My question involves criminal law for the state of: Pennsylvania.
This is for a friend. She intended to return or maybe exchange an item in one of the large discount box stores, but she accidentally ended up pulling that item off the shelf to compare it with another similar item and then not thinking she just went to customer service and successfully returned that item to the store for a refund (she had a receipt for the original item). She did this all while she still had the original item she actually owned in the car. She honestly just got confused and wasn't thinking because she was in a hurry and had multiple items to return. I know it sounds insane, but true. Anyway, neither security nor the manager tried to stop her, they just let her leave the store and never said anything. About a week later she received a call from the police saying they had footage of her committing retail fraud. She of course had no idea what they were talking about because at this point she still didn't realize that she had the original merchandise in her car. She was totally thinking at this point that she had returned the merchandise and everything was fine. So, my question is, how much trouble could she be in for what was an honest mistake? The police will not communicate with her about what they plan on doing. They said that they need to still watch the entire security footage before they do anything. So basically she is just sitting and waiting, with the merchandise that she finally realized she still had. She has never been in trouble before... barely even a traffic ticket. What are her options?

