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DN was recently able to reveal that a 27-year-old man, who is being held in the Kronoberg detention center in Stockholm with all restrictions, managed to speak for 45 minutes on the phone with an unknown person. Prison staff had approved the call in the belief that the caller was the man’s defense attorney. But during the conversation, the real defender was arrested and the scam exposed.
An attempted exemption was feared and the trial the man was supposed to attend the next day had to be canceled. Now the incident has led to an internal investigation.
– We must get to the bottom of what has happened, why it could have happened and what must be done to prevent it from happening again, says Josefin Skoglund, acting head of the special investigations section.
The director of the Kronoberg detention center, which is the largest in the country, was the one who reported the incident to the head office of the Swedish Prison and Probation Service.
– There has been a deviation from the routines that we take seriously. Prisoners with restraints, of course, shouldn’t be able to talk to strangers, says prison director Fredrik Wallin.
The diversion consists of the prison staff connecting the call from the “fake lawyer” directly to the 27-year-old detainee, without returning the call. The staff had been content to claim that the phone number was on a constantly updated list of attorneys.
– But staff should always end the call and call the approved number themselves. This also applies if police or prosecutors are looking for a detainee, says Fredrik Wallin.
Even before the investigation is complete, there is a theory as to what may have happened. Several people DN spoke to claim that the Kronoberg detention center has been subjected to a type of technical manipulation known in English as “number spoofing,” that is, the presentation of false numbers.
– With the help of various mobile apps, you can easily hide your own number and instead make it look like you are calling from an authority, a bank or, as in this case, from a law firm, says a police source.
– This means that you can never really trust the number that appears on your screen.
The method is not illegal itself. However, various police investigations show that it has been widely used as a criminal tool, for example by scammers who have forced bank customers to reveal their login details. However, neither the head of the prison Fredrik Wallin, the head of internal investigation Josefin Skoglund nor anyone from the Swedish Prison and Probation Service referred to by DN have so far been aware of the risk of “number spoofing”.
– I did not know this, says Andreas Wallin, director of the Malmö prison.
– Never heard of the phenomenon, Charlotte Magnusson, who runs the business in Sweden’s most modern prison in Sollentuna.
The Swedish Prison and Probation Service has issued one with a national order to always check the numbers of defense attorneys. DN’s survey shows that the measure is necessary.
– In the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, we are probably always a little behind. Now that this technology has turned out to exist, we must change, says prison director Radomir Sarkan, head of the detention center at Saltvik Prison in Härnösand.
– Now we have had reasons to analyze if what we have done has been enough, and it was not, answers Charlotte Magnusson, director of the Sollentuna prison.
