The Swedish owner of the million-dollar Ferrari that crashed in Malibu surrenders a DNA sample to Sheriff’s investigators. He will be charged with three misdemeanors if blood tests confirm he was the man behind the wheel during the Feb. 21 crash on Pacific Coast Highway.
By Hans Laetz / Special to The Malibu Times
Former Gizmondo director Stefan Eriksson surrendered a DNA sample at the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station Wednesday, in the company of his attorney.
Eriksson’s saliva sample will be tested to see if it was his DNA in blood left on the drivers’ seat airbag of the $1.2 million Ferrari Enzo that was totaled Feb. 21 on Pacific Coast Highway near Decker Canyon Road. Deputies suspected Eriksson was driving his car, and measured his blood alcohol content at .09 percent after the crash, just above the threshold level of the .08 percent legal limit for drinking and driving.
But the case, which has drawn worldwide attention, grew even more bizarre Thursday when deputies confirmed that two men arriving a few minutes after the crash claimed to be Department of Homeland Security agents and flashed badges at onlookers and at Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. It is believed the two men came back later to pick up Eriksson and his companion.
“We’re working with Homeland Security to try to figure out who these guys were,” said Sgt. Philip Brooks of Lost Hills. The badges were from a transit agency that operates a few vans for the handicapped out of a garage in Monrovia. Although it operates no fixed routes, the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority posts on its Web site that it is a government agency with a police department that appointed Eriksson as its “terrorism commissioner,” according to a business card that Eriksson showed deputies at the Malibu crash site.
Brooks said Thursday that the mysterious man who was with Eriksson at the crash site is a U.S. citizen named Trevor, but Brooks would not release his full name. “We would like to talk to him, but we can’t get to him,” Brooks said. “He is believed to be on board a $14 million yacht that is cruising Santa Monica Bay right now.”
Trevor gave a home address that was traced to a boat slip in Marina del Rey that had been occupied by the massive luxury yacht, which is reportedly registered to a man named Carl Freer. The chief operating officer of Gizmondo, the now bankrupt British electronic game manufacturer that Eriksson was involved with, was also named Carl Freer. And Freer is also believed by U.S. authorities to be the same person who was convicted of extortion, counterfeiting and racketeering as a member of the same Uppsala Mafia gang to which Eriksson reportedly belonged.
Authorities now say Trevor and Eriksson were in the Enzo when it crashed, and that Trevor flagged down a passing motorist to use that driver’s cell phone.
“At that time, Trevor may have realized he had a loaded weapon clip from a Gloeck handgun, and stuffed it down into the seat [of the motorist’s car],” Brooks said Thursday.
That bullet magazine was originally identified as a Beretta clip by deputies. Trevor apparently tried to hide the gun magazine by stuffing it far into the motorist’s front seat, Brooks said.
Eriksson reportedly was convicted of racketeering and counterfeiting in his native Uppsala, Sweden in 1995, and was known as “Fat Steven” to his cohorts in the Uppsala Mafia, according to the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet. The newspaper reported that Eriksson might have lied to U.S. immigration officers to gain entry into this nation following a string of convictions for serious racketeering charges in Uppsala in 1995. Eriksson served prison time but then dropped from public sight, according to the Swedish newspaper.
Several years later, Eriksson surfaced as chief technology officer at a British handheld game device company called Gizmondo, which British newspapers say was looted by executives of millions of dollars in inflated salaries, perks like Formula One race cars and other unearned benefits. Gizmondo manufactured a handheld game device that was launched last year at a gala party on Regent Street in Central London that featured an appearance by the Enzo Ferrari and a performance by the rock musician Sting.
The high tech British-American electronic game manufacturing company was liquidated in Britain two weeks ago after what newspapers there call a spectacular collapse.