Bankers blindsided by con artist's creamy cake

A well-dressed Swedish fraudster treated bank employees to cake as thanks for helping him make off with 12 million kronor ($1.75 million) in cash and gold. He has now been sentenced to eight years in prison.

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The 36-year-old resident of Farsta, south of Stockholm, used fake certified cheques to fool tellers at a branch of the Nordea bank in Vällingby, west of Stockholm, the Metro newspaper reports.

Donning a smart suit and an air of confidence, the man is shown on security camera footage calming walking with a bank employee to one of the bank’s vaults to take out 10 million kronor in gold bars and 2 million kronor worth of euro notes.

The man first went to the Nordea branch earlier this year with two certified cheques from Handelsbanken, claiming he wanted to change banks because he was moving his business.

A bank employee then called Handelsbanken to verify the checks. But what the employee didn’t know was that the 36-year-old had supplied him with a false number which put him in touch with the swindler’s accomplice.

The accomplice told the Nordea employee that he had approved the cheques himself, but was unable to provide any additional proof because of computer problems at Handelsbanken.

The Nordea employee nevertheless approved the cheques, allowing the 36-year-old to defraud the bank of millions of kronor. Two days later he arrived at the bank to pick up his gold bars and two million kronor worth of cash. With the money in his possession, the fraudster produced a cream pie and handed it over to staff as a measure of his thanks for their fine customer service.

The scam was uncovered by a bank employee when the 36-year-old tried to process a third cheque, but by then the man had disappeared.

He was eventually arrested last summer for narcotics crimes and has now been sentenced to eight years in prison for both the fraud and drugs offences.

“A spectacularly executed crime which also resulted in a long prison sentence,” prosecutor Eva Wintzell told Metro.