Skip to main content

Coupon Thief: Texas Woman Arrested for Stealing Coupons

By Stephanie Rabiner, Esq. on July 01, 2011 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Even though the penny pinchers that appear on TLC's Extreme Couponing go so far as to dumpster dive for coupons, it's rare that anyone even approaches the line of becoming a coupon thief.

But one coupon queen in Denton, Texas, has been arrested for allegedly doing just that.

She's been accused of masterminding a coupon crime spree.

According to the local NBC affiliate, Denton resident Sybil Hudson was arrested after witnesses saw her stealing coupons from a coin-operated newspaper stand.

A local distributer had recently complained to police that someone had accessed several of his newspaper boxes, stealing coupon inserts from the papers.

While it's pretty clear that those who have been swept up in the coupon craze take their clipping seriously, so do those who distribute the papers that can only be considered a couponer's holy grail.

Some people buy newspapers solely for the coupons, particularly on local-ad day and Sundays. Coupon inserts are part of the product as a whole, and when they go missing, their value goes down.

Indeed, is a paper without its coupons not a paper at all? It is then just a news source and a news source only--nothing more, nothing less?

Distributers may not want to sell papers that are only news sources, and are thus robbed of their monetary investment.

Hence the theft.

So, what will happen to the alleged coupon thief? She's denying the charges according to NBC, but if true, she can face a $4,000 fine and a year behind bars for letting her hobby go a bit too far.

Related Resources:

Copied to clipboard