Well, I was a
bit bored and read up on this Eriksson character. His life (even thus far) would propably be too implausible to serve as a movie script. It's safe to say I'd be incapable of acting quite like he has. Some factoids, arranged somewhat arbitrarily:
- He claimed to have been a passenger in the car
- His actual passenger claimed to have been a passenger in a (nonexistent) SLR racing the Enzo (in addition to a nonexistent "Dietrich")
- When the officer at the scene interviewed the men, a SUV pulled up with two men introducing themselves as "homeland security" agents
- Eriksson was over the legal limit
- According to the guy who had lent a cell phone to Karney, the passenger, later reported a .40 Glock stuffed below the seat of the Enzo
- The Enzo was leased to Gizmondo, Eriksson's failed game console company, by Scotland's Capital Bank and Erikkson had not only illegally imported the car to the US but also defaulted on his payments
- The same went for the black Enzo and an SLR, this time by Lombard
- Karney once worked for West Coast Customs, of
Pimp My Ride fame
- The "homeland security anti terrorism unit" turned out to be a "private" police force, to which Eriksson belonged, run by a company called San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority (SGVTA), owned by one Yosuf Maiwandi
- In California, bus companies are indeed allowed private police departments, with badges and guns
- Eriksson had learned of SGVTA through a mutual lawyer and had offered to install surveillance equipment in exchange of becoming a deputy commissioner
- The SGVTA website specified Eriksson as "operating undercover ... playing a vital role in the defense of Southern California's homeland security"
- Another Gizmondo exec, a fellow Swede called Carl Freer was also an officer in the SGVTA private police and was suspected of trying to avert the obligatory backround check with his badge while buying a gun
- A later search of Freer's 100 ft yacht surfaced 12 rifles and 4 handguns
- Eriksson was first booked in Sweden for robbing a bank van when he was 19
- Locally he was known as "Fat Steve", perhaps referring to his heavily muscled stature
- Thereabouts he teamed up with two other men, Johan Enander and Peter Uf, though the "Nordic Criminal Journal" described Eriksson as "the undisputed leader"
- he financed a Corvette lifestyle by cocaine and steroids, doing a year's stint in jail in 1988
- When out of jail, his gang's main income came from ruthless debt collecting (aside from kidnapping, counterfeiting and fraud)
- The group became known Sweden over as the "Uppsala Mafia" and while police kept a constant watch over their activities, almost no witnesses spoke on record out of fear of horrific retribution
- Eriksson was yet again incarcerated in 1993 (for 10 years, of which he served 6) after trying to defraud Swedish Bank's money transfer for millions; other charges included gross fraud, counterfeiting, assault, and so on
- Two years from Erikssons release in 2000 he was transformed as a tech exec by aforementioned Carl Freer
- Freer was caught forging his parent's signatures on loan documents at 18
- Often suspected of acting in the margins of law, he was convicted of forging checks in Germany in 2005, receiving a hefty fine and an 18 months' probation
- Eriksson and Freer had first met in the late 80's, both managing nightclubs
- Freer had a small GPS company, Eagle Eye Scandinavian, and convinced a Florida company (Floor Décor) to buy it, propably enticed by the latter's over the counter stock listing
- By this time a Michael Carrender joined the company as the CFO
- Carrender is a member of a rather famous religious sect called "Meade Ministries" (formerly "End Timers") which among other things dominates much of Lake City
- Meade exhorts his followers ("endtime army") to wrest all the wealth they can from "the unbeliever"
- Freer and Carrender transformed Floor Décor into Tiger Telematics and by 2002, Freer was made CEO
- The company then proposed a hypothetical GPS "child tracking system", the later evolution of which was Gametrack, later renamed Gizmondo
- Tiger Telematics proceeded to create a UK subsidiary called Gizmondo Europe, which Freer ran very successfully
- Freer introduced Eriksson in the company by stating Eriksson would make "strategic introductions" to auto racing people
- One such introduction was
Jordan Grand Prix (Yes, this thread actually
