Malibu Ferrari Crash Driver Deported to Sweden

• Expedited Processing Leads to Release of Stefan Eriksson from ICE Custody

BY ANNE SOBLE

The deportation of the Swedish businessman and convicted racketeer who crashed a $1.5 million Enzo Ferrari on Pacific Coast Highway two years ago has been expedited. Stefan Eriksson flew to his homeland last Thursday, where authorities say he is now a “free man.”
Eriksson, whose spectacular destruction of the rare sportscar made headlines around the world, is now just another Swedish citizen according to Elinor Lundmark, a press officer for the Foreign Ministry Department of the Swedish government in Stockholm.
Lundmark told the Malibu Surfside News this week that “this is now a closed matter for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” Eriksson is “a citizen with all of his rights and free to do all that a citizen can do.”
It was not known whether Eriksson was planning to travel to Germany where his wife and daughter have been living with relatives while he served sufficient prison time to be paroled to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency for deportation on charges related to illegal entry into the United States in 2004.
Lundmark said Swedish citizens do not need visas to visit other European countries, and he “can move about as he wishes.”
European gaming websites are rife with speculation that Eriksson may become associated with a resurrected Gizmondo gaming console. He was a highly-paid and lavishly-perked executive for its manufacturer, Tiger Telematics, before the firm went belly up.
Whatever Eriksson does, he will find it difficult to elude the media spotlight. He has become a cult figure in Sweden, and the electronic gaming community appears bent on assuring that he never knows anonymity.
The man known as the Ferrari Swede served less than two-thirds of prison sentences related to the crash and circumstances connected to the car’s ownership and importation into the United States.
Eriksson had pleaded no contest to drunk driving in the accident itself. Then he pled no contest to embezzlement charges on two other high performance cars and felony gun possession.
The crash remains an enigma and has attained iconic status on racing blogs around the world. Eriksson and a passenger, Irish citizen Trevor Michael Karney, were traveling over 162 mph in the Enzo when it was rent asunder. The pair walked away unharmed.
At the crash site, Eriksson claimed that a German known only as “Dietrich” was driving the car and fled the scene. Sheriff’s deputies bought his story and did not even book the ostensibly inebriated Swede.
When authorities realized they had been tricked, Eriksson was taken into custody, denied bail and shackled at courtroom appearances like a mass murderer.