Eriksson, whose story reaches Mark Sanford levels of ridiculous, is famous for crashing a rare Ferrari, escaping at least one prison sentence, possibly having a movie made about him, leading some sort of mafia in Sweden in the 1990s and making a product nobody ever wanted, ever. Referred to in his native Sweden as “Fat Stefan,” because he’s fat, Eriksson will serve 18 months in prison for his multitude of mafia and gadget-related crimes. Eriksson is a hilarious dirtbag the likes of which we rarely see in the tech world and he’ll be missed, at least theoretically, maybe. [The Local via Engadget, photo credit AP]

Wired’s story on Gizmondo, the gadget company fronted by Swedish con artist Bo Stefan Eriksson, has been optioned to be made into a film.

I just want to know, is Eriksson getting paid for his life rights? Because I’d hate to think he’s making a dime after the shit he pulled.

The original article starts out with the famous crash which brought attention to Eriksson, eventually ending his ring of lies:

THE BUMP IN THE ROAD that ended Bo Stefan Eriksson’s fantastic ride is practically invisible. From 10 feet away, all you can see is the ragged edge of a tar-seamed crack in an otherwise smooth sheet of pavement. Only the location is impressive – a sweet stretch of straightaway on California’s Pacific Coast Highway near El Pescador state beach, just past the eucalyptus-shaded mansions of the Malibu hills. On that patch of broken asphalt, there’s barely enough lip to stub a toe. Of course, when you hit it at close to 200 miles per hour, as police say Eriksson did in the predawn light last February 21, while behind the wheel of a 660-horsepower Ferrari Enzo, consequences magnify.

The Enzo has less than 6 inches of ground clearance, and at that speed, it took only a slight scrape under the front bumper to launch the vehicle. The airborne Ferrari landed in a skid that in a blink became a sidelong drift. Tires shredding, the car bounced over the shoulder onto a grassy slope wet with dew. All Eriksson could do was hold on as the slithering, swiveling Enzo again achieved liftoff, then slammed broadside into a wooden power pole.

Gizmondo’s story, one of massive fraud, mob ties and wrecked Ferraris, would make a fine film, but being optioned is far from a guarantee that the movie will ever get made. I hope it does, if only so that some good can come of the whole debacle. And so that more people can confuse Gizmodo with Gizmondo. I love that!* [Hollywood Reporter via Robert Capps, editor of the story who looks like a supertrooper]

*Not really.

A Swedish blogger met up with Gizmondo founder Carl Freer to discuss the future of the scandal-ridden handheld maker. Freer admitted that the worldwide economic implosion forced most of his investors to drop out, and he’s had to totally redesign the product. He plans to launch the new Gizmondo as an OEMed pocket PC, a bit like an HTC smartphone with gaming guts. It’ll be focusing on downloadable games and other content, like Apple’s App Store, and will come in two versions: Windows CE and Android. Since it’ll be based on a smartphone design, it will also be a phone, but it won’t come cheap.

By now we all know to take everything anybody associated with Gizmondo says with a giant mountain of salt. It’s anybody’s guess as to whether this new Gizmondo will ever go into production. But this is one enormously entertaining company, so I hope they stick around at least until the next scandal. [The Nordic Link via Engadget]

In an interview in the Gizmondo forums, Freer claimed that, “There is still incredible value in the Gizmondo. And with the enhancements we’re adding… we feel it’s only the beginning of where we can go with the product.”

Gizmondo version 2.0 will include a new graphics chip, Windows CE 6.0 (which comes with “a lot of ‘new’ goodies,” Freer says), and a bunch of original content to be downloaded off the gizmondo.com website. It’ll be ready by Winter 2008, and the developer community can expect more announcements soon.

