Bo Stefan Eriksson. Does that name ring a bell to you? Well this guy is the idiot who is behind bars in connection with a horrific vehicle crash on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu - in which a $1 million Ferrari Enzo was going 199 miles per hour down PCH and -- with the exception of its passenger cabin -- disintegrated into thousands of pieces along Highway 1, isn't going to serve his jail time out here in the US but is about to be deported. A Swedish newspaper quoted Eriksson's wife Sunday as saying he had been transferred to the federal detention facility in Los Angeles Harbor on an immigration hold, and will be put on a plane to his native Sweden or Germany, where he also has a home.
"Don't take my picture, I'm with Homeland Security," Eriksson told a photographer from a Malibu newspaper. Eriksson and his passenger escaped injury, but blamed the crash on a mystery man named "Dietrich" who had supposedly run off into the hills. Sheriff's deputies doubted that story, but a search was made for Dietrich anyway, whom Eriksson blamed for the wreck. The Farrari was financed by British banks, but Eriksson reportedly did not make payments on it, and it was about to be repossessed when Eriksson destroyed it. Police in London said it was one of three high-end collectible cars that Eriksson had illegally had flown into Los Angeles in the cargo holds of Virgin Atlantic 747s.
Before he shattered a red Ferrari in Malibu and became grist for Internet legend, Bo Stefan Eriksson ran a criminal gang in Sweden, raced cars in Europe, skippered a yacht called Snow White and helped run a video game company with dreams of taking on Sony and Nintendo, according to police and bankruptcy investigators. Eriksson's rap sheet reads like the fading charisma of an athlete past his prime - but he was skilled at creating the aura of money and sinister chic. As an executive in Gizmondo Europe Ltd., a London-based company that developed a hand-held computer game that one industry writer described as having more gadgets than a Swiss Army knife. Gizmondo was abuzz with hype and promise. Gizmondo went bankrupt in January, amassing more than $300 million in debt in its three years of existence, according to corporate records.
As the company spiraled and unpaid bills lined up, Freer and Eriksson headed from Britain to Los Angeles, leaving a trail of private detectives, bodyguards, $1,500-a-day lap dancers and millions of dollars worth of homes, cars, diamond watches and other accouterments of those who get rich quick. The tempest around Gizmondo's slide intensified in February with Eriksson's spectacular 162-mph crash of a rare Enzo Ferrari on Pacific Coast Highway.
They called him Fat Stefan. In his home country, Eriksson both fascinated and frustrated the local police. He wasn't an ordinary thief. He'd drill holes through store walls to steal car parts. He was more imaginative than other thieves. Eriksson began constructing his own underworld. In 1988, Eriksson was convicted of possessing a shotgun and selling 10 small bags of cocaine. Swedish police sketched a flow chart of Eriksson's network that included investigations into drugs, robbery, extortion, counterfeiting, bank fraud, arms trading and contacts in Eastern and Western European criminal syndicates. His financial problems didn't stop its executives' buying sprees. Eriksson bought cars, watches, cocaine and often hired lap dancers from the Spearmint Rhino club in London, a former employee said. Eriksson, who authorities say misled U.S. immigration by not declaring that he was a felon, settled into a $3.6-million Bel-Air mansion.They say that his deportation will come as soon as arrangements can be made, and is a result of his decision to voluntarily leave the United States. Why in hell's name should it be voluntary? How about mandatory? Why do we want an idiot like this in our country - free to do what he want's, when he want's and how he want's. I guess the old saying is true. Money can't buy you love but it can rent long-term happiness!
