That makes no sense at all. You want a CEO to go to jail if an employee decides to do their job wrong?
But in this case, it seems like there are several hundred false reports over several years. It's so much, that Hertz was able to hand over a database of data related to it. This is negligence, they clearly know they are doing something wrong and they know it's harming other people.
If tens or hundreds of your employees are making false reports consistently over many years and you're not doing something to resolve it? I suppose the answer to your question is yes.
For it to be a crime, a single person must willingly make a statement that they know is false. Making a statement and being incorrect about it is not criminal. Knowing that other people have made incorrect statements is not criminal.
That being said, making mistakes that harms other people is a civil tort. And that’s why these cases are going to a judge now as mentioned in the article. It also worth noting that the article is about allegedly untrue reports of car theft. Whether or not those claims are accurate still remains to be tested in court.
They also get bonuses if the employees decide to do their jobs right.
If a single employee's actions can cause an innocent person to be arrested, the company procedures were clearly inadequate - in this case, a lack of a "four eyes" principle at car checkin/checkout and insufficient record-keeping and quality assurance of these records.
It is the job of the employees to do their tasks correctly... and the job of management to provide the necessary resources for employees to do their tasks and to implement procedures to catch and prevent (inevitable) human or machine error.
The idea is that Mark would feel some sort of inconvenience if something was screwed up this badly, ideally, in light of the fact that he's receiving $16,000,000/year