(NewsNation) — Rental car company Hertz is under fire from lawmakers after hundreds of customers say they were pulled over by police and told the rental car they were driving had been reported as stolen.

Those customers say they rented their cars legally and paid for them but were arrested and sometimes thrown in jail.

Now, a whistleblower is shedding light on what is going on behind the scenes at the company.

Daniel Stokes worked for Hertz for 11 years from 1996 till 2007 and was a branch and city manager in charge of 24 different Hertz locations.

“Being a city manager and knowing what the processes were and learning more about what actually happens to the people, quite honestly, it pissed me off that knowing that it was still going on,” Stokes told NewsNation investigative reporter Rich McHugh.

Stokes believes the way Hertz is managing this current process is wrong.

“I don’t see how it’s legal,” Stokes said.

He says Hertz should not be involving police in most of these cases, but a collections company, instead.

In cases where customers have rented a car and not returned it on the due date, “Hertz is actually using the police department as a repo company and the court system as a collection company,” Stokes said. “All of these supposed embezzlement by thefts are collection issues. They’re not actual thefts.”

In other cases, he says, the car reported as stolen has already been returned and the customer who returned it late has paid restitution. It’s the next person who...

Read Full Story: https://www.wate.com/news/whistleblower-hertz-using-police-as-repo-men-prompt...