Financial Woes Continue for Malibu Ferrari Crash Driver

• More Creditors Seek Restitution from Swedish National Now Serving Time in State Prison

BY ANNE SOBLE

Last week, another British creditor joined the ranks of those asking in Los Angeles Superior Court for enforcement of a civil judgment against the imprisoned driver who crashed a rare red Enzo Ferrari in Malibu last year.

BMW Financial Services Ltd. of Hook, England, filed the lawsuit against Bo Stefan Eriksson, asking for approximately $350,000, plus eight percent interest.

Earlier the English bank holding the title to the demolished high performance car, whose battered image was relayed around the world, asked the court to enforce more than $1.3 million in civil judgments against the Swedish national, who turned 45 in prison last December.

Eriksson crashed the Ferrari on Pacific Coast Highway on Feb. 21, 2006, while driving under the influence at about 160 mph, according to a lengthy sheriff’s department investigation. Eriksson, in highly unusual circumstances, was not detained at the scene of the accident, which remains shrouded in relative mystery.

According to the BMW lawsuit, the money is owed for a loan Eriksson signed in 2004, to buy a Rolls-Royce Phantom. A judgment was reportedly obtained by the company against Eriksson in England about a year ago, according to the paperwork.

The week before, Capital Bank of Chester, England, filed its action, which states that its civil judgments stem from Eriksson’s alleged breach of a 2005 loan for the now infamous Enzo and similar violation of an agreement for the purchase of a black Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR by Eriksson’s former company, Gizmondo Europe Ltd. The SLR, which had been reported stolen, was impounded with Eriksson’s wife Nicole at the wheel.

The Phantom, the red Enzo and the SLR were part of a stable of luxury and high performance cars, including a black Enzo, that were acquired by Eriksson, a super car aficionado who has raced the course at LeMans. The Erikssons lived a lavish lifestyle in a gated Bel Air estate.

Eriksson’s Los Angeles counsel on the restitution litigation, Tracy Green, a white-collar crime specialist, said the list of creditors seeking to attach Eriksson’s assets will probably grow. They’ll “be coming at him from all directions,” she said

Green said her primary concern is to oversee the compilation of records and keep the requests to “hard costs,” because “there’s a lot of padding going on.”

Court dates for the first of the restitution airings have not been scheduled because judges have expressed the need for more information, Green added.

Los Angeles Superior Court has jurisdiction over Eriksson, who is a Swedish national, because he lived in Los Angeles at the time of the alleged violations, according to the lawsuits.

Green corroborated statements by Nicole Eriksson to the Swedish press that the couple “has nothing left” financially, but clarified it to mean that the couple’s assets “are all tied up.”

The attorney also confirmed that Nicole Eriksson left the United States with her children and is now living with her parents in Germany and “trying to raise funds for the mounting legal costs.” She said she could offer no insight into the wife’s actions involving the SLR that may have compounded her husband’s legal problems.

Following a trial with a changing cast of attorneys, Eriksson was sentenced last November to three years in state prison after pleading no contest to multiple counts of embezzlement related to three of the cars and the charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

He is also serving a concurrent six-month jail term after pleading no contest in October to a misdemeanor charge of drunken driving.

He was transferred to the North Kern County State Prison in Delano for “inmate reception,” and has now been assigned to
the California Mens Colony in San Luis Obispo.

The CMC has in the past been described as a country club prison, but along with the rest of the state prison system, it is operating at close to double capacity.

According to Lt. Mike Siebert, the public information officer at CMC, Eriksson is classified as a Level II minimum security inmate. He is not in a cell, but is housed in a 90-man dormitory.

Siebert said that the term minimum security nevertheless connotes a facility “with an armed perimeter whose inmates are constantly supervised.”

He said that Eriksson, having just arrived at CMC, is still undergoing the classification process. As with all other able-bodied inmates, he will be assigned to a work program with options as diverse as glove making, mill knitting, laundry, silk screening, and maintenance.

In addition, he will be able to study auto mechanics, computer repair, data processing, electronics or landscaping. Classes in English as a second language, literacy proficiency and computer use are also available, as are personal growth seminars.

Green said Eriksson’s release date is contingent on computation of time for good behavior. He is described as a model inmate.

Release however will most likely be a prelude to deportation. Green said that United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement—ICE is the investigative branch of the revamped Department of Homeland Security—has begun to prepare charges that could encompass “a couple million dollars in penalties” for illegal entry into the United States

Among the charges that ICE is expected to pursue are that Eriksson did not disclose a prior felony conviction and prison time in Sweden on an array of racketeering charges. Similar entry violations are expected for the importation of the high performance cars he brought into the country in 2005.

That Eriksson alleged ties to the Department of Homeland Security at the time of the Ferrari crash may be an added factor in the agency’s eagerness to press maximum charges.

It was ICE that kept Eriksson from being able to post bond during the months of pre-trail incarceration because he was viewed as being a high risk to leave the country.

On deportation, Green said definitively, “He will not be staying in the United States.”

It’s a fascinating story. Perhaps one day Eriksson will tell why he, accompanied by a gun-toting Irish citizen who quickly and quietly left the country after the accident, was driving along Pacific Coast Highway in western Malibu one February morning when he gunned the Enzo accelerator, watched the tach spin, crashed and found himself in a spotlight that took him from a lavish international lifestyle to the confines of state prison.


ATTIRE CHANGE—Bo Stefan Eriksson has traded the Los Angeles County standard orange jumpsuit for the blue denim and chambray attire of the California Mens Colony in San Luis Obispo. He was recently transferred there from the state Department of Corrections inmate reception center in Delano. Depending on sentence reduction for good behavior, he is expected to serve the remainder of his three year term in the minimum security setting.