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Angus McCoubrey, 37, and his wife were involved in a minor fender bender at the start of their weeklong stay on the island last month and thought little of it when they called police to report the incident, the outlet said. But a few minutes after the couple made the call, McCoubrey said he noticed an Edgartown patrol car racing to catch up with them.
The officer ordered him out of the car and put McCoubrey in handcuffs, CBS said. The charge? Tax evasion in Massachusetts — a serious offense for sure, but McCoubrey had never lived in Brookline, nor filed taxes there.
The news station said he spent two nights in an Edgartown jail before police took him to Brookline to face the charge. That's when his wife caught the clerical error while going through some of McCoubrey's paperwork.
It wasn't that McCoubrey evaded paying his taxes — he didn't pay for a taxi. That missing "i" caused all this trouble, CBS reported.
The Pennsylvania man told reporters that he and a friend visited Brookline in 2014 and got into a disagreement with a cab driver. They wanted him to stop, but the cabbie kept going causing the fare to increase, CBS said.
McCoubrey paid $5 of the $7 fare, and the driver filed a police report for the missing $2, the report said. McCoubrey told CBS it was a dumb decision from his 20s he'd forgotten.
Officials dropped the charges and released him, CBS reported. He told the network that he doesn't plan on suing for the inconvenience. He hopes his story can keep other people from going through a similar ordeal.
Click here to read the full article from CBS Boston.
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