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The man who crashed a Ferrari Enzo at 162mph has pleaded not guilty to a charge of grand theft, embezzlement, drink-driving, weapons violations and other charges. At Los Angeles Superior Court yesterday, Swedish video game executive Stefan Eriksson pleaded via his lawyers and was held pending the payment of a stunningly huge (for the type of crime involved) $5.5 million bail.
The judge set bail at $5.5 million to cover the cost of the cars and because Eriksson was deemed a flight risk, after the authorities found that he had booked an flight to the UK for 10 April. Eriksson's lawyer rebutted this and said his client was not a flight risk because of his ownership of a home and business in LA.
This followed the bizarre accident in which he escaped from the rare, £400,000 V12 6-litre machine, the back of which was entirely wiped out, with just a cut lip. He said he wasn't driving. When they eventually caught up with Eriksson last week, police took six hours to search his gated estate home and then took him to the local nick.
The conclusion was that Eriksson owned neither the Enzo nor any of the others in his $3.5 million collection. Instead, they were owned by financial institutions in the UK, from whom they were leased -- and the contracts prohibited him from taking the cars out of the country.
Eriksson was living in the UK last year and bought the cars then. He took the machines with him on moving to Los Angeles.