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—ICEis 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.
