More and more customers got in touch – their ordered mobile phones never arrived. The tracks led to a lonely evening worker at Postnord.
The 26-year-old Postnord man was arrested on 31 August this year. By then, his colleagues had already been looking for him since August 7.
Suspicions were raised last summer when several customers complained that their ordered mobile phones never arrived.
The complaints concerned packages that were scanned at Postnord’s department at Netonnet’s central warehouse in Borås – and then disappeared.
Postnord’s internal investigation showed that a 26-year-old employee had worked alone every time a package went missing. On August 31, he was arrested after being caught red-handed stealing.
Got more Swish than salary
In court, he admitted to some of the thefts but claimed he threw the packages in the woods, and denied selling any phones.
However, the district court found that no discarded packages were found in the forest, that many stolen phones had found new owners and that the man earned more in Swish payments than in salary during the period in question.
The 26-year-old was convicted of 16 cases of aggravated theft of mainly telephones with a value of approximately SEK 600,000 between May and August. The sentence was two years in prison and deportation to his native Somalia, with a ten-year ban on returning.
Gets a reduced sentence: “Not systematically”
The Court of Appeal sentences him for exactly the same crimes but changes the classification to theft of the normal degree.
According to the Court of Appeal, each of the thefts must be assessed separately. In no case did the stolen goods have a “significant value”, which according to practice is five price base amounts, corresponding to SEK 262,500.
Thefts can also be considered serious if they were part of a systematic crime, but the Court of Appeal does not think that the 16 thefts for which the 26-year-old is convicted were systematic. The sentence is reduced to imprisonment for one year and two months.
Avoid deportation
The Court of Appeal also allows him to stay in Sweden.
The court notes that he has been in Sweden for eight years and learned Swedish, that he had a job before he had to quit because of the thefts, and that he has some connection to the country because his mother and brothers live here:
“The circumstances taken together do not sufficiently justify that [26-åringen] shall be deported. The claim to that effect must therefore be dismissed,” writes the Court of Appeal.
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