Jailed Ferrari Driver Hit with $1.3 Million
Lawsuit
BY ANNE SOBLE
The English bank holding the title on the
red Enzo Ferrari crashed in Malibu last year is asking Los
Angeles Superior Court to enforce more than $1.3 million
in civil judgments against the imprisoned Swedish national
who was at the wheel.
Capital Bank of Chester, England, filed the
suit last week in Los Angeles Superior Court against
45-year-old Bo Stefan Eriksson. The bank is asking that the
judgments obtained in England include 8 percent interest.
The civil judgments stem from
Eriksson’s alleged breach of a 2005 loan for the red
Ferrari valued at upwards of a million dollars and similar
violations related to a Mercedes McLaren SLR.
Eriksson crashed the iconic Ferrari on
Pacific Coast Highway Feb. 21, 2006, while driving at about 160
mph and legally intoxicated, according to sheriff's
deputies.
He was sentenced last November to three
years in prison after pleading no contest to multiple
embezzlement charges and being a felon in possession of a
firearm following a three-week trial that generated less media
interest than the car crash itself.
Prior to the nolo action, Eriksson
was sentenced to a concurrent six-month jail term when he
pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of drunken driving.
Two months ago, Eriksson was transferred
from the downtown jail to the North Kern County State Prison in
Delano.
In the interval between his arrest and
sentencing, he went through several changes of counsel.
Eriksson is now represented by Tracy Green of Los Angeles.
Last month, Eriksson’s wife Nicole,
34, was interviewed by the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that
has chronicled Eriksson’s colorful past through the 1990s
as a mobster in Uppsala, Sweden, where he was sentenced to
prison time for counterfeiting and other charges..
She told the publication that the couple
“have nothing left” of their formerly lavish
lifestyle that included the stable of high performance cars and
a Bel Air estate.
Eriksson, a highly paid executive of the
now defunct Gizmondo video game company, came to the United
States in 2005 and planned on going into business here.
When Eriksson’s prison term is
completed, it is anticipated that formal deportation
proceedings will be instituted that could result in his being
returned to his native Sweden.
