A North Carolina man was arrested this week after police discovered a warrant was issued for the 37-year-old in 2002 for failing to return a VHS movie rental.
James Meyers was arrested for failing to return the Freddy Got Fingered VHS tape he rented some 14 years ago.
According to WSOC-TV, Meyers was driving his daughter to school on Tuesday when police pulled over the man’s vehicle after spotting a burned out tail light.
An officer ran a check on Meyers’ driver’s license and after about 25 minutes the cop asked the man to step out of the vehicle, the news channel reported.
“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,” Meyers told WSOC-TV.
Meyers also reflected on his encounter in a self-shot YouTube video.
“Honestly, you really can’t make up what I’m about to tell you,” Meyers said. “So, this morning I get stopped by Concord, North Carolina’s finest … two really nice officers.”
Meyers went on to explain why he was originally pulled over by the officers and how his daughter was concerned that her father was going to go to jail for a busted tail light. The man went on to explain how the warrant began as a “civil suit that they processed as a criminal case.”
Meyers said in the video officers showed him the actual warrant as the single father had a hard time believing the cause for his arrest.
“Yeah, Freddy Got Fingered, they just served the warrant 14 years later. That’s what my local police department and lawmakers are up to,” Meyers said in the video. “They are not out here catching heroin dealers, you know what I mean. They’re chasing people for movie rentals from places that don’t even exist anymore.
“That blows my mind,” Meyers said.
Meyers said be barely remembers renting the 2001 movie that stars Canadian actor and comedian Tom Green.
Turns out, Green caught wind of Meyers’ arrest.
“I just saw this and I am struggling to believe it is real,” the comedian tweeted, linking to WSOC-TV, the station that first reported the arrest.
As the Daily News points out, failing to return a rental property is a misdemeanor in the state of North Carolina and is punishable by a fine of up to $200.
The 44-year-old comedian told the Daily News he’s willing to help out Meyers if the court follows through on a fine.
“If it’s 200 bucks of course I’ll pay it for him, just for the principle of the thing,” Green told the New York newspaper.
Green admitted to the newspaper that the arrest warrant was bizarre.
“I don’t even think that it would have been as strange of a story if it had been another movie,” Green said.
Meyers is scheduled to appear in a North Carolina courtroom next month.
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