Thanks to Brian for sending in the latest update to the ever-bizarre Stefan Eriksson story: that he was arrested Saturday night on suspicion of grand theft, and is being held without bail. The LA Times is reporting that sheriff’s deputies believe the red Ferrari Enzo Eriksson so spectacularly crashed, along with a black Enzo as well as a “rare Mercedes” (I’m guessing the one his wife was driving without a license that got confiscated a couple weeks ago) are owned by British financial institutions, and that Eriksson had stopped making payments on them.
A British newspaper says that the cars were leased by Gizmondo, and that the company spent a total of £2 million on auto leasing in 2005. It also adds that Gizmondo’s former CEO, Carl Freer, is being sued by a London law firm for £517,000 in unpaid bills. Freer apparently has also set up shop in the Los Angeles area.
And finally, the San Francisco Chronicle’s got a nice recap of the whole story, adding in another mysterious character, an Irishman named Trevor Karney, who showed up at the scene of the original accident and allegedly left behind a fully loaded Glock handgun magazine jammed under the seat of another car. According to police, Karney fled for Ireland — on a luxury yacht.
Stay tuned for more…
[tags]gizmondo, eriksson, enzo, mobile[/tags]
gotta say that this story gets juicier and jucier. i think we’re all a bit obsessed with i. and with xero back in the news this week, there’s still more to come.
remember, the scumbags who let these scumbags scam everyone are also to blame. any executive from gizmodo should be kicked out of any company they are in unless they have an affadavit showing that they fought the eriksson gang.
sheesh.
[...] In all the fuss over Stefan Eriksson, several people noticed last month a new MVNO, Xero Mobile, and its ties to Gizmondo. Xero wants to target college students, and plans to give them free service in exchange for listening to ads — and its CEO, Peter Lilley, was head of Gizmondo’s Smart Adds business, which was supposed to lead the company to riches by pushing ads out to Gizmondo users. It’s supposedly already been able to sucker raise $300 million in investment, but has now done a reverse merger with a shell company onto the Over-The-Counter Bulletin Board market. Keep in mind, too, that former Gizmondo CEO Carl Freer, who’s also apparently living in LA along with Lilley and Eriksson, was reportedly helping Xero raise funds. [...]