The man, who is 31 years old and lives in the Stockholm area, is being charged in Solna District Court with aggravated accounting fraud and aggravated business money laundering.
A few years ago, in 2022, mandatory registration for prepaid cards was introduced to make it more difficult to use phones anonymously in the event of a crime.
The 31-year-old set up a system to register prepaid cards for himself and resell them online for a few hundred kronor each. In 2023, he registered and sold over 1,300 cards.
The Swish list includes several convicted or suspected individuals linked to organized crime. The cash cards have in many cases been used for serious crimes. The number of unclaimed cases is believed to be large.
Often suspected
Because the 31-year-old's identity has been linked to the phone numbers, he himself has been a suspect in 28 different criminal investigations in recent years.
Then it was discovered that only one goalkeeper was on the cash card. This caused some frustration. At the moment, it is not a criminal offence to register in this way, says prosecutor Daniel Larson at the Swedish Economic Crimes Authority.
Since it has not been possible to prosecute the business as an accessory to crime, other avenues have had to be sought, explains Larson.
This is like a pilot case where we are trying to tackle this problem.
Want to see a change in the law
Using gatekeepers for prepaid cards is common, but these are usually lower-level operators linked to criminal networks – not people who make a whole business out of it as in the current case. Simply acting as a gatekeeper for a SIM card is not illegal in itself.
"There is a huge need to review the legislation. It is punishable to act as a goalkeeper for a limited company, but today it is not punishable to act as a goalkeeper for a prepaid card," says Daniel Larson.
He also calls for better oversight by operators.
This person has then been able to register 1,300 prepaid cards. This is an obvious abuse, no private person has a need to have 1,300 mobile phones or SIM cards.
