Extreme Couponer Charged With Grand Theft

We’ve all see the shows where a woman walks into the grocery store, fills up 5 carts worth of food and supplies then dumps a phonebook’s worth of coupons on the poor checker and walks out having spent what you or I would spend on a pack of gum. It’s called extreme couponing, and it has led some people to go to extreme measures to try and emulate what they are seeing on TV. Like one woman in Pittsburgh who will need a theft defense attorney due to her couponing addiction.

According to police reports, a woman found out what the delivery spot was for a local newspaper.

She waited until a delivery driver would unload the newspapers into a storage shed and then stole bundles of newspapers once the delivery driver left. In total, it is estimated that she stole $2,700 worth of newspapers over a 17 month period, and is now facing grand theft charges.

We have heard of people stealing newspapers off the porch of their neighbors in search of coupons, but this is the most extreme case of newspaper theft that we’ve come across. In California, grand theft can be charged as a misdemeanor or a felony. In this instance, it would seem likely that prosecutors would charge this as a misdemeanor, but that still carries a heavy penalty. Even on a misdemeanor a conviction could lead to as long a one year in county jail.

After paying her criminal defense attorney, court fees, and any income she might lose as a result of incarceration, it seems highly unlikely that she clipped enough coupons to make this crime at all worthwhile.