.

Numerous lawsuits filed against Hertz in recent years accuse the company of knowingly and falsely reporting its customers to authorities. They accuse Hertz of not investigating alleged thefts before filing theft reports, as well as reporting cars stolen without any verification that they are stolen.

In February, a Delaware bankruptcy court judge ordered Hertz, which declared bankruptcy in 2020, to publicize its data on theft reports that it had previously filed under seal. It was soon revealed that Hertz files about 3,365 police reports every year on alleged car theft.

According to a lawsuit, Reece-Williams rented a car from Hertz on 15 September 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada for two weeks. The lawsuit indicates that she put down a Capital One card for the rental and that her aunt put down a Wells Fargo card as extra security.

In early November, police suddenly approached Reece-Williams at a gas station in Charlotte, North Carolina one day and ordered her out of the car, stating that it was stolen. After being frisked in full view of the public, Reece-Williams was eventually taken to jail where she was imprisoned for two weeks in solitary confinement, the lawsuit states.

Reece-Williams had been charged with possessing a stolen vehicle. She was eventually bailed out. However, following her release, Reece-Williams found herself homeless and had no way of contacting her family who were also unaware of her whereabouts, according to the lawsuit.

Another customer, Shontrell Higgs, also filed a claim against Hertz after she was falsely arrested in April 2019 in Broward county, Florida, for auto theft, despite extending and paying for her vehicle from Hertz. Higgs, a nurse, ended up spending 37 days in jail and says that she lost her job, missed her nursing school graduation and also suffered a miscarriage while incarcerated.