Left unanswered by the interview was why Freer thinks anybody is going to trust him with anything a second time around. Maybe he hasn’t heard the adage: “Fool me once, your CEO gets sent to jail for three years and your company gets liquidated. Fool me twice… well, you ain’t ever gonna fool me twice.” [Gizmondo Forum]

“There are a few things to do, and it will be a while before that happens,” Plextek’s technical director Ian Murphy said to gaming site Eurogamer, “but yes, the product has been recovered from the liquidators and we are bringing it back to market.”

Furthermore, Murphy said that he believes that the damned handheld will succeed this time because “the only reason Gizmondo was not a success last time round was because it was not fully brought into the market.” He could have said that “the only reason Gizmondo was not a success last time round was because it wasn’t painted in bright pink and decorated with lolcats” and it would have had the same effect on us. Absolute puzzlement.

We are still asking ourselves the same questions: How can anyone expect that a previously-failed, ultra-hyped product is going succeed in a second introduction against all probability? Specially, how is that going to happen when mighty and actually credible companies—like Nokia, Sega or Atari—have tried and failed miserably?

And what’s worse: how can any company get associated with a man that was convicted for fraud in his teens; fined more than a quarter million dollars in 2005 for issuing rubber checks as a car dealer during the 90s; and arrested for illegal guns possession and impersonating a law enforcement agent this year in the US? What is going to make things different from the first time?

It all will remain a mystery for the time being. However, we stand corrected: that company exists and they are going ahead with a plan to revive a handheld console that exploded in a puff of smelly smoke. [Plextek via Eurogamer]

The original article appeared in Realtid.se, a gossip online mag that according to our sources in Sweden lacks any kind of credibility and “should be avoided at all costs.” In the article, Carl Freer talks about launching a new Gizmondo with a wider screen and a possible co-op with an unnamed telco where customers will be offered a Gizmondo for free, just for signing up for a data transfer subscription.

Freer, long-time friend and associate of famed Ferrari-crasher, fraudster and fellow ex-convict Stefan Eriksson, was recently arrested in the US for impersonating an “anti-terrorist agent” and illegal possession of guns. He was also previously convicted in Sweden for fraud and fined US$265,000 in Germany in 2006 for writing bouncing checks as a car dealer during the ’90s.

The Realtid report spread then to two other, more serious newspapers: Veckans Affärer and the Dina Pengar. The latter quoted both Realtid and Veckans Affärer, tying up all the speculation with the last piece of the puzzle, a flash animation hosted at Gizmondolive.com. According to one source, the Dina Pengar article “is not good. They are just quoting other sources and try to put two and two together and end up with three.”

Whois shows Gizmondolive.com was registered by Domains by Proxy, Inc., an anonymous web domain registration system designed to hide the identity of the real owner of the site. At this time, the owner of Gizmondolive.com remains unknown. Meanwhile, Gizmondo.com, the actual domain in which any of this would have actually happened, remains parked and in the property of Gizmondo Europe Ltd. (which presumably is owned by the company’s debt liquidators.)

So yes, the November 2007 quote by Freer is allegedly real. As another source, Swedish IT journalist Joacim Melin, puts it: “in plain English, he [Freer] is probably bullshitting to attract any kind of venture capitalist” just like they did with the original Gizmondo. The rest, however, is just castles in the air and speculation at this point.

Our guess, looking at the evidence, is that the site was made by some joker following up the November 2007 quote. But who knows, maybe the next Vapormondo will have “psychic powers,” as they say. In either case, with the history above, don’t count on this happening. And good riddance, is all I can say.

UPDATE: In addition to all this, reader Sean sent us this flash template, which apparently was used in the the Gizmondolive.com animation and further shows that it’s probably the job of a prankster.

[Realtid.se, Dina Pengar and ekonominyheterna - In Swedish. Additional sources: MoneyWeek]

The authorities believe Trevor Michael Karney, the true identity of the fictitious Dietrich, hid in Ireland for a time after the famous crash, then snuck back into the United States via Mexico. He was arrested today and charged with drunk driving, resisting arrest, lying to a police officer (about his involvement in the ordeal) and, potentially, violating federal immigration code. Some people never learn. [LA Times]