is about F1, after all!), but the relationship quickly ended up badly when Gizmondo failed its commitments ($3M) to the team and Jordan filed a lawsuit against the company
- Eriksson quickly brought in his pals Enander and Uf, to take care of security and as a director, respectively
- Fast cars and beautiful women (Gizmondo had bought a 75 percent stake in a model agency, Isis) were the norm at posh, and pricey, new Gizmondo properties
- Gizmondo grabbed headlines by promising to incorporate GPS, MP3, video, motion sensing, messaging and bluetooth even before they actually had a product
- The company stock rose from 53c in 2003 to 32.50$ in 2005 and spent money furiously while income in 2004 had been a paltry $316.000 ... all from acquired companies, like Isis
- Meanwhile, Eriksson and Freer made a series of related-party transactions, outsourcing games development and such to companies that were either part owned by the two or run by friends
- The device itself was launched in 2005 (I missed the publicity completely) with such people as Dannii Minogue, Tom Green, Sting, Pharrell Williams and Busta Rhymes present
- The long and short of it was that the financial companies loved Gizmondo, gamers and game media largely didn't and were vocal about it
- Meanwhile the company had lost $300M between January 2004 and July 2005 and was being sued by Ogilvy and MTV Networks Europe for failing yet other obligations
- The company was being kept afloat by a $21.2M loan from a pair of shareholders who anticipated a US launch of the device in October 2005
- On the Friday before the launch, Eriksson and Freer abruptly told Carrender that they were resigning from the company
- The main reason seemed to be a Swedish tabloid finally getting the wind of Eriksson's new career overseas
- Gizmondo Europe declared bankruptcy in January 2006
- By this time Eriksson and Freer found themselves living the easy life in Bel-Air, CA mansions
- Freer promptly started a new company called Xero Mobile, with some Gizmondo employees and very similar organisatorial and business schemes he had already employed in Gizmondo
- It was only really the bump in the road, met at 194 mph, and the consequences thereof that drew closer scrutiny to the two men in the totaled Enzo
- LA sheriffs returned to arrest Eriksson in his Bel-Air mansion on April 8th
- A subsequent search found a .357 Magnum, registered to a businessman, Roger Davis
- Davis was both a realtor and a deputy sheriff in Orange County, CA ("OC") where the latter title was a reward for support in the elections of sheriff proper, Michael Carona
- Incidentally, Roger Davis had also been serving as Xero Mobile's president from day one ...
- On April 26 Freer was arrested on suspicion of impersonating a police officer in trying to purchase a .44 Magnum
- His yacht has since vanished and his mansion was put on market
- Eriksson's assets were frozen by Los Angeles County Superior Court
- As much as half of the $382.5M "lost" by Tiger Telematics and Gizmondo remained unaccounted for
- The High Court in London hired the services of a specialist firm Begbies Traynor to make sense of it, but even they've had trouble following the leads
- The Tiger CEO Carrender remained largely untouched by the irregularities
The above (and much more) is to be found in Wired's onetime feature
"Gizmondo's Spectacular Crack-up" (link) by Randall Sullivan, go see it there. There's some more up to date information and trivia in the Wikipedia entries of Bo Stefan M. Eriksson (he was released from prison this January, he once competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans with a Ferrari 360 Modena GTC but failed to finish, etc.), Gizmondo and Carl Freer (Gizmondo seems to still exist, sort of, and
Xero Mobile (link) does have a website).
The latter fates of "private transit policing" Maiwandi have been keenly followed by some bloggers and local media, all to be found with Google. Some sportscar crash sites have incredibly detailed graphics (grabbed and edited together from news helicopter footage and such) of the entire scene with the parts of the unfortunate enzo littering a long stretch of the highway.
You'd be hard pressed to make this stuff up. But then again, it seems applying a little pressure goes a long way for some people. Hey, couldn't this be applied as a new "GTA" storyline? I've only tried "San Andreas", though.
