That's an excellent point - where DID she get that figure from? I'm sure we'll find out eventually just how much she ran up. But for her mom to want to call police about the stolen car and running up her credit cards/stealing money.....it had to have been a substantial amount. But there again, what is a substantial amount? To me $5,000 is alot of money. To someone else, it isn't enough to worry with. Seeing how it appears IMO that Cindy and George were having some level of financial issues or at least just making ends meet, then I would say even an amount as low as $5,000 would possibly give her reason to try to get Casey arrested.
I notice alot of media are making a big deal of the fact that in the first 911 call, Cindy says to Casey "I've given you a month!". They are taking that to mean that Cindy already KNEW Caylee was missing for that whole month. That's not necessarily the case. She could have meant a number of things. Say for example, the whole reason Casey left her moms house in the first place was that her mom said to her something along the lines of "you and caylee move out - bond - see how things go - see how you handle it on your own as a single mother". She could have been referring to the fact that Casey has already tried it "on her own" for a month already and Cindy is fed up - if Casey is stealing a car, stealing money and leaving Caylee with a nanny all the time (in Cindy's mind this is what was going on), then Cindy could have been saying I'm fed up - you've had a month to make it on your own and enough's enough. JMO on what she actually meant by that statement. I do not believe at ALL that Cindy knew her granddaughter was "missing" for a month already.