The case of the crashed Ferrari Enzo -- one of only 400 ever made -- moved closer to resolution when police arrested the driver on Saturday in Malibu, California. Swedish video game executive Stefan Eriksson faces charges of grand theft following a police raid on his gated Bel-Air estate on Friday. They took six hours to search it and then took him to the local nick.
The conclusion was that Eriksson didn't own the Enzo, nor any of the others in his $3.5 million collection. Instead, they were owned by financial institutions in the UK, to whom loan payments had lapsed. Eriksson was living in the UK last year and bought the cars then. He took the machines with him on moving to Los Angeles.
All this follows the report a few weeks ago of an Enzo that was crashed into a roadside electricity pole. The car was said to be driving at 162mph on impact. When the police got there, the driver was gone, and Eriksson said that a man called Dietrich was driving but that he had done a runner. He claimed that they were racing a Mercedes McLaren SLR. Testament to the strength of the Enzo is that no-one was seriously injured -- Eriksson suffered a cut lip.
Although police couldn't initially prove it, they didn't believe he wasn't driving. They took DNA swabs from Eriksson and the driver's airbag but haven't released the results of the test. Given the police arrest, one would have to assume that it matched Eriksson with the airbag.
Police also seized Eriksson's Mercedes McLaren SLR last month after his wife was stopped on suspicion of driving without a licence -- the car had been reported stolen to the UK police.
Eriksson was alleged to have been an executive with video game company Gizmondo, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year with over £100 million in debt.