The Gizmondo Caper: The Denouement

The bizarre, twisted tale of former executive officer of venture capital gaming swiz Gizmondo Stefan Eriksson, the infamous felon who recently totalled a $1,000,000 stolen Ferrari Enzo in a high-speed, alcohol-fuelled crash in Malibu, looks like it is finally coming to a close.

Eriksson, 44, who was arrested in his swish Bel Air home last week has now been charged on a number of counts including embezzlement, grand theft auto and being a felon in possession of a gun, as well as two counts of drunk driving. As to why he has been charged twice with drunk driving, we are not sure. We don’t really think that one is the real stinger for Eriksson anyways.

Eriksson, initially claimed that he was merely a passenger in the 2003 Ferrari Enzo, which crashed into a lighting pole on the Pacific Coast Highway, shearing the car in two. A German man called Dietrich was driving the car and fled the scene before police arrived, according to Eriksson. The LAPD charges seem to indicate that the cops aren’t buying that one.

The real worry for Eriksson is the embezzlement charge, which relates to taking three cars worth a total of $3.8million out of the UK – two Enzos and the Mercedes which police impounded last month, after stopping Eriksson’s wife Nicole Persson, 33, in Beverly Hills.

The gun possession charge is due to a gun being found in his LA home. This is not good news for Eriksson, who has a felony conviction for counterfeiting dating from the early 1990s.

Deputy District Attorney Steven Sowders made a statement which said these cars were leased to Eriksson from a number of British financial institutions, and that he therefore had no right to remove them from England.

Eriksson's bail has been set at $5 million, and he could face up to 14 years in the dreaded Sing Sing if convicted. SPOnG intends to pay the games industry's most radical drunken gangster a visit when we are in La La Land next month, as we have some nice DS games he might like to play in prison. Or he might prefer a PSP. OutRun's pretty good. We won’t be so mean as to give him Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories.

Whatever, we'll make sure he has at least one of the two best handheld gaming systems on the market. One thing’s for sure. He certainly won't need one of those Gizmondo SatNav thingummybobs, as we hear that Sing Sing is designed on a very easy to understand grid system.

As an addendum to this sorry tale, a report in last weekend’s Mail on Sunday, alleged that Kevin Maxwell, the well known son of the late media tycoon and embezzler Robert Maxwell, was involved in a failed bid to rescue Gizmondo from financial ruin last year. That deal fell apart when Kevin and his brother Ian - who had previously been declared bankrupt with debts of over £400 million – failed to provide the funding.